When pros share, everybody wins
7 Jul, 2011 By: Ron Hall i-newsWhen people within a particular group or industry share their experiences and their knowledge everybody in the group or industry wins.
I relearned that obvious but too-often unappreciated dynamic as I followed a recent exchange of ideas among members of the Irrigation Practitioners group on Linkedin. Andy Smith, formerly with the Irrigation Association and now with Reinke Manufacturing Co, started the discussion forum about a year ago, and I always look forward to the next comment or question from Andy and other members.
A recent exchange of ideas on this particular Web-based Linkedin was particularly instructive
In May one of the group’s participants shared that a community college is requiring all new irrigation systems on its campus to be audited and meet a 75% DU. The poster essentially asked fellow irrigators if the 75% DU was possible. DU stands for distribution uniformity, a measure of how uniformly an irrigation system applies water across a landscape.
What followed over the course of the next several days were 22 comments, some detailed, some brief. All of them, however, spoke to the subject and none were insulting, silly or off color.
Some of the respondents felt that reaching a 75% DU was unlikely if not unachievable. Some thought it possible.
But DU being just one measure of an irrigation system’s efficiency, group members commented on many other related factors — product selection, landscape design, budgetary considerations, etc. — each of the posts illuminating yet another factor necessary for achieving the most efficient water use possible.
I followed the discussion day-to-day. I looked forward to learning something new with each response.
By the time the discussion had run its course, I felt I had a much broader understanding of DU and many of the factors that impact it than I would have had reading a treatise or text. I had learned from professionals with practical experience, people unafraid to share so that we can all advance.
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