{"id":2076,"date":"2011-11-23T07:59:01","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T21:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/?p=2076"},"modified":"2015-02-23T16:05:27","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T06:05:27","slug":"mla-social-media-conversations-workshops-charters-towers-katherine-katanning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/mla-social-media-conversations-workshops-charters-towers-katherine-katanning\/","title":{"rendered":"MLA Social Media Conversations Workshops – Charters Towers, Katherine & Katanning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just back from attending the Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) inaugural ‘social media conversations’<\/strong> workshop in Charters Towers.\u00a0 A very useful and enjoyable two days – with enough new information to make the head spin (next step is to put the new stuff into practice), great company and interesting discussion.\u00a0 In fact, I’d love to attend another one down the track, to find out how everyone else is getting on and have the inevitable questions that will arrive out of testing something new, answered.\u00a0 And to continue to update knowledge on changing technology\/systems – including learning more shortcuts and tricks.\u00a0 These are the sorts of simple but time-saving and efficiency increasing tips that people working in large offices teach one another on a daily basis, but people working on their own or in geographically \u00a0isolated businesses, miss out on.<\/p>\n

Attendance at\u00a0these social media workshops\u00a0is is highly recommended for any livestock producers who are interested in learning more about how to get first-hand stories of everyday rural life and issues, direct to\u00a0anyone who is unfamiliar with Australian agriculture, via the internet or mobile phones.\u00a0 I’m not sure that there would have been much rural\u00a0interest in attending\u00a0social media\u00a0workshops prior to the live export ban fiasco.\u00a0 But the outpouring of live export misinformation actually did the bush a favour in one way, because it highlighted the increasingly urgent necessity for as many rural Australians as possible to take maximum advantage of the huge range of direct storytelling and networking avenues now available, to counterbalance the mass of opinion very efficiently broadcast by animal rights extremists and uninformed conservationists (eg the ones who keep telling us that ‘Meat Free Mondays’ will stop the sea engulfing coral atolls in the Pacific).\u00a0<\/p>\n

MLA workshop information includes websites<\/strong> (static or rarely changing\u00a0background information – but it can take days or even weeks to be found by search engines, especially if the website is new and\/or small), Blogs<\/strong> and online forums<\/strong> (up-to-the minute opinion pieces, found by search engines within minutes), Twitter<\/strong> (instant 140 character messages, around the world in seconds), Facebook<\/strong> (more personal and casual family stories, but also how to set up a\u00a0Facebook ‘Page’<\/strong> for business networking\/storytelling), LinkedIn<\/strong> (more formal business networking – direct with decision makers running companies and organisations to grassroots primary producers; all around the world), YouTube<\/strong> (videos)\u00a0and Flickr<\/strong> (online galleries of still images).<\/p>\n

Workshop participants bring their own laptop if possible.\u00a0 And if you need help with anything, it’s there in spades.\u00a0 Our group had a huge\u00a0age range, from Hillgrove’s venerable can-do Tom Mann at 76 (embarrassingly capable with a fancy mobile phone activities)\u00a0to people many decades younger.\u00a0 The range of experience was very varied also, however most had personal experience with one area (eg Facebook) but knowledge gaps in other areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Participants end the one and a half days with a Tumblr blog page set up and a Facebook ‘Page’ (for non-family\/close friends) set up, with images and links attached.\u00a0 Plus a new network and\u00a0a specific ‘to do’ list.<\/p>\n

Any livestock producers who are interested in attending the MLA\u00a0‘Social Media Conversations’ workshops should contact Deborah Leake<\/strong> at\u00a0Meat & Livestock Australia<\/a>\u00a0as soon as possible, because only the dates and locations for the first 3 ‘test run’ workshops (Charters Towers, Qld;<\/strong> Katherine, NT<\/strong> & Katanning, WA<\/strong>) have been set.\u00a0 More workshops will be held in other areas in 2012.\u00a0\u00a0 Speaking up now will help ensure an MLA workshop is held within travelling distance of where the largest number or most interested participants live.\u00a0 Information Technology-related workshops tailored for rural residents are as scarce as hen’s teeth – so best to sieze the opportunity.<\/p>\n

Over the last six months it has been great to see so many rural residents realise\u00a0they have first-hand stories of what it’s like to live in the bush that are of interest to other people, and that you don’t need to\u00a0have some sort of special qualification to be able to write something of interest\u00a0to others.\u00a0 The more primary producers who invest a bit of online time in explaining to the public what their life is like, all over Australia and in all aspects of food and fibre production, the better off we’ll all be now, and future generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just back from attending the Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) inaugural ‘social media conversations’ workshop in Charters Towers.\u00a0 A very useful and enjoyable two days – with enough new information to make the head spin (next step is to put the new stuff into practice), great company and interesting discussion.\u00a0 In fact, I’d love to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,8,11,12],"tags":[82,147,179],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2076"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4466,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions\/4466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}