- Author: Mark Bolda
The extensionist of the 2010's is faced with a multitude of choices concerning where he or she will be most effective in transmitting good information to the clientele he has been assigned. While traditional formats like face to face meetings and on site farm calls still work, others liked mailed newsletters have been set aside in many cases for more timely, content rich and effective media, including vehicles like this blog.
On point, some of us Advisors and Specialists have taken to playing around a bit with Twitter, the microblog site which allows a person to keep others up to date on their own doings without having spend hours crafting an article. Personally, if one's business is to connect with a larger audience, I think Twitter can work.
I don't express myself so well on this point, so I'm including below a (mildly inflammatory) piece by Barry Ritholz, a blogger whom I follow pretty closely concerning the use of social media to connect with people in the professional space. The highlight in the middle is mine:
"For years we heard about people tweeting their every move. If you think this is how Twitter still works, you're probably e-mailing your friends jokes on AOL. Twitter has moved on. The looky-loos have long departed. The self-righteous wannabes tweeting over a hundred thousand times are living in their own tiny silos, in their own echo chambers. That's one of the great things about Twitter, when you see somebody hating on you you can check them out and in almost all cases they have almost no followers and no one sees the hate, so you can relax. This is not the network television of yore, this is one jerk with a megaphone in the middle of the prairie with no impact.
So you've got experts in every field tweeting about their findings, what interests them.
When breaking news occurs a hive emerges with tons of data... if you can't adjust on the fly, you don't deserve to be on Twitter, you need remedial reading classes."
I'll rephrase in less forthright language. Twitter has moved on from being the redoubt of the solipsist and the extremist, as in "hey, look where I am" or "hey, this is what I think" over and over again, to a medium for experts to connect quickly, effectively and share with those who are interested in what they think.
Not all a bad thing.
Whole post is below.
- Author: Mark Bolda
Colleague Surendra Dara is holding his annual strawberry production research meeting this upcoming November 12 (Wednesday). UCCE heavy hitters Steve Fennimore, Oleg Daugovish, Surendra Dara and myself will be joined by Strawberry Commission researcher Hillary Thomas and a representative from the Santa Barbara Agricultural Commissioner's office.
Topics to covered will be discussions of fumigation alternatives, mites, lygus, vinegar flies and a demonstration of the smartphone app "IPMInfo".
Another major extension event put on by UCCE - don't miss it!
- Author: Mark Bolda
Interesting article this weekend on the UC ANR homepage concerning extension in the information age.
http://ucanr.edu/?blogpost=15394&blogasset=52096
More on this at a later date, but this article covers neatly some of the thoughts I've had on how we at UCCE are using the web to extend and enhance our ability to serve.
It's a little wonkish, so I'll summarize the key takeaways here:
- Knowledge and information is produced and distributed by a network of people, not an individual. I can't any imagine any scientist being very successful in our industry working on his or her own these days, it's a given to bring representatives from all sorts of disciplines into a project, and then growers participate to keep things realistic and practical.
- Interesting note that partnerships can form across agricultural sectors, I would have to agree. Information flows pretty readily between our strawberry and caneberry industries, and I like to think that we have a decent connection with the lettuce and cool season vegetable industry.
- Last but not least, online information technologies can be innovative ways to connect and learn, but will never be a substitute for personal and in-person connections. In my opinion, an Advisor will not thrive simply by writing blogs and posting on social media. My experience is that these technologies enhance and enrich the work I am doing, but of course will never ever substitute for time in the field with the people we are here to serve.
Good article, it looks like the research is confirming what we are realizing in the field.
