'Performance Matters' for staying in touch

It has been a big socially connected week for me. I had about 20 birthday greetings from Facebook friends, I received an email from Prime Minister Harper, another from Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and an inspiring 'Performance Matters' video clip from Canterra Seeds (see website below).

 I had Facebook birthday wishes from friends and family across Canada, parts of the U.S. and from as far away as Norway. I happened to be out, but my mother called from Ontario and left a voicemail greeting.

The Prime Minister and Premier didn’t send me birthday greetings (I’m not that old), they just wanted to consult on matters of state and public policy. And I am always glad to share my thoughts.

As Ed – I mean Premier Stelmach – pointed out in his note yesterday it is a new era of communications.

“Times have changed quickly,” writes the Premier. “A mere decade ago, there was no Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or YouTube. Google is not much older. Yet many Albertans regularly use these sites to get information and stay in touch with their friends, relatives and colleagues. I have already set up a Facebook supporter page and a Twitter account and now I hope you will read these emails from me so we can stay in touch.”

And aint that the truth. When I was a kid, at the dawn of time, there were three basic tools to keep in touch with friends and neighbors – pickup the phone (and hope the party line was free, or quietly listen in until it was free), write a letter, or if you happened to see your neighbor as you were going from one field to the next, stop your tractors on the road and have a visit. That was how most connection was made. (My mother still keeps a pretty close eye on the kitchen window at the farm house to see who is going up and down the road.)

Today, I still use the phone a lot, but email is huge. Man, if email went down today, my goose would be cooked. I’m sure I process at least 100 emails a day. Some of that is staying connected with family and friends, but much of it has to do with work. I can connect with farmers and agribusiness when I am working on stories. All the columns and photos that appear in Grainews and Cattleman’s Corner come and go via email. For someone like Christoph Weder, who appears to be still searching for a homeland, I can receive his column whether he is on the ranch at Spirit River in Alberta Peace River region, from his hotel room in Munich, Germany, or at a food trade show in Dubai. Wayne Burleson, range management specialist from Montana recently sent me a column and photos from Malawi, Africa, and Kim Nielsen, with the ag service board in the County of Clearwater in central Alberta, used email to keep us all posted on his Australian adventure earlier this year.

When it comes to email communications, distance and time zones are meaningless. (The other day I was researching some information on seeding systems and I came across a website for TAKA Co. which is the largest agricultural implement manufacturer in Iran. I sent them an email to see if they have any Canadian dealers yet. But, who knew?)

I still haven’t got any real sense of the value of Facebook and Twitter yet. I joined the networks, because they are there and I felt I should see what they are about, but I can’t say they’ve made a huge difference in the quality of my personal life, or benefited my work.

I exchanged a Facebook message with Alberta farmer/writer Gerald Pilger the other day. He admits that he joined up because he kept getting messages from people on Facebook urging him to join, but on the day we chatted I don’t think Facebook was helping him in his efforts to move grain so it wouldn’t heat.

And I had a short Facebook chat with Harry Sugimoto of Lethbridge yesterday. Harry is retired, but he was an ag specialist with the Royal Bank for many years. He admits he isn’t a very good Facebooker yet, either, but felt he too should check it out.

But now that Premier Ed has opened Facebook and Twitter accounts, that means I will have another tool for getting my input on provincial matters directly to his ‘in box’. The province should be running much more efficiently in the near future. Steveo (PM Harper) hasn’t invited me to be a Facebook friend yet, but I’m sure it is coming. 

Aside from ‘the value’ of all this social networking, the other big issue for me is time. When the heck do you find time in the day for all this social networking???

Back to the message from Canterra Seeds. It has nothing to do with Facebook or Twitter, but I thought it was a clever and funny commercial for their products. It is good to see a company with a sense of humor. Check it out www.performancematters.ca

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