EIA Working Group 6 held a meeting on November 18, 2021
Participants : Fleur Martin, EIA Secretariat (Leader), Keith Bellin, Irritec, Vicky Barbouti, Rivulis
Different topics were discussed during this meeting :
Statistics of EIA website and Social Network
Fleur Martin presented the EIA website statistics, which are stable, with with a peak in October, due to the forum and Eima. .
EIA’s LinkedIn page has 1067 followers, and is doing very well.
The EIA Facebook page has only 251 followers, and is growing slowlly. Two reasons: On Facebook, most of our connections are end users, and EIA is a professional association.The participants asked if we really need to be on facebook . If you don’t pay for advertising on Facebook, you can’t get any followers. Rivulis and Irritec have lots of followers on the social media.
Participants suggested Fleur Martin to prepare a post with an image doing the promotion EIA, and they could post it on their different medias.
Redesigning the EIA website
Content and coffee sent a second version of the new website prototype .
Remarks/Suggestions of participants :
Regarding the list of members, it isn’t friendly to scrow to see all the brands, especially for the brands with first letter at the end of the aplhabetic order ; they proposed a solution : put all the logos of the members in the blue part, on the top of the page.
Adding a jobsearch page for the members they could use when they are recruiting.
Sustainability is very important ; all the members have to follow the rules to respect sustainability. We should have a paper for sustainability on the homepage.
Editorial committee
Aim of the Editorial committee is to propose and select articles to develop EIA website content and create a technical library for members.The articles must be technically and agronomically satisfactory and no-commercial oriented.
Fleur Martin sent to participants two articles published in Irrigazette November/December 2021 edition :
« Deployment of irrigation-related sensors and probe », by Raphaël Karm, Terideal.
« Drip Irrigation and Fertigation, and inseparable duet » by Xavier Martínez Sagarra, ITC Dosing Pumps.
All participants agreed that the 2 articles can be published on the EIA website.
EIA virtual irrigation forum : October 8, 2021 – Feedback
Fleur reminded the Forum Agenda to the participants.
Feedback : the content was very interesting, rich but uneven. Some presentations were too long, we need to calibrate the presentations. Some guest speakers had technical problems during their presentation.
In the futur, we might have 4 forums per year, but shorter and more simple, with only one invited speaker.
Eima exhibition : Otober 19-23, 2021 – Feedback
On Eima, EIA shared Irrigazette’s booth (16 square meters) and organised a cocktail on the trade-fair, after the exhibition, on Wednesday evening.
Feedback :
The Irrigazette- EIA booth looked fine.
The Cocktail was fine and it was the opportunity for participants to meet other players of the industry, but the speeched were too long and it was difficult to find the room. Pavillon 16-18 was far from Irrigation Hall.
The next meeting of WG 6 will be held in January 2022.
In January, Oriol Torrano, from ITC Dosing pumps will join EIA Working Group 6.