Webinars from October, 2007 and later require Flash Player (already installed in 98% of web browsers). The power point presentations and other documents are available in PDF format and require Adobe Reader to open.
Archived recordings are available for the following webinars:
Contents |
Fall 2010
September
Starting Right in Specialty Foods with Brian Norder, Director, Vermont Food Venture Center
An informative session on what it takes to start and grow a specialty food business. Brian has over a decade of experience assisting entrepreneurs in all phases of food-related business development.
Resources referenced in the session
- Vermont Food Venture Center
- Northeast Center for Food Entrepreneurship
- New England Food Entrepreneurs
- Rutgers Food Innovation Center
- North Carolina State University Food Science
- University of Idaho
- University of Nebraska Food Processing Center
- Prince Edward Island Food Technology Center
- Guelph Food Technology Centre
- FDA Labeling Assistance
- National Business Incubation Association
Spring 2010
June
Youth Market: Rural Entrepreneurship Experience. This webinar highlights the Youth Market 4-H project, which was designated as a Program of Distinction in 2009 by National 4-H Council and also received the Annie E. Casey Family Strengthening Award. The project's overall goal is to incorporates a youth component into the county effort to improve the economic status of families in Garrett County, Maryland, a rural Appalachian area. Youth market goals are focused in two areas. First, a classroom experience - youth gain knowledge and skills through participation in a youth track at the annual rural enterprise conference. Second, a vendor experience where youth develop a successful small business. The Youth Market Program was developed to provide young people and opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship and have a "real-life" experience of selling at a market. Participants develop life skills, gain money management experience, and explore new product markets. Youth working under the guidance of 4-H leaders and mentors from the adult farmer's market will increase their chances of success in their small business initiatives. As youth experience success in their market endeavors they become contributing members of the household, the financial security of their family increases and as a result, the economic development of the region improves.
May
Getting Your Community Ready for Entrepreneurship Development, part 2. In this follow-up to April's webinar Sharon Gulick of University of Missouri Extension introduces you to two communities that are taking their economic development into their own hands. The projects have taken very different approaches (e.g., one has taken a broad based community economic development and youth entrepreneurship focus and the other on local foods and tourism). The presenters discuss the challenges they faced, how they built their teams, developed their plans and the successes that they've had. These are two very dynamic projects that have gotten national attention for their unique strategies and community engagement styles.
April
Getting Your Community Ready for Entrepreneurship Development. Even before the current recession we have been reading and hearing a lot about entrepreneurs. And by all accounts, they may be the most important ingredient for a sustainable economy into the future. Yet, unlike a big manufacturer that comes calling seeking incentives to locate in our community, they are hard to identify ... and their needs are a challenge to understand, much less meet. If a community is going to make entrepreneurship development a part of its economic development portfolio, how do they go about it? Are there some proven approaches and best practices that will help communities to be successful at welcoming and supporting entrepreneurs? In short, yes! ...Features Deb Markley sharing insights drawn from the RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship’s Energizing Entrepreneurs (e2) approach to thinking about entrepreneurship-focused economic development and Greg Clary sharing how the Texas Center for Rural Entrepreneurship (TCRE) prepares communities for certification as an Entrepreneur Ready Community. Greg Wise from the University of Wisconsin-Extension Center for Community and Economic Development will moderate this program.
Winter 2010
March
Get Found! with Jay Jenkins, Extension Educator, University of Nebraska. This session focuses on strategies you can use to drive more traffic to your site(s). Is your information getting lost in the sea of information available on the Internet? Are you lost in the maze of acronyms and vague meanings of terms like SEO, SEM, keywords, tags, page titles and subheadings? You will learn how clearly written and properly implemented web pages get found.
February
Analyze This with Vishal Singh, Instructional Multimedia Designer - Communications, Information and Technology, University of Nebraska. Google Analytics generates detailed statistics about visitors to your website. It provides you with a powerful website analytical tool that can help you improve your websites.
- Download the presentation from the webinar
- View the recorded webinar now!
- Link to the guide discussed on the webinar
January
Web Usability Testing. Lana Johnson, CIT DEAL Lab, Communications, Information and Technology, University of Nebraska. Usability is the ease with which people can perform a certain task on an object or system to achieve a particular goal. Web usability testing allows us to observe what users do, where they succeed and where they have difficulties. Feedback from this testing can then be used to improve web designs and interfaces for better user experiences.
Fall 2009
December
Identifying Hidden Assets and Opportunities in Your Community(or What You Don’t Know About Your Community Spells Lost Opportunities). Bill Pinkovitz, Community and Business Development Specialist, Center for Community and Economic Development, University of Wisconsin-Extension leads this session on how communities can better position themselves to take advantage of opportunities. “Nothing ever changes around here.”That is a common refrain in rural America. However, a quick look at some of the dynamics often reveals significant changes in even seemingly stagnant communities. Often, the changes are substantial, but can be subtle and go unnoticed. Other times, we have just been too busy to notice. In too many cases, real opportunities go untapped. This session identifies and analyzes many of these often unnoticed trends and the opportunities they create for communities, organizations and businesses. Data sources and successful methods for using the data to identify and analyze opportunities for local businesses and organizations will be discussed.
Following are some of the web pages that were featured in the presentation:
- www.census.gov - The US Census page discussed during the webinar
- Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics
- Bureau of Economic Analysis
- factfinder.census.gov
- The Self-Sufficiency Standard
November
Missouri 4-H Youth Entrepreneurship: Cultivating “Cloverpreneurs” in the Show Me State. Steve Henness is Extension Associate with the University of Missouri Extension 4-H Center for Youth Development. Steve provides leadership for 4-H programs and events in Youth/Adult Partnerships and Youth Entrepreneurship. He directs the MU Extension Youth Enterprisers Program, a statewide AmeriCorps*VISTA project placing full-time adult volunteers in assignments to build community entrepreneurial capacity.
- View more information related to the Extension Youth Enterprises Program (EYE)
- View more information related to the Missouri 4-H Entrepreneurship Project
- View the recorded webinar
October
Economic Gardening. Chris Gibbons, Director of Business & Industry Affairs for Littleton, CO discusses the opportunities and challenges in economic development rooted in growing jobs through entrepreneurship rather than chasing jobs by recruiting companies from outside.
- Read about Economic Gardening in Littleton, CO
- Download the presentation from the webinar
- View the recorded webinar
- Link to low- and no-cost resources for Economic Gardening
- How to register for the Econ-Dev mailing list (to discuss economic development with others interested in the same topic)
- Go to Google Groups sign-up page.
- In the column on the right side of the page click "Join this group".
- Sign in to Google using your existing Google account. If you do not have a Google account,
click "Create an account now." Once you are signed up as a member, you will be able to post to
the group by sending an email to econ-dev@googlegroups.com. You may change your settings at Google
Groups Econ-dev webpage anytime.
September
Visual Merchandizing. Glenn Muske, Oklahoma State University, takes us on a tour of ways that business owners can create compelling visual displays that will draw the interest of customers without breaking the bank.
Spring 2009
June
Engaging Youth in Entrepreneurship. Join Mary Emery, Iowa State University, Laura Allen, Career Education Coordinator, Michigan State University Extension, Debra Kantor, University of Maine, and Patricia Fairchild, Nebraska 4-H Curriculum Design and Youth Entrepreneur Specialist for an informative session on how to engage youth in entrepreneurship. The session will introduce the Youth Entrepreneurship Community of Practice and their project to create a matrix of youth entrepreneurship programs. Patricia Fairchild will introduce the Nebraska curriculum and Laura Allen will present on the Beyond the Lemonade Stand PROJECT which used the curriculum “Be the E.” This session will wrap up our webinar series for the summer.
May
Finding Your Target Market Using MarketMaker
April
Tips and Tricks for Successful Farmers' Markets
Related resources you might find helpful...
- The Art and Science of Farmers' Market Display
- Visual Merchandising: The Silent Salesperson. View a recording of a marketing workshop conducted by Glenn Muske, Oklahoma State University. The workshop covers some key aspects of display as a sales tool. The workshop is approximately 45 minutes long.
March
Informal and formal planning: Using INVenture to build your business plan Join Maria Marshall, Small Business Specialist, Purdue University for an overview of how to use INVenture, an online business planning tool free to the public and available at INVenture. INVenture helps you think through the business planning process in the course of six interactive stages. Recommended for small business owners, farmers, business coaches and mentors.
Winter 2008/2009
E-Commerce Series
Maximizing Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign with Andy Lewis, University of Wisconsin Extension and John Wells, President of WebWise Design & Marketing
The Fruit Company: A real ecommerce story.
The Next Level of eMarketing - Web2.0 Tools and Tips with Tim O'Brien, Information Technology Business Consultant from the Nebraska Department of Economic Development.
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USDA Scientists, Cooperators Create the First Genomic Map of the Domesticated Turkey
By Chris GuySeptember 8, 2010
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers and their university colleagues have sequenced the majority of the genome of Meleagris gallopavo, the domesticated turkey, creating the first-ever turkey genome map. The nearly complete map could help growers to more efficiently produce bigger, meatier turkeys. The research is reported today in PLoS Biology, an online journal of the Public Library of Science.
Americans consume about 17.6 pounds of turkey per capita every year, and the U.S. produces nearly 6 billion pounds of turkey meat annually.
"Turkey is the fourth most popular meat in this country," said Edward B. Knipling, adminstrator of USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS). "The information gleaned from these genetic studies will help breeders develop improved commercial turkey breeds to meet consumers' demands in the United States and worldwide."
The research was a partnership led by Curtis Van Tassell and Julie A. Long with ARS; Otto Folkerts and Rami Dalloul of Virginia Tech University's Bioinformatics Institute (VBI); and Steven L. Salzberg of the University of Maryland's Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, at College Park.
Van Tassell works in the ARS Bovine Functional Genomics Laboratory at Beltsville, Md., while Long works in the ARS Animal Biosciences and Biotechnology Laboratory, also at Beltsville. ARS is the chief intramural scientific research agency of USDA. This research supports the USDA priority of ensuring international food security.
The researchers used "next-generation" DNA sequencing technology that relied on high-throughput instruments at the ARS laboratory in Beltsville and at VBI in Blacksburg, Va. The new technology produces millions of DNA sequences simultaneously.
The instrumentation used at VBI characterized longer strands of turkey DNA, while the ARS researchers focused on characterizing many more short DNA fragments, permitting greater detail through deeper sequencing of those fragments, according to Van Tassell. The overall turkey genome was compiled by assembling the various DNA fragments. To achieve that, the scientists had to develop new computer programs to interweave the DNA strands of varying lengths.
The turkey genome assembly was further strengthened when physical, comparative and genetic maps built by researchers from Michigan State University and the University of Minnesota were used to match the DNA sequences to turkey chromosomes. By the end of the project, the original partnership expanded to include 68 scientists affiliated with 28 national and international institutions.
"The project underscores how rapidly the field of genome sequencing has changed," said Long. "We sequenced the turkey genome in less than a year, at a fraction of the cost of sequencing chicken and cow genomes. The turkey industry and consumers will benefit from this research."
The turkey genome sequence is publically available at: www.ensembl.org/Meleagris_gallopavo.