Help Desk

Hi All,

I'm Nina from Missouri and I've been moonlighting in this job since July (while doing my 'real' job). Missouri was one of the first ERT programs but have been plagued by high turnover in this position -- we've had 5 people in 5 years with big periods in between where nobody is in the position. This means that people are in this position for long enough to learn the ropes but not long enough to make changes and thus our program is stagnated and we only use a few features on the site. I would love to make changes, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

I want to propose a "show and tell" series to see how other programs are doing things. 

Here's what I'm envisioning: 

One <45 minute meeting a month for ~15 months for each program. One program will take the lead and do a walk through of their program for everyone. We will record it for people who cannot make it. 

Topics to cover include:

• Features of their ERT website 
• How they go through a process from when a developer uses the site until the project is "done"
• Background layers and automated reports styles
• How ERT is used across the agency 

If you're a program that's really proud of your program, you can use this to brag, and if you're a program that would like help, you can more structure it as a "who has a better solution for X, Y, and Z?"

Let me know if you're interested in this (or not) and we can go from there. 

(Sorry in advance to Elyzabeth because this may cause more people asking for more things.)

Thanks!

Nina

nina.fogel@mdc.mo.gov

Hello Nina!

This is Amelia Baker from the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. Our team would be super interested in being a part of your "show and tell" series. Fantastic idea!!!

Thanks,

Amelia

Email: ngpc.envreview@nebraska.gov

Phone: 402-471-5423

Perhaps we could add a few smaller presentations to the Conservation Tool discussions - say 15 min tops per agency- and do a few at each Conservation Tools meeting. I'm a little hesitant to commit to a 45 min presentation or 15 monthly meetings.

Hi Nina,

Great idea! Echoing Virginia, I don't think our staff can commit to15 45 minute sessions. 15 or 30 minute session during a conservation tools meeting sounds more realistic. If only a small number of states are interested, we could organize a more modest show and tell that would not require such a time commitment.

Thanks,

Nathan

c-ndewar@pa.gov

What about 2 states per month. 20 minutes each so 45 minute meeting? We can aim to kick it off in January? I would volunteer to go first but we are about to get a new ERT analyst and I want them to get their feet wet and lead Missouri's presentation. Anyone want to volunteer? You wouldn't need to even make slides, you could just create a fake report and walk us through how you would deal with it. 

Relatedly, it would be great to get a repository of different automated reports. I had my assistant make reports for the states she didn't have to pay for, but she picked a random area so they were often not the more "interesting" reports because they didn't hit any sensitive species or ecosystems.