I started working at Intel in December 1994. At that time, there were just short of 3,000 websites—in the world! To “browse” the web in those days, we used a program called Mosaic; Netscape was just being launched.
Now fast forward 15 years.
As of the end of November 2011, there are 525,998,433 websites in the world. Some 21,400,000 new websites come online every year—that’s a rate of roughly 58,600 new websites coming into existence every day! Instead of Mosaic and Netscape (both of which are gone), there are five or six main browsers. We can access any of these sites on our home computers, work computers, smartphones, or Internet-connected tablets. Instead of needing IT approval to get online, the Internet is literally in the palm of our hands.
Needless to say, with all this Internet traffic out there, it’s a challenge to develop a site that is truly valuable, that cuts through the clutter, and stands out. But that’s exactly what we’ve tried to do.
Today, AGC is excited to launch our new and updated chapter website. This site brings the chapter squarely into the 21st century. It will allow us to communicate with our members, decision-makers, key stakeholders, and the general public more effectively. You’ll have access to up-to-the-minute information about member services, government affairs, events, training, and more. You’ll be able to register and pay for our events, for continuing professional education, and for training classes. We also have pages dedicated to storing and making available documents about our government affairs work, membership information, workforce development, labor relations, safety, and more. The goal is to make the site the “web portal for the construction industry.”
One of the most important features of the new website is a robust and responsive search function. You no longer have to be a computer nerd (…not that there’s anything wrong with that) to find something on the website. Just type in a search word in the search bar, and the site will list some links to suggest a way to find what you’re looking for. This should be a great help to visitors to the site, and it will get better over time.
We’ll also be blogging…this post is the first of many. We want to be able to post information for you that will be useful and timely, and regularly updated. You’ll have the chance to post comments to give us your suggestions and feedback—we want to continuously improve the site. Over time, we’ll be experimenting with using multimedia (video, audio, photos, podcasts, etc.), as well as with social media like links to Facebook and Twitter. Taken together, we are pushing to find ways to get you timely, useful information in the way you want it. We want to help you maximize the Value of Your Membership.
Our web team has worked hard to reinvent the chapter’s website to make it useful to you. Please let us know what you think—and thanks for visiting our new site.