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.
Archive for the ‘General Extension’ Category
Audio Video on the Knowledge Economy
Monday, March 12th, 2007Choices Magazine
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007The 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.
Reading Science Fiction to Learn More About Diversity
Sunday, February 25th, 2007One 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.
The Time Cost of Maintaining Tech
Saturday, February 24th, 2007Kevin Kelly has a post on his Technium site that really got me thinking. Kevin discusses the additional cost of keeping technology and gadgets going after we have purchased them. Kevin calls this the “true cost of ownership”. I first breezed over the article a few days ago, then found myself bouncing back to it. I was subconsciously adding up how much time I’d been spending trying to get a new computer camera working with both AIM and Skype. Kevin estimates that for every $1 you spend on technology, you will spend a $1 of your time (defined as the cost of a tech person’s time) maintaining it. Kevin also shows some data that indicates that the percentage of time that is spent on maintaining software has almost doubled since the 70’s.
There are several important issues from this post for Extension to consider. Here are a few:
- Has the upkeep time came at the cost of other time? Or is it that we have saved time with the technology and that they increased time is really an investment? I think it is the later, but it still illustrates other needs. See below.
- Skills: What kind of continual training do Extension professionals need to keep up with maintaining and enhancing the technology. Just as important, what kind of training do we need in how to use the systems that we create by having the technology. For example, once I get my camera consistently working with Skype how can I better learn to use the system for various work efforts and increase my efficiency and effectiveness?
- Staffing: Who do we need to support us? What is the role of tech support? What additional skills do we need to look for as we hire educators. Can we share support across Extension systems?
- Equipment: What types of equipment and software do we need? If Web 2.0 platforms become a reality will it save us time? Are there standardizations across systems that we can use?
Some things to ponder and think about. It would be an interesting research project to actually track the economic impact and cost of our time.
2007 Farm Bill Updates & Proposals
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007Here is the USDA link to the 2007 Farm Bill Updates and proposals: www.usda.gov/farmbill
Travel Tips
Sunday, December 31st, 2006Extension professionals tend to travel by air at least a few times each year. My experiences have been pretty positive overall, but I’m always looking for ways to make travel easier and more efficient. Dwayne Melancon at Genuine Curiosity has been sporadically posting advice on travel (see this post that includes links to his travel related postings). He recently posted this piece about an article in Bestlife by Peter Greenberg. Great advice and tips on travel by an experienced traveler. Highly recommended, as are the above posts by Dwayne – I now have a Nintendo DS Lite because of his posts!
50 Business Blogs
Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006Lisa Haneberg at Manager Craft has a neat little post on 50 Business related blogs. The blogs are neat and cover several management areas like management and leadership, coaching and communication. What I find equally interesting is how the list was put together. It was compiled by asking a panel of speakers to provide nine blogs each. While to the panel was specifically addressing blogs, I think it would be an interesting question to pose to speakers at other meetings that Extension Professionals conduct. What if we asked each speaker to share one, two or three blogs that they read? I think that we might find that we are not reading that many blogs and missing out on additional sources of content. So, I’m going to start asking Extension Professionals I really respect to provide a blog or two that they read regularly. If they have none, then I’ll ask what online resources they are using. If they still have none it will be an interesting indicator.
Learning and Leadership
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006Rosa Say is running an interesting set of invited postings about leadership at her blog. They all are interesting, but this post by Kevin Eikenberry about learning and leadership caught my eye. Most Extension Professionals place a high emphasis on life long learning – at least for our clientele. My first reading made me think about how we as Extension Professionals need to keep on learning to add to our leaderships skills. Glen Hiemstra points out that when we find ourselves simply reacting to things we are often still looking backwards at past structures and models (see Glen’s Preferred Futuring concept in his book).
Kevin addresses this very directly: “The status quo requires no leadership. Think about it. If everything in the current situation was great – if there was no need for change – how much leadership would be needed? Leadership is required because we want to move somewhere.” Other good tidbits include brief discussions on modeling learning and how being a better leader leads to becoming a better human.
It’s also a good post for Extension Professionals working with leadership and management groups. You might want to also check out the other posts on Rosa’s blog and take a look at what Kevin is saying on his blog.
New eXtension Communities of Practice
Friday, September 8th, 2006eXtension has announced 10 new Communities of Practice. Here is the link to the complete list, including the existing COP’s.
Increasing the Odds for High-Performance Teams
Friday, September 1st, 2006This past week I was able to spend parts of three days attending various meetings and workshops on developing high impact teams. Ohio State University Extension hosted Arlen Leholm and Ray Vlasin, authors of the book Increasing the Odds for High-Performance Teams, from Sunday evening through Tuesday. Arlen is the current Dean and Director of Cooperative Extension for the University of Wisconsin and the former Director of Michigan State University Extension. Ray is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus for Michigan State University Extension, the former Director of the Natural Resource Economics Division of USDA’s Economic Research Service, and a Staff Economist for the House Public Works Committee.
It was time well spent. Given the fact that most Extension work is done via teams (and committees) we really need to focus on ways of improving our teams’ performances. As an institution that touts science-based research for decision making, we do a terrible job of actually looking at the literature for teams and applying it to our own work. Leholm and Vlasin do just that in Chapter 2 of their book. This chapter has a very good and very succinct overview of the literature about teams. It is so succinct that it is easy to miss the density of detail it contains. The book also has several case study chapters, including one discussing two Extension High Performance Teams (one at Michigan and the other in Ohio).
The book will be especially valuable for those interested in developing longer term, self-directed teams. Much time was spent discussing the differences between self-directed teams and single-leader teams. And the organizational architecture required to have true self-directed teams. And the time frame – maybe two or more years – to really get the team humming.
So without giving the book’s contents away, here are some key concepts. It is possible for organizations to “increase the odds” of developing high performance teams. But they need to truly empower them, build trust and commitment among team members, and help provide the context to develop clarified and realistic team expectations, rules and team purpose. To be truly self-directed, teams must have an infrastructure to keep them focused on performance. And that infrastructure is their own formalized (read written) purpose and operational statements.
To get a better understanding see this 2004 presentation by Arlen and Ray to. For twenty bucks, the book is a cheap investment for Extension professionals.