Columbia County tourism staff and a representative from Paradise presented a redesigned tourism website, a new event calendar and marketing metrics for October. Haley McKenzie (Paradise) and Michelle Moore (market coordinator) said the site was modernized to preserve the Lake City brand while improving usability and adding an accessibility bar that supports vision impairment, ADHD‑friendly views and seizure‑safe settings.

McKenzie and Moore showed the new calendar’s three view options (list, month and photo) and said the site now includes linked affiliation pages, an events email that goes out monthly and a signature events page for annual highlights. Staff said the barbecue showdown was moved to April and emphasized the calendar will be used to drive tourism and make local activities easier for visitors to find.

Staff presented October social metrics: about 32,000 Facebook impressions with roughly 8,600 followers, and about 18,000 Instagram impressions with just over 2,000 followers; Haley said Instagram engagements and reach doubled month‑over‑month. Presenters credited nature‑focused content and collaboration with local events (e.g., Florida Grapple) for recent gains and asked board members and community partners to send event details for inclusion.

The presenters also noted two anomalous top cities (Lanzhou, Singapore) they suspect are bot traffic and said staff is working to exclude those from analytics.