So what do I do for work anyway?

So you might be wondering, what do I do for work? Sometimes I wonder myself. Just kidding, but it can be kind of obscure. I work for Oregon State University in the Horticulture Department. Horticulture you say? Does this mean I can come to your house and help you with your plants? Well maybe a little. I do some gardening at home, but not that much. I do have degrees in plant science and soil science, so I should be of some help. What I really do in the Department of Horticulture is work for two federally funded projects, through the CSREES (and others), and help those projects communicate with one another through the use of web tools and ultimately help them publish their outreach materials to www.extension.org. These projects are grant funded, meaning they have a limit time frame. I am hopeful that I will be able to sustain my paycheck after these projects run out of funding, but that remains to be seen at this point. I'll keep you posted on that.

These projects are collaborating online using semi-private websites that are wiki-like in nature. So that's what I do, I manage websites, Well, that's not all I do. These websites also have some social networking features to help the participants get to know each other too. The main function of the website is to provide them with a group functionality so they can collaborate on documents with the ability to edit them, comment on them, review them, etc. The project members are a mix of scientists and educators and many of them play both of those roles. We are using Drupal software to make this all happen. Mmmmm Drupal.

Lately, I have been getting ready for a training in my department about using web 2.0 and social media tools in research and extension work. The Extension service is getting very interested in using social media to help the researchers and educators connect with their clients in a more meaningful way. There are many of them already using Twitter and Facebook to do this. It is a brave new world for them, and it will be my job in the next couple of weeks to explain it all to them and help them get started. So as of late I have been immersed in reading all I can on this topic. What I keep coming back to is how do you convince an already overworked, overstressed individual that they need to spend more time on something else, and that something else has its own culture and technology that they also have to learn? And all of the 'experts' are saying that folks don't have time to NOT do this if they want to stay relevant. Wish me luck.