After 13 years with ANR, IT Manager Karl Krist is leaving to take a position with Foundation Plant Services at UC Davis. Karl was hired at ANR in 2000 to create the first Site Builder. Before then, all county websites were built separately, lacked any unifying appearance, and were difficult to update by county staff. 

It took Karl about six months to create the original Site Builder and begin rolling it out to counties.

"I was adding one or two counties per month," Karl told me this morning. "I made sure Site Builder worked for people by following up constantly with them. Any issues or needs were dealt with immediately." 

In 2000, Site Builder was far from the full-featured content management system we...