Musings While Sitting on the Deck of Sentinel Pines Lodge . . .

ASHS President William J. Lamont, Jr., comments on the ever increasing number of communications options for ASHS members

I was recently sitting on the deck of “Sentinel Pines Lodge,” a small retreat I own over the mountain from State College, having some liquid refreshment and social networking with my good buddies Barclay Poling, from NC State and Pete Bergholtz, President of Ken-Bar, Inc., lamenting how quickly time flies by and how we are now being viewed as “Senior Members” of society.

It is hard for me to visualize myself as a “senior” member of anything. Maybe it is because I am surrounded every day by 40,000 non-senior members of society who often remind me of myself a number of years ago. If I could plug into the energy level of these students, I believe I could power State College. When I think of my student days and compare it to today’s environment, one thing that jumps out is the vast array of technology that I see every day on campus. When I was a student, the main technologies utilized on campus were a slide rule, number 2 lead pencil (I still use that today), and books. There was not even a pocket calculator, and the phones on a table at home or on the wall were the heavy black variety with the dial on the white-numbered face, and TVs were black and white. We even had party lines and a switchboard located at the phone company with a real live operator. Personal computers were just a figment of someone’s imagination.

Today I continue to be amazed at how connected everyone is, and wonder if the electronic world ceased to be would everyone have withdrawal symptoms? Students walk around with their iPods in their pockets and plugs in their ears, or they are talking or texting with their cell phones, Blackberries, or tweeting to their friends who are across the street. I have a fear that there has to be some hearing impairment in this generation of students since I can enjoy the music they are listening to as we walk across campus and I don’t even own an iPod. I never thought I would see the day when a car would literally vibrate from the bass subwoofers. Then again, I remember turning up the radio in the car (that’s all we had) to rock and roll, but the car never vibrated.

Think about how much technology is now part of our Annual Conference and how we conduct business as a society. I am sure that the first President of ASHS, Liberty Hyde Bailey, delivered his presentations and lectures without many visuals, and I know that he definitely was a print type of guy. I have seen a photo of Liberty Hyde Bailey sitting in his living room up in Ithaca, New York, talking and conversing with students about horticulture. Today, Liberty would be on Facebook, have a blog site, and be on YouTube showing how to prune or identify a certain plant. The art of pruning a shrub or the science behind the horticultural principles extolled by Liberty Hyde Bailey haven’t really changed, but it is how we deliver the information that has most assuredly changed. I am sure if he were alive today, he would embrace the electronic revolution. I think back on how as graduate students and young professors we used to make our presentations for the annual conference using the old blue and white slides with black tables of data on a clear background. Now we use PowerPoint and create presentations and posters that boggle one’s mind. Sometimes I believe we stand a chance of losing the “take-home” message in the myriad of bells and whistles in a presentation.

So Many Ways to Communicate . . . .

In the movie “Cool Hand Luke” after Luke (Paul Newman) is returned from escaping and is receiving punishment, the warden of the prison camp addresses the prisoners and says: “What we got here is... failure to communicate.” At ASHS we do not have this problem thanks to Tim Rhodus, ASHS Editor for Digital Information Resources, and our visionary Executive Director Mike Neff. Under their able leadership, the members of the Society can communicate with one another and conduct society business via e-mail and listserves and now the new social networking system for all working groups created through Ning.com. Members of a WG Network (WGN) have a wide variety of social networking services available, such as blogs, events calendar, web links to ASHS Working Groups and the annual reports of the working groups, HortTalks 3D video wall for reliving the Annual Conference, and so much more.

We as members of ASHS are connected now more than ever, and there is no reason for anyone to not be able to communicate with others in the Society. This is so much better than the “old days”—especially for the Working Groups, which are the heart and soul of ASHS and where communication is extremely important as they plan workshops, collaborate on colloquium, symposiums, conduct business meetings, and prepare their annual reports and plan for their future. The days of hard-copy publications is fading fast as everything is going online. We as a Society have positioned ourselves to deliver information in a form that our members are used to receiving it. If information and communications are not packaged in a format that the recipient is used to, desires, and expects, then we will have a failure to communicate. We will continue to push the envelope in the field of communication and technology, so even I can have the opportunity to become a social networker off the deck.

My quote for this column comes from an unknown author:

“If we have captured the spirit of a liberal education, we might be described like this: acquainted with the facts and principles of the cultural heritage of mankind; capable of using full intellectual resources in making reasoned judgments; and of the character to assume moral and social responsibility.”

 - Reflections Column, published in the September 2009 ASHS Newsletter