I started a new project over the weekend. It progresses faster than expected, likely attributable to not having followed the directions. I was able to make process improvement because I am uninhibited by the notion that I must follow the instructions. By so doing, I assumed the risk of having to start over. Given my experience in the project area, it was a risk worth taking. Depending on the situation, this won't always be the case.

Mark Bell sent a nice photo from his working vacation last week, during which I believe I had daily interaction with him. I don't know where he was when he took the photo though I suspect it was closer to Seattle than Davis. I am doing my best to be in vacation mode this week from 2 pm onward (or 3, or 4, depending on the day), minus cooking dinner.

Monday, several of the leadership team met with Mikael Villalobos from UC Davis. This was our second meeting with Mikael to learn from him and discuss learning opportunities for UC ANR, tapping into his expertise. Linda has worked with Mikael in the past. I am eager to see what trainings UC ANR offers this year and how they are received by prospective participants. Given that in-person trainings are on hold for a while, virtual trainings offer a nice option and avoid the need for travel time. We have observed increased participation by clientele in our offerings; I suspect we all may be more likely to participate in virtual learning sessions as well.

Yesterday I met with a small group to work on our REC Strategic Framework assignment focusing on one of the goals. I will admit that I am looking forward to not having 3 strategic plans on my list of activities in progress. In addition, I serve as a board member for a national leadership development program and we are working on a strategic plan for that program as well. I am a ‘planner' and fan of strategic plans, but this is a bit much, even for me. However, I learned a new collaboration application – Mural. Teams can use it within Zoom. It comes complete with sticky dots and voting tools. Mural can definitely make the virtual learning/work environment more interactive. Take a look. Kit has already forewarned that she might use it in our training session later today. Perhaps I will be fonder of virtual sticky dots. What's interesting in this application is that the host can track who has used what number of dots and confirm that participants did not place more than one dot on an item during voting.

Later this week, there is a meeting to hopefully move towards finalization of guidance on income generation. We are past due on needing such guidance and it will be more critical to think about income generation going forward.

In general, my, week becomes far less interesting as it progresses with routine COVID-19 calls for several hours on Thursday. No end in sight for those calls, but I remain ever optimistic that we will soon see signs of the pandemic winding down.