Trends and Issues in Extension

I’m spending the next nine days splitting my time between conferences in Florida and hope to do a little blogging about each. First is the National Extension Technology Conference in Gainsville. This is an annual event and not a specific organization. I’m simply a participant at the conference (I’m subbing for a collegue at an eXtension meeting), but I’m really excited. I think Extension is on the cusp of either adopting and developing cutting edge technologies to help us reach clientele and organize ourselves or falling behind and becoming irrelevant. NETC has both technical and application tracks – the first more for techies, the other more for those interested in applying the technology as a tool.

The second meeting is the annual conference of the Association of International Agriculture and Extension Educators in Clearwater. I’m only hanging around for one day, but I’m giving a carousel presentation co-authored with Daney Jackson on Future Trends in Extension (see the link here for the title information). This conference draws an interesting cross section of Educators from around the world.

Two good meetings for Extension professionals to attend. See the respective websites for information about future meetings for each conference.