Not so good news from today’s NY Times article by David Leonhardt. It’s never encouraging when an article starts with these four lead sentences:
If history is a reliable guide, the recession of 2008 is now unavoidable.
The dismal jobs report released Friday showed overall employment to be lower than it was three months ago. Every time such a slump has occurred since the early 1970s, a recession has followed — or already been under way.
And if the good times have really ended, they were never that good to begin with. Most American households are still not earning as much annually as they did in 1999, once inflation is taken into account. Since theCensus Bureau began keeping records in the 1960s, a prolonged expansion has never ended without household income having set a new record.
Implications for Extension include more programming to meet increased economic stresses, community economic development strategies. And once again we need consider the impacts on Extension funding and budgets. It also forces us to consider more uses of technology and new organizational systems like Extension 2.0.
It feels like a matter of weeks since I last posted and it’s really been months. Kind of the way life feels like these days. I’m forever committing to multiple projects. A great (and quick read) on the need to focus and on getting more done by doing less busywork is Graham Alexander’s Tales from the top. Some more good advice comes from a post from Dwayne Melacon’s Genuine Curiosity blog. Dwayne recommends a simple system. Taking the top few items that are critical to get done each day and putting them on an index card. Dwayne calls it his “Daily Watch” list and creates it from the multiple project lists he maintains (this follow’s David Allen’s Getting Things Done).
Good advice for Extension professionals caught in daily white water. If you can’t at least focus on your key commitments for at least some of each day they will slip away.
The Galaxy III website is up and running! Many of the preliminary details are posted including the broad, overview schedule. I’ve participated and presented at the previous two Galaxy programs and highly recommend attending. Having the site and information up this far in advance helps Extension Professionals plan and organize to attend.
Here is the site link. See this link for a brief mission statement for the conference.
I finally got to Philly yesterday and online today. The east coast storms have played havoc with the flights. It would have been perfect for twitter, but oh well.
More later!
Starting on Monday I will be attending the 2007 National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals (NACDEP) annual National Conference in Philadelphia. I hope to get a post or two up during the conference. I was hoping to play with Twitter too, but that is looking less likely to happen. How to keep up with everything?
I am also part of a team presenting a workshop on Extension restructuring, Centers, and moving to multi-programmatic programming. And a way from less geographically maintained programming issues (see the top of page five of this PDF for a brief description). And eat some real cheese steaks. Bring on the Cheez Wiz!
If you are at the conference be sure to look me up.
Jack Vinson has an interesting post about a Computerworld article that discusses some positive benefits of multi-tasking related to technology tools. One of the articles comments makes a nice point that much of what is being referred to as multi-tasking is simply switching between tasks.
I found this neat little tool on James Robinson’s “new” weblog. James seems to share his name with 11,630 other people in the US. Unfortunately at least one of them is on the TSA watch-list (see his post here). Anyway, I started to play with How Many of Me just for fun. Then the Extension programming wheels started to turn and I began to think about how I could use this tool in my programming. Some initial thoughts include:
- An icebreaker
- An “after break” tool
- A meeting starter (different from an ice breaker in that you know and are familiar with everyone around the table)
- A way to see how many other folk like you are out there in the US…or how few
- A tool to understand the power of large groups
As of 3.13.07 there are 28 other Jerold Thomas’ in the US and 2,066 Jerry Thomas’. Try it. Then try your significant other, parents, friends, etc. Check out the stats page.
I just added a post to new blog at our OSU Extension Knowledge Economy Website. The site is still under construction, but we hope to have more blog postings soon. The post describes a power point presentation that serves as a good intro to the Knowledge Economy. The whole KE (Knowledge Economy) concept is pretty critical right now but is also hard to describe to people. Hence the neatness of the presentation.
The American Agricultural Economics Association publishes a quarterly magazine called Choices that covers a number of topics that are relevant to Extension professionals. The current issue (4th Quarter, 2006) focuses on the following (from the Editor’s page):
In this issue of Choices, we offer two collections of papers. One theme covers the topic of setting the stage for the next farm bill, by updating the justification for farm programs, reviewing policy issues likely to affect the 2007 Farm Bill, projecting the effects of continuing the 2002 Farm Bill with less spending, and examining new program options based on land stewardship programs. The other theme addresses changes in fresh produce marketing and small farms’/firms’ response strategies in order to remain competitive, profitable, and economically viable in this changing market. This issue also contains articles on obesity lessons from Japan and on formula versus grant-based funding for agricultural research.
Click here see past and future content.
One of the most interesting things about reading science fiction is the continued validity that it often tells us more about our current world than future worlds. It is easy to project current norms, styles and mindsets into the future. Cyberpunk has been a relief in pushing this aside, as has the increase in transhumanist sci-fi (I’m still waiting to listen to the CD version of Richard Clarke’s Breakpoint to see if transhumanism has hit mainstream fiction). I just finished reading John Birmingham’s Weapons of Choice, an alternative history sci-fi book focusing on WWII. It is the first in a trilogy (the other titles can be found here and here).
I’m not big at all on alternative history and there seems to be a fair amount of it addressing WWII. I was drawn to Birmingham’s book by a brief review of the third book in the trilogy in the current issue of Wired magazine. The initial driver in the story is the sudden transformation of a US led allied fleet from the year 2021 back to 1942. Right into the middle of the 1942 US fleet at Midway. You can see the novel for the science behind the transformation (it’s really about multiple universes). The real story line is taking a multinational force from 2021 and dropping it into a very homogeneous 1942 American society.
It is very interesting to read about the relationships. A modern Navy and Marine Corps from 2021 with females and several non-white officers and leaders are not necessarily well accepted by 1942 society (roughly 50% of the 2021 forces are non-white and/or female). Violence occurs, as does a lot of intolerant interactions. It made me think both about the past and the future. It is good to see just how much has changed. It also interesting to think about the future and how much more our society will change. Current demographic trends indicate a very different racial and age make up in America. Our future world will be different.
So what are we doing to prepare our communities and clientele to prepare for this? Most of our Extension systems currently do not reflect this trend. Nor do significant chunks of our current clientele. What about future clientele? What about our youth programs that need to be prepared to work in the future? This just adds to Extensions ongoing struggle of expanding into new clientele bases without disenfranchising important existing bases.
It’s not a quick read, but it is relevant to gaining a better understanding of where we’ve been and where we are going. And to realize social change is possible. We already know what much of the US and the world will look like. We just need to start with changing ourselves. If you’re over 30 you can start by watching bits and pieces of MTV.