Services

The Southern IPM Center offers technology, evaluation, and communication services to support working groups and other collaborative efforts.  Communication and evaluation services are available to anyone in the southern region on a first-come, first serve basis.  Technology services are available to any groups in the United States.  Any of the services may be included as part of Southern IPM Grant applications at no cost to the project with a letter of commitment from the Southern IPM Center.

 

Technology

Project Management with Basecamp

Basecamp helps organize people, tasks, discussions, and files associated with a project.  Everyone on the team is kept up-to-date on progress and can clearly see upcoming deadlines. .  The Southern IPM Center is happy to add anyone to Team IPM and  will help you  setup your IPM  project and provide suggestions on how you might use Basecamp to stay organized.

Online Conversations with Slack

Not everyone needs a full blown project management solution to keep their team together.  For those just needing a forum for people to discuss IPM, Join our Slack .  Current channels give updates on new invasive species reports, new content for Extension and outreach programs, and help with tech, communications, and evaluation

Webinar Hosting and Online Meeting Moderation   

Not everyone is comfortable hosting and moderating webinars on online meetings.  We help with setup, moderation, practice sessions, recording, streaming, and troubleshooting. 

Electronic Newsletter Management with MailChimp

Electronic newsletters are a key tool for many outreach and extension programs.  The IPM Center uses  MailChimp  to deliver timely announcements, automatically create E-mail newsletters from Blogs, manage subscribers, track user interaction with newsletters and show what traffic on your website is coming from newsletter or other sources. We help set up your newsletter, connect it to your website, import existing newsletter subscribers, and interpret statistics on how your audience interacts with your content.

Content Delivery

The IPM Centers work closely with the Bugwood Center to provide content that can be used in any Extension program and on any website.  Types of content include maps, pest data, presentations, images (including annotated image series, image galleries), video, lists of available publications, and forms for reporting invasive species or pest occurrence.  We’ll help you discover what resources are available and how they can be integrated with your programs by directly downloading content or accessing it from the API.

Pest and Invasive Species Monitoring

In addition to the Content Delivery options above, the IPM Centers also partner with the Bugwood Center to provide tools to coordinate Early Detection and Rapid Response to invasive species and pest monitoring programs.  This functionality is provided through EDDMapS and AgPest Monitor.  This includes applications for pest reporting, data verification, follow up on new reports, mapping and visualization.  Anyone with interest in these tools should reach out to Joe LaForest.

Content Management

Finding a stable and secure place to host a website is only the first step in having an online resource.  Next, you need someone to help manage content, reach out to members of the team to get updates, and put that information online in a timely manner and visually appealing way.  While we would love for every program to have a content manager, that is not always possible.  We offer limited support for content management and training people how to manage their own content to make work with your visitors, social media, and search engines.

Advice

We keep up on what different groups are working on in the region.  Many are willing to share either how they build a new digital tool or are willing to share the infrastructure supporting their program.  If you want to know what resources are out there or just want a sounding board for ideas, we are available.

Web Hosting

Working groups frequently need websites to raise awareness of current pest issues with stakeholders, provide a clearinghouse of information on a specific topics, announce recent activity, outputs and outcomes from ongoing collaborative work that bridges multiple institutions and needs to have neutral branding while representing the contribution from all partners.  The Southern IPM Center will provide hosting of these sites in Wordpress.  After a project ends, the center will continue to provide hosting as long as the group is active and willing to provide input to keep the site updated.  Examples of previous work include:

 

Full Websites

Allium Net (https://alliumnet.com) >

Evaluation

There are two main types of evaluation; evaluation that measures the success of a project in achieving its outcomes (summative) and evaluation that measures if a project accomplished its goals (formative). Both are often used simultaneously in project evaluation.  Our Evaluation Specialist, Tegan Walker has outlined steps for a successful project evaluation and is available for consultation.

 

Communication

Communication of project outputs and outcomes as well as effectively engaging targeted stakeholders is key to many projects.  Our communication director, Kayla Watson, is available to provide advice on the use of social media, communication services, structuring of communication campaigns, and promotion of project activities.  This is limited to helping to develop a communication strategy and assisting PIs or Working Groups with establishing routes of communication and utilizing the SIPMC Communication network. It does not include development of content or other publications.