Back to the future, every day

There are several members of the DC VELOCITY editorial team, including this author, who cut their journalistic teeth in the world of newspapers. Although for most of us, those days are in the distant past, we haven't forgotten the adrenaline rush of working against daily deadlines to report, edit, and file news stories.

For much of our staff, then, DC VELOCITY's latest endeavor—the biggest undertaking since the launch of our magazine seven years ago—has taken us back to the past, but with a futuristic twist. That endeavor is the rollout of our newly upgraded Web site, DCVelocity.com—a site whose content is now updated daily.

With the launch, we have shifted from a monthly news gathering operation to a daily media organization. And we've done it just for you.

You've told us that your needs have changed. You now need more information than ever before—and not just any information. You need more insightful, thought-provoking information—the kind of business intelligence that will help you refine your processes and improve your logistics operations. And you want it right away.

That's what we aim to provide at DCVelocity.com. Among the upgrades you'll find when you visit our new home page are:

• A new site design that gives prominent placement to the very latest stories right at the top of the page.
• A simpler, more intuitive method of organizing content that will allow you to go right to the information you need with a single click on our new Navigation Bar. You can select from our four core categories (Transportation, Material Handling, Technology, and Strategy) or from our rotating line-up of specialty categories, which will change as your interests and needs evolve. (Our current specialty categories include Defense Logistics, Systems Integration, Green Logistics, and Lift Trucks.)
• Direct links to the latest material on our five-channel streaming media site, DCV-TV, by simply clicking on the thumbnails on our home page.
• Links to posts by our impressive stable of bloggers, who will share their thoughts and insights on a broad spectrum of logisticsrelated topics.
• Easy access from our home page Navigation Bar to "Resources" you can use, like vendor White Papers, descriptions of the latest logistics products and services (which will be categorized for your convenience), and listings of key industry conferences, seminars, trade shows, and professional development opportunities for logistics professionals.
• Quick links to our latest print edition as well as our robust archive of articles from past issues of DC VELOCITY.
• Special access to some of the most popular stories from our sister publication, CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly, the journal of thought leadership for the supply chain profession.

These upgrades are also reflected in our new approach to publishing our weekly e-newsletters. The newsletters, which we've rebranded as "Velocity Weekly," are your guides to the latest content updates to our Web site. Each is organized around a particular theme (Transportation, Material Handling, Technology, or Strate - gy) and will include news stories as well as links to the most recent posts by our bloggers.

And, of course, each e-newsletter will feature the latest videos on our new DCV-TV site, your source for news reports, videocasts, "Velocity Video" case studies, and our popular Channel 4 "Viewer Contributed" uploads. (Think of it as YouTube for the logistics world.)

All in all, it's been a lot of work, but it's also been a labor of love. Those of us here at DC VELOCITY are now going back to the future, every day ... and we're doing it just for you!