TAP PFI’S NETWORK – ON THE NET

Rick Exner

Ever wonder how to reconnect with that guy at the field day who’s grazing ducks just like you?  Or the woman at the district winter meeting you had such a good conversation with?  PFI members are serious about sharing information, resources, and ideas.  The Member Directory is one resource to move that sharing along.  Another is the PFI On-line Directory.

There’s a link to the Online Directory right on the home page at www.pfi.iastate.edu.  Click on the link, and you will find yourself at the welcome page.  That’s where you tell us who you are.  Remember, this is a service for members.  Your admission ticket consists of your last name (or company name if that’s how you joined) plus your member ID number, which appears on the mailing label of your PFI newsletter.  Enter these two pieces of information, and you’re into the member database.

However, if you previously granted PFI permission to include you in the Online Member Directory, then you will have more choices than members who have not done so.  Right before you are two checkboxes showing whether you told us to include you in: 1) the (printed) Directory; and 2) the Online Directory.  Maybe you put yourself in the PFI Directory but never got around to choosing the Online Directory.  We don’t just assume you want to be included in the PFI website, so you have to tell us.

Let’s say you’ve come this far and find that one or both of your boxes aren’t checked.  You can simply click on the unchecked boxes on your screen, then click the button that says Submit Change.  That will automatically send an email to PFI webmaster Rick Exner (yours truly), and I will promptly update your permissions.

In the mean time you can update your membership information on-line by going to the top of the page and clicking on “update membership information.”  You can do everything here except make the actual payment to renew membership. All your changes will be emailed directly to the PFI staff.

OK, let’s say you’re part of the Online Directory now.  At the bottom of the welcome screen are live links to various tables: Members, Districts, Interests, Crops, Tillage, Fertility and Forestry, and Livestock.  So you click on, say, the Members link and find... an empty table. It’s empty because we need to know if you want to download all 200-plus members listed.  If so, just click on the Submit Query button and wait.  If you’d like to narrow your search, select some combination of search criteria at the top of the screen, e.g., PFI District and Last Name.  You can also choose whether the database finds records that match either criterion (District 5 or “Wilson”) or to select only records that satisfy both (or all) that you entered.

You’ll notice that the members turning up in your search results have their last name or organization name underlined and highlighted in color.  That’s a link to all their Directory information.  Click on the link and see what farm data, practices, and ideas each member is sharing through the Directory.  There’s that duck grazier!
PFI is a learning community, and your board and staff are keen to help this networking increase in richness and utility.  The Online Directory encourages grassroots communications – the kind that don’t need to go through a staff person or board member.  We encourage all members to join the PFI On-Line Directory for this reason.

Take the opportunity to reach out to other people interested in sustainable agriculture.  If you’d like to send us a snapshot or two of your family or farm, we’ll even find a way to include them with your Directory listing.  And please give us feedback.  If there’s something about the Directory that doesn’t seem to work right, use the Webmaster link on the PFI home page to let us know how to improve the Online Member Directory.