ATA Turfgrass Virtual Roadshow

The Road Shows went into uncharted territory this January, literally zooming into the future. Due to the Covid Pandemic, it became obvious in November that we would not be in a place where we could offer our successful series of Road Shows “live” this winter. Our educational speakers did not have travel sanctioned by their universities, and even reserving most venues became problematic.

The ATA Board made the decision to offer our program virtually. Many of our members rely on these road shows as an opportunity to get their pesticide recertification points for the year, and we didn’t want to let them down. The program was arranged on Zoom webinar and offered twice, on January 6th and 27th. While there were a few glitches and operator error in using the new technology, it really went quite well overall, with some even commenting that they preferred the format to the “live” event!

We would like to take this opportunity to say a special thanks to John Nabors who gave free instruction regarding the ins and outs of Zoom webinar. Also, to Tricia Roberts and James Horton, who worked with me to get the program off the ground. We owe all our speakers a big round of applause. They have become very proficient in the use of this technology and provided us with the recordings we needed to set up the Show. We also especially appreciate our education advisor, Dr. Dave Han for taking extra time to appear live and answer questions at the end of the presentations.

If you are like me, you are really ready to get back to normal, and we hope to bring you the Road Shows live in our six cities next year. In the meantime, we feel blessed to have the technology to make the presentations possible. Thank you all for your patience and we hope to see you soon! In the meantime, take care and stay safe.