It’s been a record hot summer in Boston and a red hot summer at CMAC too, with lots of projects heating up and a constant stream of activity. Research Manager John Balch and Office Manager Maggie Boyd have focused on re-hauling our Communications platforms and implementing new social media strategies. With the excellent cooperation of our researchers and the effusive energy of our summer team, we are excited to introduce a re-imagined website, featuring more comprehensive guides to CMAC’s projects, more frequent updates on our research and organizational growth in a blog style format, and new videos designed to convey our work to a wider audience.
Our web presence is an important part of the Outreach component of our Mission, and we were thrilled to work on new strategies to elevate that content over these last couple of months. Our efforts to refine our website have allowed us to better showcase the research of our teams and to channel their insights towards confronting contemporary challenges. We plan to continue the essential task of communicating our work going forward so that all of our supporters and stakeholders can stay informed and engaged.
Here are some highlights of the summer:
The updated project categories (Modeling Social Systems, Engaging Virtual Environments, Quantifying Identities & Ideologies, Charting Academic Landscapes) organize our wide variety of projects by how they achieve impact, clearly and quickly highlighting our variety of innovative research methods and the ultimate goals in their application.
The #MeetCMAC Series includes articles explaining key concepts and methodologies. This is an excellent way to explain some of the ways we achieve impact to experts in other fields as well as to the general public, and allows us to add more people to conversations about our research!
The Summer Communications team also worked closely with CMAC’s videographer Jenn Lindsay to create a variety of new videos that deliver insight into our work in a concise, accessible format. We are especially excited about the CMAC Introductory Video, now featured on our homepage, which gives a dynamic description of our work. The Welcome Page itself has become a much better launchpad for both new and seasoned visitors to the website, with clear links to Recent Updates and Projects that can get you immediately involved in the action!
Followers can also now ‘Subscribe’ to our work, receiving regular research updates, monthly impact reports and other announcements – just another way to stay better connected to all we do at CMAC!
And, finally, we have revised and expanded on existing project descriptions for every single active project, giving each of them a dedicated page to show off their unique methods, approaches, teams, and impacts. These pages provide a broad overview of the projects alongside a link to the most recent updates, giving users insight into CMAC’s unique and interdisciplinary approach to tackle a cornucopia of important questions.
If it’s been a while since you last poked around, give the new site a spin and feel free to subscribe to be on the front line of the newest happenings!
