Behind the Deep Fried blog

If you kept up with our blog during last year’s Fair, you may have noticed our Deep Fried blog has undergone a bit of a face lift since we last brought you our behind-the-scenes look into the 11-day celebration of food, fun and agriculture.

We moved the blog from Blogger to WordPress, after enjoying the benefits and customization options of our departmental WordPress blog, In the Field.  We’ll still be able to bring you videos and pictures like last year, as well as any podcasts we cook up (or should that be fry up?) .

With the help of graphic designers Amanda Meares and Lisa Brockmeier, we also have a spiffy new header and design. We came up with the mustard-on-a-corndog idea here in the Press Office, but these talented ladies actually made it happen. And we mean made it happen–after a few test runs, Amanda pulled together actual corndogs, french fries and condiments to create a real-life version of our “Deep Fried” blog title. Talk about going above and beyond!

We have a few new features you can use now, including a search bar in the right hand column where you can enter keywords about the Fair and find related blog posts and links. Get to know the bloggers on the bottom left-hand column “Authors” section, and be sure to check out the other conversations we’re having on YouTube, Facebook and MySpace by using the links on the right-hand column under “Social Media.” There’s even a handy Twitter widget that allows you to see the ongoing dialog (fondly referred to as our “Deep Fried Tweets”) between users there.

As we get closer and closer to Fair time, we’ll bring you information on entertainers, competitions, deep fried creations and more. Bookmark our blog, and check back in a couple weeks find out when we will reveal our 2009 Web site based on our theme, “A Whole Lotta Happy.”