Moving out of the 1950's with a Virtual Field Day.

If you heard Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy’s opening remarks at last year’s tri-society meeting then you heard his challenge that we need to get out of the 1950’s model of outreach and into the 21^st century.   In particular, the traditional field day.  With most people receiving their information via the internet and with the explosion of the smart phone during the past few years we have a perfect opportunity to get our message out.  Too often at field days the speaker is standing in front of a field that has little to do with the topic or if it does the treatments can no longer be seen.  Attendance at field days has fallen in recent years since most producers cannot take the time out of their busy schedules.  Our goal is to produce a dozen or more 3 minute or less videos that show a problem, answer and follow up and have them present on the web for easy access.  At last year’s meeting we presented our first year attempts at a “virtual field day” with several lessons learned including the importance of branding, more action and less talking heads, a story throughout the season, and attention to sound quality.   This year we will present our new attempt that incorporates these lessons learned into both a video and still photography format that covers a wide range of topics.