July 6, 2009

From Extension Collaborative Wiki

MiTT Core Team Meeting

• Submitted by Mary Hightower
• Present: Jane Schuchardt, Mary Hightower, Bo Beaulieu, Dan Cotton, Tom Coon, Karen Ballard, Rich Poling

• MiTTNet and eXtension report (Dan Cotton): Nancy, via Jane, reported that there were 7-10 items already in the directory shortly after the announcement went out last week. Nancy also had a question about how duplicative the material in MiTTNet would be of information already in eXtension and CYFERnet. Lyla spoke with Bob Craven to find out how information from the ag risk database was transferred, per a question from Nancy that was discussed in the June 29 call. RE potential “leftover” money from the original CSREES grant for the planning meeting, Dan sent a note about costs to Jane, Anne and Ray. Deliverables: Dan said he would visit with Nancy and Ray offline to see how the personal finance material in CYFERnet might be made transferrable. Dan would also make appropriate changes to MittNet to show Nick Broady as “customer service” contact. Dan will arrange with Nick Broady to do a web training during the Monday, July 13th MiTT team meeting on people.extension.org and a training on collaborate.extension.org during the July 20th meeting. Mary will contact Anne for a look at the note about funding; report could be made at next week’s meeting.
• Audience target reports (Bo): Bo Beaulieu said he and his team used http://search.extension.org to see if there were items that addressed his group’s key topics. His team found 318 items. Bo’s team was in the process of evaluating those items to see what was viable for MiTTNet purposes. Once evaluation is complete, his team would contact the author to see if he or she was willing to fill out the documentation needed to have that material included on MiTTNet. Once that step was complete, Bo’s group would send out a general solicitation letter seeking any material the group may not have already found. Bo said his section would be ready for the July 30 launch. Deliverables: None.
• Communications/Marketing report (Mary): Mary noted that she and Terry would be ready to report on July 13 as planned. Deliverables: No new deliverables.
• Evaluation Report (Karen, Rich): Karen and Rich sent out results of the evaluation survey, reporting an 89 percent response rate. Rich noted comments that many were pleased with the multidisciplinary approach. Jane said Susan Sharkey was interested in the progress and would visit with Susan in Madison, WS later this month. Karen will provide evaluation message points for Tom’s ECOP presentation on July 30. Deliverables: Karen to provide evaluation message points for Tom’s ECOP presentation on July 30; Jane said she would provide message points as well. Mary to provide PowerPoint template. The presentation will be discussed on the July 20th web meeting.
• General comments: Bo asked if there was any quality control built into populating MiTTNet. This is the responsibility of each audience target team. MiTTNet is open to anyone with an eXtension ID to add resources. The process relies heavily on the honor system that Extension professionals will follow the guidelines for appropriate entries. Meeting wrapped at approximately 3 p.m. EDT.