Joe LaForest, Associate Director – Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health
The Communicator: Volume 5, Issue 10, October 2024

The University of Georgia Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health (historically known as Bugwood) has been a long-term supporter of the National Plant Diagnostic Network through the different applications it has created and maintained to provide easily accessible resources supporting outreach and extension efforts. While we try to keep things simple and easy to use, we admit there are plenty of times that using the systems has required some expert assistance to figure out how things work. We greatly appreciate that feedback and use it to improve Bugwood’s systems, to develop new services, and to enhance user experience of existing digital resources. 
 

Bugwood systems screen
The Bugwood Tools suite is rich with services.  While many are familiar with the image systems, there are also systems supporting sharing of occurrence data, presentations, digital resources, and video in addition to creating maps and supporting working groups.
In an effort to most directly assist users, we began offering Office Hours every other week on Fridays from 1PM to 3PM Eastern Time. People that plan to attend are encouraged to register and submit questions or upvote other user-submitted questions at https://www.bugwood.org/office-hours/ prior to the open forum help session. While having these topics in advance allows us to prepare, it is not required. The content of every Office Hours session is determined by who shows up. If we get enough people interested in different topics, we open up breakout rooms and individual groups, generally, led by a Bugwood employee with expertise on the topic, discuss issues that matter to them. Despite the small turnout, compared to a planned webinar, these mini-unconferences spend more time on a specific user’s needs with more immediate issue resolution. It also gives our developers time to interact with users, get more direct feedback on their work, and see the impact of their efforts.
 
As an added benefit, users that know us for one service like the Image Database learn about other Bugwood systems or services we offer including how to show the impact of the digital information users have made available through our systems.

 
Office Hours webpage
Bugwood offers Office Hours to help users with their specific issues.  These are held every two weeks.  People who will attend are encouraged to submit questions ahead of time, but it is not required.
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