Class XXXI

Mark was tied up in meetings, so I decided to drop in on the GWATA (Greater Wenatchee Technology Alliance) holiday meeting at Tastebuds. Fresh from the media seminar, I had recruiting on my mind, so visited with Lance (Class XXI) and put the arm on Nina to consider joining. She's been through the Wenatchee Chamber's leadership program and her energy would be a good fit for Ag Forestry. She sounded enthusiastic, so I submitted her name and will follow up with her later in the year.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Wrapping up the Media session

I managed to arrive at Farm Credit Bureau without getting lost, though nobody rode with me to witness my triumph. Steve is walking wounded this morning after his fall on the ice yesterday morning, but is probably doing better than he'd expected.

Carla Savalli's presentation on the future of the media was enlightening, particulary because it seems so clear that the senior editors cannot see where the industry is headed.

Jay Penick, CEO of Farm Credit Bureau, spoke on business leadership, which was timely for me, given the fact that I'm going back to do our strategic planning session next week.

Key Learnings

• The importance of relationship-building and effective networking
  
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• The media don't necessarily know the future of their own industry.
  

Learn to format your key points in several different ways to get your message across.
If you think you've been misquoted, take the story to other people to get their opinion. If you have a genuine difference of opinion with a reporter, go directly to them instead of their editor.

Grant & Brad were our secret observers and Brad praised Kaydee for her exquisite professionalism. He was very kind to session manager, and told Juan "you could charm a monk off the mountain." Brad was so enthusiastic and if he can bring that kind of energy to his speaking, he'll be great.

An important day

Having survived my adventurous driving escapades of the previous night (and left my passengers laughing instead of screaming) I offered the brave a lift to KHQ. Rhonda was willing to try me again and Jim laughed but made sure to get into someone else's car.

The morning session included a five-minute speech by Ginny (who took the opportunity to take another run at the CAFO issue. We also briefly revisited our video interviews the previous day, then after a break launched into a panel discussion by reporters Matt Rogers of KHQ TV and John Stucke of the Spokesman Review. It's not uncommon knowledge that print media is under assault from a variety of electronic media, including the Internet, and Stucke was understandably emotional in his remarks, having just learned of his own reassigment and staff layoffs.

It is hard to imagine (if you're beyond a certain age) that there will soon come a time when newspapers can be found only in museum archives, but that day may come much sooner than we think. I'd predicted by 10 years newspapers would be gone; for some in our state, the end may well come much more quickly. This is an 800 pound gorilla in the room for so many entities who currently assume that newspapers will cover their issues despite this competition, despite drastic cutbacks in order to meet the bottom line.

Where does that leave rural towns? Where does it leave those of us who still like to read in-depth analysis of difficult or controversial issues? The Internet, TV and radio all rely on succinct sound bites and the public's impatience with lengthy discussion has already lead to drastic over-simplification of many, manhy complex issues.

If  others in the room are thinking along these lines, we (and thousands of others) may come to the conclusion that we need some forum like newspapers for in-depth issues exposition. Will it come too late for the newspapers? Who can say?

Elections

Our class meeting began after the panel. After discussion on the best way to proceed (sparked in part by Orv's five-minute speech, which was  a timely call to action urging classmates to stretch their comfort zones and run for an office), nominations were opened for the various offices. A few of us, myself included, had previously declared intent to run, but Orv's talk had, I think, the desired result in making nearly every position a bit of a horse race. The end results were as follows:

President: David B.; Vice-President: your humble scribe; Secretary: Stephanie; Treasurer: Clay; Special Projects Officer: Ginny; Board Rep: Steve B-M; Curriculum Coordinating Committee Representative: Rachel; Graduate Services Committee Representative: Juan.

It was satisfying, of course, to be elected; more so because there was so much participation in the process. I'm convinced that any of us could step forward to lead, and I nearly declined to consider an office to allow someone else to grow into the position, but heavens know I'm comfortable riding herd on groups of volunteers.

Building Rapport with the Media

I pity the speaker assigned to the after-lunch session of any seminar. Fortunately, it was fated neither to Skip, our speaker, or my class as an audience, to snooze. We had an excellent and lively lecture on developing relationships with media personnel and thereby shoring up our own credibility. He had several handouts, including one of strategic planning communications strategy, which was very handy for me, as I'm looking at our SP retreat when I return to work next Tuesday.

Fox Theatre Tour

The afternoon was most pleasantly spent: we were treated by Katherine (Class XXIX) to a tour of the gorgeously renovated Art Deco Fox Theatre, which just re-opened after a $30 million renovation. Mark would have loved it. My jaw frequently dropped at the amazing decor, and I had a special treat at the end: as our tour guide took us backstage, I recognised a very old friend from Portland, Oregon, one of the first staffers to the first board I ever participated on. I lingered for about 15 minutes to learn how she'd come to Spokane, and we exchanged information. She's had some challenges coming to the Fox, but my guess is that she'll do very well there.

Editorial Review

Our final agenda item included auditing the editorial board at the Spokesman Review to see how the subsequent day's issue was put together—a very speedy process indeed.

At last we were cut loose to our own devices. Several classmates decided to go ice-skating, others rented go-karts; my policy group decided to attack our issue over excellent hors d'oeuvres and entrees at the heavenly Blue Fish Grille (accidentally discovered yesterday when Josh and I were looking for lunch. We wrestled with the topic and how to drill down to something achievable. At this juncture, we've decided to do a little research and reconvene, perhaps with a telephone conference.

At not so long last, we returned to the hotel—at least Steve, Josh and I did— and I've enjoyed an hour's quiet time to reflect on a full day. Tomorrow, if I can manage to get there without getting lost again, we recovene at the Farm Credit Bureau for our final session of the year.

Making media make sense

A late night... we got a bit of background on media training this afternoon, then went through our media interviews, which were all pretty good. I chose fairly broad topics and while I was comfortable in front of the camera, feel I could have developed my talking points better.

We toured KHQ and watched segments of the 5 PM news broadcast, then shucked out of our work duds for jeans and headed off to Farm Credit for dinner and critique. Somebody ought to have critiqued my driving, for I got completely lost both going and coming, and thank heavens all my passengers had senses of humour about being late and didn't scream when I drove off the embankment. *sigh*

Critiques went well, though it's hard on everyone to pull late night hours. David helped lighten things up by reading a new crop of quotes from Wenatchee, and everybody started chiming in while the critique sessions went on.

We had an addition to our group: Paul (Class XXIX) joined us to do his interviews (which were pretty interesting: Yakima fishing rights) and I think he said one of his classmates completely melted down during the media segments.

Well, that's it for this long night. Tomorrow we tour the Spokesman Review and continue our media training.  Jennifer suggested "Ag Forestry on Ice" tomorrow night with an ice skating party, but some of us are really feeling the need to do some work on our policy projects. Fun may have to be deferred until later!

Never count on technology

On the eve of the media seminar in Spokane, my printer elected to quit 3/4 of the way through an innocuous job (Google maps) and left me with no way to print out the one document I really needed: the media interview sheet.

I suppose I should have looked up the old 1970's pseudoscientific biorythms instead of directions from KHQ to the hotel: yesterday I shelled out $1,300 to replace the tie rods and wheel bearings on the front of my car. The tie rods in particular were needful: there's nothing so unpleasant as having a catastrophic failure in the no-man's-land between Wenatchee and Spokane in the middle of Winter, when the weather outside is indeed frightful.

To put these frustrations into perspective, it's entirely possible that all  my classmates on the west side of the mountains are dealing with catastrophe of a much higher order.  Snow over the weekend gave way to heavy rains and sudden flooding. The major north-south corridor, I-5, was closed around Centralia after the freeway was submerged in 10 feet of water.

I sure do hope that my classmates are safe at home and on the road, and may well hear horror stories much worse than my petty concerns tomorrow.

A new crop amongst the Cold Storage

My husband (Class XXV) and I attended the grand opening of Yahoo's newest date centre in Quincy, which gave us a chance to rub shoulders with some of the folks we met while he was putting together the first datacentre here in Wenatchee. I got a chance to thank co-founder David Filo for fixing my Yahoo e-mail account last year, as well as tip Congressman Doc Hastings that my class would be seeing him in Washington DC early in 2008.

I had a nice conversation with his assistant, whose husband went through the program, and thanked Rufus (Class XXIV) again for speaking to our class last month.

Now Datacentres seem an odd crop for north central Washington, but high-tech is planting itself firmly into the local economy, drawn by low-cost power, cheap land (in Grant County at least) and an unusual non-profit called NOANet, which brokers bandwidth from the inland PUD fibre optics networks.

The challenges to this new industry are related to my speech topic last month: water. Datacentres take an enormous amount of energy to cool, owing to the heat of thousands and thousands of servers. My good friend, Pete, who helped me immeasurably with background for my water rights talk, did a fair amount of work with the city of Quincy and Yahoo to secure water rights before the plant was opened.

It will be very interesting to see how the water used to cool this and other mega-datacentres can be re-used to benefit the ag industry as well.