I am updating the University of Minnesota Extension Health and Nutrition program website.
Let's break apart that kernel of a sentence.
Extension: I didn't really know what extension was all about before I came to the University of Minnesota, but it has a long history. Basically, the "cooperative extension" of a land-grant university brings research-based knowledge to (rural) communities with the intention of making community members' lives better.
University of Minnesota: My local land-grant university. The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 gave land to the states for them to develop or sell; proceeds went toward establishing colleges that would focus on teaching agriculture, science and engineering.
Health and Nutrition program: Extension usually focuses on the areas of agriculture/food, home/family, the environment, community economic development, and youth/4-H. At the U of M, Health and Nutrition (H&N) falls under the Family Development area (agriculture and food tends to address the production side versus consumption).
About 90% of H&N's energy and resources go toward Simply Good Eating, Minnesota's delivery system for SNAP-Ed. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - Education is a federal/state partnership that supports—you guessed it—nutrition education for people eligible for SNAP benefits. H&N has Extension Educators (EEs) and Program Coordinators (PCs) distributed across twelve regions of Minnesota, managing paraprofessionals called Community Nutrition Educators (CNEs) who do most of the actual educating.
Updating: Extension's website is migrating, program by program, from a more rigid, cramped template...
...to more open, flexible template.
Part of my job, then, is to take all the content currently on the H&N page, review it, and figure out how to make it look good using the new template. But that's not all. H&N wants to expand their site, creating big "buckets" (categories) of information that make sense for its various audiences. But that's not all. H&N also wants to develop more and better content, to become a destination for health and nutrition information for Minnesotans.
This means I work closely with a number of people. I take orders from the H&N program director about the big picture. I follow rules and regulations laid down by the Family Development project manager. I asked EEs and PCs for ideas, clarification, and feedback. And I rely on my best buddy, the web production assistant, to take my Word documents full of URLs, cut-this's, and change-that's, and turn them into functional web pages.
Website: I'm building a framework, which is only half the battle in this Age of Social Media. And it's plenty of work for now.
There you have it. I'm being called a consultant years ahead of schedule, I'm managing multiple projects, and I'm learning valuable new skills. For what more could I ask?
Updating: Extension's website is migrating, program by program, from a more rigid, cramped template...
 |
| UMN Extension's front page in January 2010, courtesy of the Way Back Machine. |
...to more open, flexible template.
 |
| UMN Extension's front page today. |
Part of my job, then, is to take all the content currently on the H&N page, review it, and figure out how to make it look good using the new template. But that's not all. H&N wants to expand their site, creating big "buckets" (categories) of information that make sense for its various audiences. But that's not all. H&N also wants to develop more and better content, to become a destination for health and nutrition information for Minnesotans.
This means I work closely with a number of people. I take orders from the H&N program director about the big picture. I follow rules and regulations laid down by the Family Development project manager. I asked EEs and PCs for ideas, clarification, and feedback. And I rely on my best buddy, the web production assistant, to take my Word documents full of URLs, cut-this's, and change-that's, and turn them into functional web pages.
Website: I'm building a framework, which is only half the battle in this Age of Social Media. And it's plenty of work for now.
There you have it. I'm being called a consultant years ahead of schedule, I'm managing multiple projects, and I'm learning valuable new skills. For what more could I ask?
