Recap of November 2023 Discussion
This month’s picture is the 2023 Changemakers. These are the women who graciously gave us photos of them working in the field, “changing the face” of tree care.
https://mailchi.mp/bbc352868d57/women-in-arb-zoom-13915570?e=[UNIQID]
Here's a recap of our November discussion:
We discussed who would be at TCI Expo and who/what we were looking forward to seeing.
We talked about Covid and the effect it had had on our professional lives, particularly networking.
We discussed the difficulties of reading tone in text and strategies for being sure tone would be "heard" as intended.
Zoom has a continuous chat feature. Rebecca is still trying to figure out how to make that available to everyone who attends (let me know if you know how). This could fill in the gap that we tried to fill with the discord group.
The 3-30-300 rule for urban forestry, developed by Cecil Konijnendijk during the pandemic, was discussed.
Going back to the zoom discussions, we discussed AI and the benefits and drawbacks of it.
The book "Invisible Women" discusses how the biases of the programmers affect the biases of the program (the old "garbage in garbage out".
On the upside, chatGPT can be useful for helping launch the writing process, editing is easier than writing for a lot of people.
We discussed "psychological safety" the idea that you are safe to be yourself and speak up, which helps prevent group think and reduces on the job injuries. Ways to help foster psychological safety include:
modeling the use of preferred gender pronouns
land acknowledgments prior to meetings and conferences (if you don't know what to say, check your local university)
acknowledging existing privileges and biases
We discussed climbing comps and the fact that they're still binary men/women and how nonbinary folks feel about it.
We also discussed that the way it is currently written, each chapter can send two men but only one woman to the regional comps, leading to way more men competing (and getting that experience) than women.
We discussed Society of American Foresters (SAF) and their soon to be released Certified Urban & Community Forester credential. SAF has traditionally been about traditional ("dirt") forestry and has been known for "gate-keeping" their credentials - they've only been available to folks with a degree from an accredited university. Several of us attended and spoke at their convention this year.
Conference agenda scheduling was a topic - so many conferences require you to choose between speakers you'd like to hear for one section and then the next section there's no topics interesting to you. Often the agendas don't seem particularly thought out.
We discussed Florida's new Prescription Pruning Qualification.
ISA and CEU categorization - especially in regards to various certifications - was discussed. Who decides which "bucket" it goes in?
We discussed hiring good people. What makes a good employee (attitude, ability to learn, etc.)?
Learning Management Systems (LMS) were brought up. What's a good one for an ISA chapter to use? TCIA uses brightspace, ISA uses latitude learning. What makes a good LMS? Can ISA chapters get help from ISA for contracting these services?
This led to the discussion of the difficulty in finding insurance for climbing events. ISA used to have a policy chapters could get a rider for, but they can't do that anymore. Getting insurance for the climbing comp is an ordeal each year.
We discussed the loss of Norm Hall and Carl Cathcart and the effect they'd had on our members.
Finally, we discussed podcasts we're listing to me. Wiser than Me got another mention. Heavyweight was recommended. You can see past recommendations on the blog.
