Ektron Helps The California Endowment Promote Healthy Community Lifestyles
NASHUA, N.H., December 16, 2009—Ektron Inc., a market leader in enterprise Web content management and social software, today announced that The California Endowment has launched their CalConnect social networking community on the Ektron platform.
A private, statewide health foundation responsible for awarding more than 9,000 grants totaling nearly $1.7 billion, The California Endowment wanted to create an online environment that would foster better communication between grantees and other California stakeholders. “We wanted to bring together different groups and organizations that usually don’t work with each other but often have similar objectives,” stated Julio Zaldivar, CalConnect Architect and consultant at The California Endowment. “By creating an environment where they can network with both peers and experts and collaborate on policies, grant writing, events and projects, we can have an immense impact on the promotion of healthy lifestyles and healthy community development in California.”
The California Endowment selected fourteen communities as the participants in its planned 10-year initiative, giving each community its own designated social Web section on the new CalConnect social network site. Ektron’s collaboration and social features – including profile pages, blogs, wikis, discussion forums and group spaces – were established to provide a convenient, central location for networking and collaboration. The California Endowment leveraged Ektron’s core content management technology to offer more features for members to connect with one another and work together across both local communities and the state. Members can take advantage of features such as calendars to manage events, upload and share documents, collaborate on projects, create photo galleries to add pictures, videos and slideshows, and use alerts to broadcast and manage community announcements.
“What you’ll find at CalConnect is a social networking site full of resources dedicated to improving the health of Californians and their communities,” Zalidivar noted. “Visitors have access to some of the latest reports and studies through the CalConnect Resource Library, while connecting with community leaders and health experts throughout the state.”
“We’re pleased to see The California Endowment leverage the power of Ektron’s solution for their CalConnect community,” remarked Steven Sherkanowski, vice president of marketing at Ektron. “Many companies are realizing that their Web Content Management solution needs to include integrated social software capabilities. Ektron’s customers are able to take full advantage of the combined power of enterprise Web content management and social software.”
The full case study on The California Endowment’s CalConnect social network can be read here.
About Ektron
With Ektron CMS400.NET, businesses are building communities around their brand that combine their own content with aggregated social media from across the Web. Ektron’s eMarketing suite empowers marketing teams with drag and drop page assembly, multivariate testing and analytics to optimize content delivery and drive measurable business results. CMS400.NET is also a flexible platform on which developers can build a custom solution to meet specific business objectives. An integrated solution company, Ektron is dedicated to the success of its customers’ and Partners’ Web projects as well as the entire lifecycle of their Web sites. Headquartered in Nashua, N.H., Ektron has more than 8,000 customer implementations worldwide, including LG, Sony and Johnson & Johnson. For more information, visit: http://www.ektron.com.
About The California Endowment
The California Endowment is a private, statewide health foundation that was created in 1996. The California Endowment's mission is to expand access to affordable, quality health care for underserved individuals and communities, and to promote fundamental improvements in the health status of all Californians.
As part of that initiative, The California Endowment launched CalConnect, a social networking site created specifically on the premise of sharing the experiences and information with the fourteen communities selected for the initiative as well as policymakers and health experts throughout the state. For more information, visit: http://www.calendow.org/
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