Networking 101

I can honesty say that not much could have prepared me for the networking opportunties that I ran into today. I spent a small part of the morning helping Mark with the Farm Discovery Days event. It occured to me this morning that it is just a little over a week away. I emailed all of the teachers who are bringing their classes (around 12-15 teachers, and about 700 students) their finalized times from the schedule. I did get a few responses before I left for the first of two meetings for the day.
My first meeting was with the Lima Rotary club. I was allowed to watch a presentation put on by a few senior fair people and parents that are endorsing a livestock pavillion for the fairgrounds. The building would provide a great place for beef and horse shows (of the bigger kind) to come to the area. I think that the grounds have a great opportunity to give the youth a great facility to show in, and allow for finacial stability for the grounds. The concept has been given much thought and consideration by the group, and I was fairly impressed by the presentation that they gave. This is another thing that I have been surprised by. I think that the community supports and will help plan many ideas that may not be even considered by a smaller area.
The second meeting I attended was the Family and Children First Council. It has about 40 representives that each bring their ideas and experience to the table. The majority of this meeting was taking care of previous business, and finacial issues. I was excited to see a presentation regarding the Disability Baseball League in Allen County. I love the idea of giving kids the chance to play baseball (one of my favorite sports). I think it was nice to end with a warm fuzzy kind of event that Allen county puts on. The lady said that almost 80 kids participated last year, and she is hoping to reach her goal of 100 this year.
I was able today to register, and login to the online camp counselor training. I only got the chance to start looking at it, but I do like the idea that kids can work online with each other between each session of counselor training. I am hoping to look more critically at the officer training, and help Mark to further it as much as possible.
Tomorrow is cleaning day at the office. I am hoping that I can get some work done outside of helping clean the office, and keep on task as much as possible. Other than that my biggest goal is making sure that I help Mark as much as possible with the Farm disocvery Days and anything else that is coming up. It is starting to really hit the "busy season" for 4-H with the enrollment deadline quickly approaching!