Felix Laboy and E-Site Marketing have created three stunning designs for an all-new IAOC website. You may remember Laboy as the host of a travel week here at the IAOCblog.

You can see all three comps here, and I welcome your comments on your favorite design. The new design will carry through to our blog as well. We plan to continue to offer the blog as a platform for guests to discuss a wide range of online communications interests, and the invitation remains open to our readers to join in as bloggers in producing blog weeks.

For our new website, we want to provide space for a number of different specialized interests to come together as groups and also bring the specialties together as a whole to learn about and tryout all the new technologies that keep cropping up so fast.

The website will provide space for educators, practitioners, and special interest groups (for example the travel industry or industrial communicators). It will also provide a technology forum for the creators of tools and content services to demonstrate, preview, evangelize and otherwise guide potential users in understanding how the tools work, and the advantages of using them.

Trying to keep up with the new technologies is like drinking from a fire hose. For our own sakes as online communicators we have to find a way to learn about new and cool tools without going through all the sales presentations, or installing the demonstration software. Hence the theme of IAOC’s 2006 conferences: "where content and technology meet," which will also be the driving principle of our website and blog.

So we're looking to find technology providers who can help us understand their products and services, help us keep up with the next new thing while it's still new, help keep us from falling behind the technology curve, and at the same time help us avoid new technology exhaustion.

So please look at our website comps and give us your comments. You may comment here on this blog. For longer comments, or if you want to receive a personal reply, inquire about chairing a special interest group or sponsor our technology forum , use our contact form or call me at +1.856.256.3064.

Don Dunnington
President, IAOC