More posts as the conference nears. I also hope to post a bit more during the conference like I did in 2006 (see here, here, here,  here, and here).

I’m looking forward to a fun teaching and conversation session!

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.

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.

This is a great summary of Enterprise 2.0 and includes McAfee’s idea of SLATE (Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions, Signals), some ground rules for organizations (make the offerings easy to use and do not impose structures on how the work is done or categorized), the roles managers will play (standard platform, having a receptive culture) and challenges and opportunities. Great, quick read. Highly recommended.

Cool and useful stuff. Read Kevin’s review and see his example. Some of the things I learned include finding promo codes, using a mobile phone to check prices while in a store, getting magazine articles, how to use one time credit card numbers and a host of other neat tricks. Like Kevin I’ve found myself ear-tagging several pages and marking them up. This is also a great book to simply jump around and look for the cool stuff. I’ve been skimming it and just simply opening it up to a section. The sections are brief and easy to use.

Mark is a creator of Boing Boing. If you are online a lot this book will be useful. Highly recommended.

They’re good because Pogue is good. Pogue’s background includes the theatre and he uses an entertaining and humorous delivery method. Much of the shows takes place either on the streets of New York or in tech stores.

Here is a list of upcoming shows. See also Pogue’s show notes for the tips and ideas he shares. David also has a cool site. All are highly recommended.