THINKeEXTENSION

After two blog posts yesterday on  RSS and Google Reader for the listening component of an eExtension Strategy, I thought twice about this post. However this story does illustrate perfectly why RSS and a good RSS Feed Reader are fundamental to good eExtension Strategy. If you didn’t read yesterday’s posts here’s a quick explanation.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is simply a stream of information most commonly blog posts, podcasts, videos, or images that can be subscribed to. For example if you subscribe to a blog with an RSS Feed Reader like Google Reader. You will receive blog articles as they are published, much like an email inbox for feeds.

I use Google Reader to subscribe to numerous RSS Feeds that help me to stay abreast of my industry.By using a number of keyword tracking tools in tandem with Google Reader I recieve an alert when Web Content is published and is associated with one of my keywords.

Yesterday scanning quickly through my feeds in Google Reader, I found a keyword alert that included a name I knew well. The name of someone I have worked with and have a great deal of respect for, Phil Moran from Noosa Landcare Group.

The keyword I was tracking was “Landcare” and the alert landed in my Feed Reader because Landcare Australia Limited posted a photo of Phil in to thier Flickr account. Flickr is a Web2.0 photosharing website that allows users to upload images and share them across the web in dozens of different ways. Flickr automatically creates an RSS feed for each user (a stream of photos that you can subscribe to), and every time a photo is uploaded the RSS Feed for that user is updated.

Fortunately when Phil’s photo was uploaded to Landcare Australia Limited’s photostream on Flickr it was tagged “Landcare”. It was that tag that set off the course of events, that saw the alert land in my Google Feed Reader. Amazing stuff! Looking a little bit further through the photos, I also found a image of another colleague, Paul Marshall speaking to the Minister for the Environment Peter Garrett no less. Actually there was quite a list of the who’s who of Australian NRM amongst the happy snaps.

Now think about this if Landcare Australia Limited had uploaded this same photo to a web site that didn’t have an RSS Feed, chances are I wouldn’t have found out about it. Landcare Australia Limited have been stepping up in the Social Media stakes lately by trialling a Wordpress blog, using Youtube Videos, and creating an interactive website to promote the National Landcare Awards, I have already talked about why their move to a free blogging platform is more powerful that using their current CMS powered website which has no RSS and it difficult to interact with.

Two Take Home Messages:

• RSS helps you share and listen to content that is important in your industry, niche, or specialty. Start using it today.
• Flickr is a free photosharing website (there are some limits to the basic free membership, not many though), that is tremendous eExtension Tool. Start sharing photos from workshops, field trips, covers of reports, any Extension content you can via Flickr then tell your audience many of them will already be using Flickr and it will give you one more way to connect.

Now here are the photos.

(left) Phil Moran (Noosa Landcare Guru) presenting at the National Landcare Awards. (right) A little bit further on I found one of Paul Marshall as well.

Tags: RSS, eExtension, eExtension Strategy, Flickr, Extension