The NICH Team

Attending: Gail, Lucy, Ellen, Casey, Shannon, Margaret, Suzi

1. Gary Bachman (Extension Research Professor, Mississippi State) ~ report on Coalition of American Plant Societies (CAPS) ~ not on call today, but on a previous call, said his report to CAPS went well, and that they would be interested in engaging with NICH.
   • Ellen had questions about who is on the NICH list, to make sure we aren’t missing people who should be engaged.
   • Action Item: Lucy will send listserv information to NICH group. Steering committee will look at list, and identify folks who should be engaged with NICH, and added to NICH. If you see folks, send that person and Lucy a note asking if they can be added to the listserv.
   • Action Item: Ellen will check with Gary, to see if he is coming to the meeting, and / or see if he can send out a document with bullet points summarizing CAPS presentation.
2. Denver Meeting Specifics
   • Registration Numbers – Ellen
     1. Update on Numbers (5 people registered, thus far: Tom Underwood, David Grapple, Casey Sclar, Katie Dubow, Lucy Bradley). Suzi said that she has registered. Ellen and Gail will be registering via direct payment from their Universities.
     2. Action Item: Ellen will send out another registration reminder to the NICH list, with the option to register or RSVP regrets. Ellen will double check on Suzi’s registration. Ellen and Suzi will follow up to see if phone recruitment is possible.
     3. Question: if we only have a few folks registered, will we still be hosting the meeting? We will make the call on whether or not to host the meeting, by the next phone call (June 13th).
     4. Question: it possible to have people register as an RSVP, so that we can see who is not coming?
   • Budget – Casey/Lucy
     1. Contract Updates and Cost expenditures
     2. Expenditures: funds for NICH to be channeled through previous NICH account grant. Funds for registration going to Georgia.
     3. Action Item: Lucy, Casey and Ellen will follow up with an offline conversation about how to handle finances / expenditures.
   • Transportation – Shannon
     1. Transportation: Hotel suggested that we use a car service (large SUV) for minor trips to and from hotel. $50 per SUV per way ~ about $400, total for our meeting (does not count folks who may choose to walk to the Denver Botanical Garden). Each large SUV holds ~ 7 people. Shannon and Rusty are also willing to drive. We do not need to commit to car service until up to a week before the event.
   • Catering – Casey
     1. Catering: DBG has exclusive contract with Catering by Design.
     2. Action Items: Casey and Suzi will work together to get menus from Catering by Design, and will work on putting menus, together. Casey will cc Shannon on emails to Catering by Design, in case something more local needs to happen.
   • Agenda – All
     1. Shift Suzi and Katie McCoy on schedule to Thursday? Will it work for the local folks who are part of the panel? Is there anyone from the mission/vision/goals committee on the agenda?
     2. Action Items: ask Rusty to make change to Suzi and Katie’s placement on the agenda, and then send final agenda to Shannon (so that she can coordinate with local folks) ~ and to steering committee, in general. Ask Rusty to check out the agenda on the conference website (http://archive.consumerhort.org/conference-agenda/) and note any changes that need to be made ~ specific to the agenda (or to the meeting, in general).
   • Other Meeting Items
     1. Shannon will work on informal dinner plans, as we get final ## on registrants.
     2. Transportation to meeting from airport: link on how to get to hotel from airport is now on website as an FAQ (http://archive.consumerhort.org/frequently-asked-questions/)
     3. Action Items: Shannon will check out the FAQ link on the website. Shannon reviewed this, while we were on the conference call, and mentioned that the train FAQ is good. Add in that the cost is $9. Shannon mentioned that there are other options for travel to the Botanic Garden that could be added to the website: B-cycle, Denver’s public bike-sharing program or a 30-minute walk.
3. Organizational Structure – Casey
   • Is organizational structure ready to share, pre-meeting? Tom said ‘yes.’
   • Ellen posted the organizational structure on the Collaborate site, during our call.
   • Action Items: Ellen will provide feedback on organizational structure, to simplify, prior to putting the organizational structure on the website.
4. Pre-Meeting Package to Attendees – All
   • Action Items: Ask Rusty his thoughts on sending out the following to all attendees prior to meeting: agenda, transportation information, copy of mission/vision/goals, copy of organization structure, copy of NICH objectives.
   • Note that most/all of this has been posted on website. But, Rusty expressed interest in sending this out as a pre-meeting packet.
5. New Business – All
   • Ellen’s presentation about her recent industry meeting. See Appendix for Ellen’s notes.
   • Question ~ edits to the goals, based upon industry feedback? Do these need to go back to the writing committee?
   • Action Item: Ellen to coordinate with Suzi, to finalize edits on the goals, based upon industry feedback. Ellen will distribute to all. Margaret will take these to reps from the nursery industry, to get their feedback.

Attending: Gail Langellotto, Lucy Bradley, Suzi McCoy, Rick Durham, Ellen Bauske, Casey, Margaret Pooler, Rusty Collins, Margaret, Shannon Spurlock, Katie Dubow

Steering committee introduced themselves to Suzi and Katie.

Welcome New Steering Committee Members

• Suzi McCoy, Garden Media Group
• Katie Dubow, Garden Media Group, creative director
• Clint (?) will also be participating, from Garden Media Group
• GMG has been serving PR and marketing needs of industry for almost 30 years, so has a pretty broad view of the industry.
• GMG does a trend report since 2001, on the consumer and business side of the gardening business.
• NICH and GMG have similar interests and alignment. Mission as a company is to get all people gardening 365 days a year. Gardening is a seasonal business ~ so how to infiltrate hearts and minds of folks who don’t garden?
• Trend reports are posted on the Garden Media Group website
  • http://www.gardenmediagroup.com/trends
• Direct link to the 2016 trends report can be found at:
  • http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/165357/docs/2016_Garden_Trends_Report.pdf?t=1462827189802
• Suzi and Katie’s take on our mission, vision, goals:
• GMG spends quite a bit of time working with clients to develop mission and vision.
• Vision is the big picture ~ loftiest goal you have ~ who do you want to become. Mission is what you do ~ what are our products. Vision should be short (7 words or less). Mission can be a lot longer.
• What is currently the NICH mission could be the NICH vision. What is currently the NICH vision seems more like an objective. Vision could be: ‘growing a healthy world through plants, gardens and landscapes’. Drop the ‘art and science’. It doesn’t matter how you get there. It is good to have ‘health’ in there, because health will resonate more with folks.
• Move horticulture out of agriculture and into health and wellness. Make plants a necessity for a healthy lifestyle and not a luxury.
• Rusty noted that from survey, 60% of people liked mission as written, and 40% had recommendations.
• Casey, Suzi and Katie discussed how to make NICH more attractive to industry. One thing would be to add more consumers into the goals ~ having more people fall in love with gardening. To attract industry, there needs to be a focus on building consumers. Clients are going to want to see mission and vision . . . but are also going to want to know ‘how are you going to accomplish this’ (the goals).
• The goal of our working group had been to NOT wordsmith in Denver, but to get feedback on mission, vision and goals. It was suggested that instead of doing a revision, the writing committee can ‘tweak’ the mission, vision and goals prior to the Denver meeting.
• In the ‘new’ mission statement (increase the percent of US households), could we change to: ‘increase the number of consumers participating in horticulture to 90% by 2025.’?
• Rusty suggested sending ‘new’ mission and vision statement to steering committee ~ give them 48 hours to respond. Rick noted that the writing committee was formed at the request of the steering committee, and that the steering committee
• Decision Made:
  • Changes to mission, vision sent will be sent to the steering committee (and Rick will send to writing committee) ~ with a short deadline (2-3 days) to respond. Responses will be focused on ‘tweaking’ mission, vision, goals so they are ready to go in Denver.
• Action Items:
  • Please consider the following proposed mission and vision statements, based upon feedback provided by the industry members of our steering committee. Within 2-3 days, send any comments you have on to Gail at gail.langellotto@oregonstate.edu. Gail will summarize comments and report back to the group.

Mission:

‘NICH aims to increase the number of consumers actively engaged with horticulture to 90% by 2025.’

Vision:

Growing a healthy world through plants, gardens and landscapes.

Denver Meeting Update

• Denver meeting is a go. Rusty suggested doing registration ‘online’, through EventBrite. Charge a small fee ~ to discourage registrations but no shows.
• Based on survey results, we’re probably looking at about 15 people for the Denver meeting.
• For the question regarding registration fee, $200 to $250 seemed to be the price point that made folks a bit uncomfortable.
• On the first night, could arrange an informal dinner (going out) or informal hospitality suite in someone’s room.
• Transportation costs: Shannon should have transportation costs, soon. She also noted that the train to plane ($9, one way) is a good option for people getting into Denver.

Agenda:

Folks travel into Denver by Wednesday, June 29th 3pm. Optional group dinner at 6-7:30pm. Informal gathering in the lobby bar, starting after 8pm.
Three sessions planned across June 30th – July 1st.

June 30th

• Session 1: mission, vision and goals ~ Present what mission and mission are, and then allot discussion time to talk about objectives. Trim session down from 3 hours to perhaps 1-1.5 hours.
• Lunch: how will lunch be done? Botanic Garden has two areas where you can order lunch. It might be easiest to do a pre-order. Lunch can come out of registration fees. Maybe extend lunch noon – 2pm, with an optional tour from 1-2pm.
• Session 2: organizational structure ~
• Perhaps have a panel of experts on how to engage industry and others to participate in this effort ~ Suzi and Katie, and a local expert, as well. Shannon can reach out to local expert.

July 1st

Session 3:

• There was lots of discussion about the agenda ~ but Gail had to sign off early.

Action Items:

• Rusty will refine and distribute a new agenda to steering committee members.

Margaret’s Insights

The stakeholder group that NICH wants to engage is so broad, that it challenges us how to engage them. Another challenge is that a lot of industry commissions their own research. Industry seems more interested in applied research ~ how innovations can be applied. How to address these concerns should be forefront on our mind, as we move forward.
How can we take our goals, and translate them into talking points for industry? Since our goals might be changing ~ how do we move forward? There was a suggestion that Margaret wait until the ‘refreshed’ goals are available. At that point, Margaret can take them to industry to get their feedback, suggestions on translating these to talking points.

Gary Bachman ~ report on CAPS

There were technical problems that prevented Gary from connecting to the meeting, but he wrote that the CAPS group was receptive to NICH, and that he has invited various groups to sign up for NICH updates.

Attending: Gail, Ellen, Lucy, Shannon, Casey, Margaret, Rick

1. Denver Meeting 30 June – July 1  (Casey)
2. Botanic Garden – Rooms reserved all day on Jun 30th and half day on July 1st.
   • We can talk to the Botanic Garden about our food needs, next.
3. Hotel information forthcoming
   • Warwick hotel contract secured (30 room nights; $179 per night):  reservation deadline of June 3rd.
4. Late Night arrivals on 29th/informal gathering (nothing major):  steering committee dinner on June 29th or should we have a general reception on June 29th?
   • Rick, Margaret, Bob Kellam will not be able to attend NICH meeting in June.
5. Transportation costs (Shannon): information forthcoming
   • No transportation on the 29th, unless we have a reception on the 29th.
   • Transportation on the 30th:  roundtrip out to the Botanic Garden, and then back (full day)
   • Transportation on 1st of July:  one trip out to the Botanic Garden, and one trip back (half day)
   • Does the Warwick have a shuttle?  If so, could we look the Warwick as an alternative?
   • Action Items:  Shannon will call the Warwick and ask about transportation; will follow up on transportation options.

1. Program Committee Update (Rusty, Ellen, Lucy)
2. Survey Results – Update:  not many responses (~12), and seems like we may be recruiting from within our group.  Not many responses from outside of our group.
   • Action Items:  Lucy will resend the survey, with a deadline of May 13th to respond.
   • Action Items:  Steering committee should fill out the survey, as well.
   • In the survey note ~ send out information about the Warwick hotel.
   • Denver has a train to plane service at Union Station (http://www.rtd-denver.com/a-line.shtml).  The Warwick is ~ 1 mile from Union Station.
3. Should we put the organizational structure on website?  At this point, Casey suggests holding off on putting the organization structure on the website.
4. Mission – Vision – Goals Committee Update
   • Updated goals and objectives were included on the survey.  They are not currently posted on the website.
     • Decision Made:  we will put the new goals and objectives on the website.
   • If survey closes on May 13th, is there enough time for the writing committee to meet, prior to our Denver meeting?
   • Should mission and vision be ready to be presented at Denver meeting?  Writing committee was given permission to take a renewed look at mission and vision.  But, we will not change the mission and vision (on the website), for now.

1. Action Items, Website updates (Ellen will take care of this):
2. Add Shannon and Rusty as steering committee members.
3. Add updated goals and objectives to website.
4. Add hotel and meeting information to the website.

1. Sponsorship
2. Shannon had talked to a local foundation about sponsoring NICH activities, but they declined, at this time.

1. Identifying and Working with Like-Minded Groups (Margaret)
2. There are other efforts that are related to what NICH is doing, and many of them are commercially-oriented.  There may be a way of joining forces.

1. We need Private Industry members! (Casey)
2. Casey has meeting scheduled with Suzie McCoy (from Garden Media Group) in the next few weeks, and will broach the topic.  Suzie may have a better idea about what type of campaign we can use to engage them.
3. Timing:  spring is a bad time of year to engage nursery production folks.  It’s their busiest time of year.
4. Our efforts to engage industry should be focused on long term involvement, rather than short-term funding.
5. Other efforts focused on getting funding to solve problems that affect industries.  Our efforts seem one or more steps away from what an industry person might be looking for.
6. Another challenge is that we don’t have enough industry involvement for them to even say what their needs are.
7. Other folks who might be involved: Charlie Hall (gardening impact data) or other researchers who work in consumer hort.
8. Ellen has a meeting with a marketing professional at Bonnie Plants to discuss NICH.
9. We need to develop a list of industry talking points, that can be linked back to our goals.
   • Action Items:  Margaret will take the first stab at writing industry talking points, in collaboration with American Hort (Jill Callaborough?).  Casey will assist, perhaps putting draft past Suzie McCoy.  Approach will be to take NICH goals, and put them into industry-specific language.

1. Next Meeting – May 17, 2016

Attending:  Tom, Ellen, Beth Horne (Event Coordinator, Center for Urban Agriculture), Shannon Spurlock, Rick Durham, Mary Meyer, Lucy, Gail

1. Upcoming NICH Meeting:  tentative date of June 27-30 Shannon Spurlock and Denver Urban Gardeners will be hosting.  Beth will be part of the conference planning team.

a. Hotel or Downtown.  Shannon~ pre- and post conference tours might work better if we meet downtown (bus tour or b-cycle tours).  Distance between downtown and airport ~ 30-40 minutes.  Denver airport hotels very isolated.  Consensus is to have the meeting at a downtown hotel.  Shannon will reach out to local contact to see what ACGA used as hotels when they met in Denver.  Let’s line up hotel, before promoting the meeting dates. Hotel should have one larger meeting area, with smaller break out areas.

b. Number of Attendees: Shannon would like to know how many people will be attending.  Estimate is currently 100 people.  Is that correct?  Are DUG going to be expected to do outreach to recruit more folks to the meeting Tom:  our focus is a national audience, although local folks are welcome. For national focus, include folks who weren’t able to attend the first meeting to attend the second meeting.  Ellen notes that our mailing list is currently 46 people . . .  half of our 100 person target.  Also, that we did not get good representation from family and consumer science, even though many of our goals fall into that area.

c. Tours:  Shannon~ pre- and post conference tours (bus tour or b-cycle tours). Bike tour or walking tour to urban farms, urban gardens and People’s Gardens, in Denver.  Denver Botanic Garden has also offered pre- or post-conference tour.

d. Conference Committee:  Shannon, Beth, Lucy, Mary, Ellen, and perhaps Rusty.

e. Agenda:  June 27th is the travel day, perhaps a tour on the 27th.  Meeting on June 28th-29th (day and a half).  Folks can either travel out on June 29th, or stay around for a tour on June 30th.  Focus of this meeting should be the organizational structure of NICH, including forming working group team.

Need to move work beyond the steering committee.  The night of the 27th, we might be able to do an informal dinner at ‘the horse barn’.  It should be a no-host type of event.

f. Facilitator:  Shannon mentioned that they have worked with a local facilitator named Rusty Collins, who has done a good job for them in the past.  We have used Warren in the past, but it might be good to reach out to Rusty.  Shannon will reach out to Rusty Collins to see if he is available June 28-29th.

g. Registration Form:  The conference folks at the Center for Urban Ag will handle the registration form and collection of money (if money collection is needed).

2) Writing Committee Volunteers:  Tom (will host) and Rick are also willing to be involved on the writing team.  Other folks who volunteered for the writing committee include (Ellen will send a note to the three below, saying there are two other committee members, and they will be in touch, soon).

• Rima Green
• Adena Sabins
• David D. Close

3) Adjustments to the NICH website

a. Surveys have been stopped.

b. Adjusted the Vision Statement.

c. Richie can (and has) created registrations forms so that can be done on the web site.

d. NICH Steering Committee Minutes are being posted on the website.

e. Writing Committee members will be added to the website.

f. Steering Committee Member Adjustments:  Mark Boxson has resigned from the committee.  Maree Gaetani has resigned from the committee.  Bob Kellam is taking a leave of absence from the committee.  Jenn Tedeschi is backing off of (but not out of) engagement with NICH.

4) Other Business

a. We should get a ‘hold the date’ notification, with meeting location, out to our lists.  We should all use our listservs to get a ‘save the date’ out to all of our lists.

b. Lucy will send information out on ‘how to subscribe’ to the listserv to all of us, so that we can get that information out to our network.

c. Next phone call: March 22nd at 10am EST.  Focus of next phone call will be the program agenda for our June meeting.

Summary of Decisions Made
1. We’ll be meeting in a downtown hotel, not the airport.
2. Conference committee consists of Shannon, Beth, Lucy, Ellen, and a facilitator (perhaps Rusty Collins).
Summary of To Dos
1. Shannon will reach out to Rusty Collins to see if he is available to facilitate our meeting in June.  She will also ask about cost.
2. Ellen will send a note out to writing committee members letting them know they have two more members, and that information on next steps will be coming soon.
3. All of us will get information out to our networks, asking them to save the date (June 27-30) for a meeting in Denver, CO.
4. Lucy will send us information on ‘how to subscribe’ to her listserve, so that we can begin to grow the NICH network.
Next Phone call:  March 22nd at 10am EST.  Agenda item = planning program agenda for June Meeting.