Trends and Issues in Extension

Rod Boothby at Innovative Creation has a really salient post on communicating Enterprise 2.0. Mainly that we keep talking about what technology does versus the issues or problems that it can solve. Pretty obvious after Rod points it out. And a point that I keep finding myself guilty of falling into!! Here are some quotes from Rod:

“Big companies are slowly starting to adopt Enterprise 2.0 technology.   But, selling technology isn’t the answer.   And selling technology misses the point.”

And…..

“It is my belief that if you are trying to help people, you need to tell them what problems you are going to solve, and not necessarily how you are going to solve the problems.”

Good points, now I just need to follow Rod’s advice as I put together some of my Extension 2.0 pieces. One key way we are currently doing this is with an internal research project at OSU Extension. More about that program in a few months (We’re currently under IRB review and will distribute the instrument soon, but it’s a system wide census so I don’t want to introduce bias at this point).

I also recommend Rod’s 15 page white paper on Web Office. Here is Rod’s post that contains a link to the PDF of the white paper.