The case for face-to-face.

W you're my age, attention has to be paid to the generation gap. Slacking off leads to a slide into isolation and even ignorance. It isn't always easy for my generation who are more at home with paper, print and books than iPhones, iPads and touch screens. But I will also be the first to recognize the importance of change. Last year we planned our annual Wisconsin Turfgrass Association Winter Turf Conference. We are past the time when we held our meeting in a large hotel for two days, offering a full-blown equipment show, concurrent educational sessions with speakers, and a great social event the first evening. Now we're down to one day, eliminated even tabletop displays for vendors, and offered educational lectures by our own faculty, grad students and maybe one out-of-state speaker. I believe our experience is mirrored across the country. Our winter conference has always been a dicey proposition, primarily due to snow. The lawn care/landscape guys plow snow and really need the off-season revenue. For others, just getting to the conference is dangerous if the roads are slippery. So this year, for the first time, we offered a simultaneous webinar. The meeting was held at a university auditorium that was equipped to broadcast the conference live. Thirty-two responded to the webinar, about a third of the number who attended in person. We followed up with a survey, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Clearly, we'll do it again, with a few changes. It is cheaper (our webinar was only $20), eliminates travel time, takes out the weather factor, and it can be watched later if work interferes. It is also a concept familiar to younger superintendents. However, I still prefer the face-toface conferences, and probably always will. To me, there's something refreshing about the personal connections made during a conference. I like the interaction that occurs when a group of turfies gather, and they often have a real dollar value to the organization that paid your way to attend. I think I have learned as much from other superintendents at these meetings as I have from the lecturers. There is archive a webinar to watch later, but that is another compromise. Although obvious, you cannot host an equipment show tabletop or otherwise at a webinar. That is a limitation. I'm no Johnny-come-lately to distance learning. Wisconsin kids who attended a rural, one-room school, like I did were students of the University of Wisconsin Extension's "School of the Air." We learned music from the