YOUR BUSINESS
Webinars to communicate and empower horticulture in 2020 and beyond
We can bring the world to our members in a time when we cannot travel.
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BY JOEL DINSDALE QUALITY ASSURANCE COORDINATOR, VEGETABLESWA
CYMI, (that’s millennial vocab for ‘In case you missed it’), COVID-19 has forced the world to have a rethink. Within a matter of weeks, the whole world adjusted and now are familiar with the terms and actions of social distancing, iso, masks, sanitisers etc. It is really unclear as to how long these things will be in place, so we’ve had to adjust accordingly.
Despite COVID-19 restrictions, vegetablesWA is determined to keep communicating and interacting with our amazing network of members and friends to ensure that fruit and vegetable production is minimally impacted by the crisis.
As a result, we have been getting our technology on and conducting webinars to communicate critical messages to our network in place of running face-to-face workshops (that’s so 2019!). We have chosen to use the platform Zoom, but other organisations in the horticulture space are using Webex, Teams, Skype, and the list goes on. To run programs like Zoom, you only need a smart phone or smart device which is a common tool for most involved in horticulture. “So why use Zoom”, you ask? The answer is simple!
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WA Grower SPRING 2020
We can bring the world to our members in a time when we cannot travel. A great example of this was our recent webinar on Melon Food Safety lead by vegetablesWA’s industry extension officer, Sam Grubiša. The webinar was presented by Dr SP Singh (from the NSW DPI). Dr Singh is an Australian expert on Melon Food Safety who has been heavily involved in a number of projects that were born following the Listeria outbreak in early 2018. The presentation, which he shared from his office in Sydney (via Zoom’s screen share function), primarily drilled into melon food safety, but there are so many learnings that could be applied to other fruit and vegetable commodities. Zoom has a chat function, which allowed for the live participants to ask their burning questions of Dr Singh. This added great value to the event for our participants. “I missed it…can you tell me more about it?” No…because Zoom has solved that problem!
