From the Chair: Stephen Fletcher (August 2010)

From the Chair-Stephen Fletcher,
UNC-Chapel Hill
Staying Relevant . . . from 30,000 feet.

When all else fails, look up . . . or down. I was having the hardest time writing this, my final column as Section Chair, trashing a half dozen attempts. I wanted to talk about the three-year plan and just didn't know where to go with it, getting bogged down in the minutia. Finally, way (way!) past my final deadline it hit me: look at it from 30,000 feet.

The theme for the midwinter meeting was "staying relevant." We discussed many ideas from different perspectives, and many of the specific initiatives can be found in the document now in formation. But when I stepped back from the individual discussions or specific ideas, the overall picture—the view from 30,000 feet—pointed to new emphasis on staying current in order to stay relevant.

One of our section's trademarks has been pushing the frontier, with VIEWS and our section's web site being two shining examples. As meeting attendees looked at both of these, however, they were looking a bit dated—not only stylistically, but more importantly, in their functions. A quarterly publication and static Web 1.0 website stand little chance of being relevant in the current realm of Tweets and social networking. The most important revelation that emerged from this year's Midwinter Meeting was the need to converge our best assets, making the web site more informative and interactive, and being able to convey information on a regular basis rather than every few months. As the section goes forward, you will begin to see this convergence with a newly designed web site based upon the content management system Drupal. Coincidently, SAA has recently implemented Drupal for its redesigned web site. But as VMers, we want to do more than SAA can currently implement. By pushing the VM web site beyond what SAA headquarters can currently provide, the Visual Materials Section can stay relevant with timely information and interaction, once perhaps more importantly, staying on the frontier.