It was readily apparent to regular visitors to MHSAA.com that the MHSAA’s website had a redesigned look and navigation system when it launched at the start of August.  Because of the compressed timeline under which they worked and the time when most of the work was done – during the summer when school was not in session – programmers were forced to test many features in real time this fall, which is not the MHSAA’s usual approach to new IT initiatives.

The conversion/migration has not proceeded without bugs and glitches – in fact, football score reporting didn’t go smoothly in week one, there were many login problems for school personnel and some registration delays for officials as programmers merged old data into the new system. But not so many problems when you think that the organization’s entire electronic database cobbled together over 20 years is being converted to a streamlined content management system.

Less than three weeks later, a redesigned MHSAA.tv was launched with more than 400 hours of programming of regular-season events and MHSAA tournaments from the 2008-09 school year, and hundreds of hours of archived events of previous years.

During 2009-10, programming will grow exponentially as schools post regular-season events on MHSAA.tv.  Click here for the news release describing the first stages of this video streaming initiative that is not only being provided at no expense to schools or their patrons, but also will be generating new revenues for local programs.

And then go to MHSAA.tv to sample the programming.