Podcast

 

I just started a podcast. 

It's something that's been on my mind for a long time. I have watched as my industry - county conservation - has been undergoing a huge generational turnover. Along the way, I recorded some interviews with retiring/retired directors that I knew, mostly to glean their institutional knowledge from 30-40+ years in the system. That spawned additional ideas for topics to talk to people about and now I have a long and growing list of topic ideas along with a much smaller, but still growing, collection of recordings. 

It felt a bit selfish to horde all that knowledge. So...podcast. It's a show for parks and conservation professionals. My hope is that the insight shared in the episodes helps people be better leaders in their jobs, at home, and in their communities. I know it has helped me. And I can think of no better way to move the world forward, to leave it better for our kids, than to be better leaders. 

Now, some caveats: I am no professional interviewer. Nor am I a professional audio engineer. Most (actually, so far, all...) of my recordings were done with an iPhone and edited (not well) in free audio editing software (I'm currently using Audacity). The intro music was made with Garage Band on my iPhone the first time I ever used that app. The sound quality in these early episodes is not great, but hopefully that will improve over time as I get better at this stuff. 

Or maybe I won't, and I'll decide this is too much work and to heck with it all, I'm keeping this knowledge to myself. Or maybe I'll win the lottery and can afford to hire some professional sound people and...wait, I don't play the lottery.

Hard to say what the future holds...

For now, let's just go with it and celebrate the fact that I found the time to make this happen. I do hope you'll find some benefit from the content in these episodes and I welcome any feedback and/or ideas for future topics and guests. 

We only have one world to leave the next generation. Let's make it a good one. 

The first few episodes are listed here. Future episodes will be posted on this site as they're published.

Here's the introductory episode. Or maybe "trailer" is a better term for it.

In this episode, I speak with Dan Cohen, Director at Buchanan County Conservation and Matt Cosgrove, Director at Webster County Conservation. They have been the legislative committee leaders in some capacity for the County Conservation Directors Association for more than a decade. We discuss the legislative process and how we as park and conservation professionals can better influence legislation at the state level.

In this one, I talk with Karen Kinkead and Stephanie Shepherd from the Iowa DNR Wildlife Diversity Program about what the program is and how it's funded. As park and conservation leaders, we can contribute to this great program directly through our state tax form and/or through the license plates we buy.