Innovations, AI, and the Future of the Forestry Industry with Jason Ross of Wood Central

Episode Overview

Episode Topic

In this episode of Timber Talks, host Mindy welcomes Jason Ross, the publisher of Wood Central, a leading platform in the timber and wood-based industries. They delve into the latest innovations and advancements shaping the industry, highlighting the evolution from traditional lumber to cutting-edge applications in mass timber, lignin, and silicones. They discuss how forest products are no longer limited to pulp or paper but are now integral to technologies such as batteries and car internals. The conversation sheds light on the dynamic changes and exciting future of the forestry and timber sectors, emphasizing the importance of staying informed and connected.

Lessons You’ll Learn:

Listeners will gain a comprehensive understanding of the forestry and arboriculture trends that are shaping the future of the industry. Jason Ross shares insights on the democratization of media in timber news, the significance of transparency in industry practices, and the role of social media in spreading awareness. The episode also explores the potential of AI in forestry, its benefits in fire prevention and monitoring, and the importance of responsible resource management. Through real-world examples and expert opinions, this episode provides valuable knowledge for professionals and enthusiasts alike, emphasizing the necessity of adaptability and continuous learning.

About Our Guest:

Jason Ross is a 15-year veteran in sustainability, marketing, and communication, with extensive experience in the timber and wood-based industries. As the publisher of Wood Central, Jason has played a pivotal role in shaping forestry and arboriculture trends, bringing valuable insights to the forefront of industry discussions. His passion for green buildings and sustainable practices has made him a sought-after speaker and advisor, having presented at numerous prestigious forums, including the United Nations and the Green Building Council of Australia. With a background as a Senior Manager and Director in a multinational business, Jason has honed his skills in stakeholder engagement, brand management, and supply chain management. His work with Responsible Wood and PEFC has driven significant growth in certified products across Australia and New Zealand.

Topics Covered

The episode covers a range of topics, with the latest innovations in green building materials, including the use of mass timber and other sustainable resources in construction. We explore the impact of digital media and technology on the industry, highlighting how platforms like Wood Central are transforming how timber news is shared and consumed. Jason delves into the importance of transparency and certification in the timber supply chain, emphasizing the role of programs like Responsible Wood and PEFC. Additionally, we examine the challenges and opportunities presented by the circular economy and its influence on forestry and arboriculture trends. From advancements in AI to the integration of blockchain technology, this episode provides a comprehensive look at the factors driving change in the timber and wood-based industries.

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About the Guest: Jason Ross– Shaping the Future of Timber with Forestry and Arboriculture Trends.

Episode Transcript

Mindy: Welcome to another episode of Timber Talks, the podcast, where we dive deep into the world of forestry and arboriculture. I’m Mindy, your host, and today we have a very special guest with us, Jason Ross, the publisher of Wood Central. Wood central is a leading platform dedicated to covering all aspects of the timber and wood based industries across every digital platform. Their mission is to inform, connect and inspire individuals and organizations within these industries. Welcome, Jason.

Jason Ross : Welcome, Andy. You couldn’t have said it better myself. All right.

Mindy: So let’s start by talking about the innovations and advancements in the timber and wood based industries. Jason, can you give us a brief overview of how the industry has evolved over the years?

Jason Ross :  absolutely. Well, where do you start? You know, like if you look at forest products, you’ve got, you know, the evolution of mass timber. I know, uh, Mindy in the North American market, you know, you really lead the world with the Europeans and mass timber at the moment. You’ve got, you know, lignin and silicones as well, looking at using different types of products. I think really where the industry is going is that we simply don’t know why the future products could be, you know, it’s no longer a lumber or an engineered wood product. It’s no longer pulp or paper. You know, forest products could end up in batteries. They could end up in,  you know, cars, car internals and all sorts of different things. It’s a really exciting time to be in the industry.

Mindy: Okay.  Can you share some specific examples of technological advancements that Wood Central has highlighted recently?

Jason Ross : Yes. Well,  so Wood Central is the biggest, uh, media platform for timber news in the world. Now,  look, the way what we really set out to do was to sort of take timber based news and bring it into the 20th and the 21st century, if you know what I mean. So it’s about sort of developing a distribution model where, you know, if people are scrolling on LinkedIn or they’re scrolling on Facebook, or they want to look on TikTok or YouTube, you know, as a younger audience,  you know, it’s there.  it’s also about getting timber news into Google News, Apple News and getting and actually sort of aligning to the narrative because, you know, if you think about it, you know, whether it’s a geopolitical conflict, you know, the Red sea, uh, crisis in the Suez Canal or it’s the war in Ukraine,  the order, everything is related back to forest based products.  and it’s really important to, I guess, sort of get that alignment,  and sort of try to broaden the audience as well, which is really important as part of our credo as well.

Mindy: Right.  Well, I can also see where transparency is a really important aspect to really across the board in any type of business. If you’re not transparent and something happens, you’re definitely going to be on the first page of Google. So it’s better to, you know, just put it out there.  so people understand what’s going on. And I think,, I’m a blogger, video blogger. I’ve been doing that for over 18 years. And so when I first started doing I normally specialize in ag type of topics, but I was amazed way back then because I used to teach ag what people actually knew,  compared to what people actually know now due to social media. So I think it’s a great thing to have wood products, wood information, uh, wood knowledge out there. So, you know, the lay person and the expert knows what’s going on.

Jason Ross : Well, it’s actually interesting. You know, you go into a supermarket, you know, and you and you might look for a paper based product, you might look on the package, you might see a little symbol, whether it’s an SFI symbol or a PFC symbol on a product, or it could be an FSC product as well. And what that really is really important from a transparency perspective, is to understand where that product comes from in the forest and to make sure it’s certified. And, you know, and that’s really what we’re about as well, is about communicating, you know, where the product comes from in the forest. You know how it works for the value chain. So that, you know, as consumers we can be far more informed.

Mindy: Right, right. And be more responsible with our dollar of how we want to spend what  types of programs we want to support. When I was in graduate school, there’s a big chicken producer, and, uh, they produce cheap chicken essentially. But their practice of how they treat farmers. How they treat the environment isn’t always up front. So in through this process I was in, everybody was appalled about how this chicken producer was destroying this community. But yet we were sitting in a barbecue place eating barbecue chicken that was bought from. And so, uh, it was really actually kind of funny because the proof that was leading this was a vegetarian, but I was like, you know, you can be appalled all you want about how the chickens are treated, how the environment is being treated. But you speak with your dollar and businesses aren’t going to change if you continue to support them with your dollars. So having that knowledge out and helping people understand it so they can make better choices with their dollar, whatever, whatever they believe in.  because it’s it, you know, we have greenwashing. We have organic produce, you know, that sometimes isn’t people don’t understand what organic produce actually means. So,  it’s always good to have that information out there, in my opinion, to let people make an educated decision as to what practices they want to support, because in the past we haven’t really had that level of transparency.  so people could, you know.

Jason Ross : We  at Wood Central, we, we like to say it’s a democratization of the media.  you know, if you look at five years ago, the only way that you could get information, you know, as a blogger, you’d understand this. To me, it was through blogs and blogs. You know, they you know, often blogs were shared through social media and it was really quite close. But the way that media is now trending, I actually think that we may see in the next five years a massive correction in the way media is presented. And we may actually see some of those blogs with information actually become the source of AI bots. So how we consume media is really changing, and we believe it’s a really great opportunity to actually start pushing out content and doing some investigative journalism around that content. So getting that information out there, because with Google News and Apple and so forth, now you can reach so many more audiences than what we could have in the past because less people are actually reading mainstream media.

Mindy: Right, right. Well, I think people are, you know, you have to read things with a grain of salt and decide for yourself, you know, is it true or is it fake media?  but people are wanting to know more information. And I think this is a great time for businesses and, you know, to start putting the truth out there,  about their practices and, and also in some ways, honing up or taking responsibility for mistakes they’ve made because technology, you know, we didn’t have the technology back then when these practices were standard. And now we have technology that says, you know, this standard practice has caused this problem and we need to course correct that, but taking responsibility for it also in the same stance.

Jason Ross : So and Mindy you know it’s an interesting point you raise there because if you look at the likes of blockchain, you know, particularly within forestry, you know blockchain is going to be quite revolutionary in terms of how it can be applied to tracking products through the source.  it’s a very topical information, very topical subject at the moment with the UDR, the environmental union, deforestation regulations,  where there’s a lot of,  there’s a lot of debate at the moment about how far that should go in terms of actually providing data from individual forest plots as well. So I think we’ve I think what’s exciting about our industry is that it touches all parts of the world, whether it’s how we we , the air that we breathe, the products that we buy and consume, the land that we live on.  It’s quite a fascinating industry.

Mindy:  So I have another question. So how has Wood Central contributed to spreading awareness about these innovations within the industry? So you’re on Instagram, you’re on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Are you on threads?

Jason Ross : We’ve veered with threads. But it’s interesting actually, because what we found is depending on what type of content we share,  will get more traction on different platforms. So if you’re if you’re writing a story about a mass timber building, you know,  there’s some incredible examples in the United States. You know, you look at what  wow, we’ve been doing in Oakland and of course, the Portland airport as well, which is,  which is about to come online, uh, which is really exciting.  That’s a really good story for LinkedIn. You’re dealing directly with engineers, you’re pushing your content through there. Whereas if you’re dealing with a story like,  I don’t know, we wrote a story yesterday about the Japanese yen, how they’re now actually using Himalayan forest, scrub, uh, shrub to actually to, to print money. And it’s quite an interesting story about how that process is. Now, that’s a story that would be probably more appropriate for, for example, Reddit.  so we actually are on Reddit as well, and all threads as well. So  it can vary like, you know, Tick Tock is a very good story for the Olympic Games.  the Paris Olympics is known as the Timber Games. So it’s about curating the right message for the right audience.  on the right platform.

Mindy: Right.  Are you all also on YouTube?

Jason Ross : Yes, we are.  YouTube’s YouTube’s an interesting one. We don’t have the same platform that you the visibility that you probably have on YouTube at the moment.  but we are on YouTube and it’s sort of it’s an interesting platform for our industry because, you know, we’ve got to find a way. You’ve got to capture the audience’s interest within about 15 seconds. Otherwise the algorithms won’t actually allow the content to, to to to spread further. So that’s probably a platform at the moment that we’re playing around a bit with. We’ve had a couple of viral videos on YouTube.  but it’s an area that we’re really looking at using. I use YouTube a lot to cut up shorter, shorter shorts and run those in stories and use it as third party media as well, which is quite interesting.

Mindy: Yeah, I, I spent 18 years creating videos for YouTube, so I yeah, I completely, I completely understand I, I work with some other businesses about their social social media manager and, and you know, understanding your demographic and, and that type of stuff. But YouTube is a unique social media platform because, yeah, we are pulled in so many directions. You’ve got to get that attention immediately or they’re going to move on to something else. I mean, it can be so valuable, but yet people just, you know, I don’t have the time to watch that type of thing. So,  yeah, yeah, YouTube is a unique, unique situation. I think. Instagram, well, I actually think Twitter is a unique one too, because you just got to be there at the right time. You know, Typekit.

Jason Ross : Is coming back. You know, you know, it’s interesting because we actually write 6 to 8 stories a day. So they’re fully indexed. So which means that they have to be unique. And you know, and really that’s about trying to capture the narrative of Google and Apple News. Right.  but Twitter is a fascinating platform because if you’re on the right time, at the right time, and with the right hashtags, you know, right place, right time, it can be great. I actually find Twitter is a great platform to share longer form audio only information as well. Better than YouTube,  and better than LinkedIn because for some reason,  it sort of it sort of goes further. And I think a lot of people have sort of jumped off Twitter over the last 2 or 3 years, but there’s still a lot of activity that’s actually happening on that platform. So if you know, for anyone listening today, uh, the listener,  I would really look at using Twitter to, to communicate your forest news,  because, you know, you can really target the subgroups and you can get a lot of reach really quickly.

Mindy: Right? I guess my challenge is that hitting that right time, the hashtags isn’t the problem, but it’s just hitting that. Yeah, right. Time to reach the right people. You know, that type of thing that I’m still I have clients, I do their,  Twitter and so I’m still doing that, but it’s just, you know, hitting the right time,  you know, but it’s it’s a game, you know, and the game changes sometimes, and you just aren’t aware of it or or why. You know why that type of change happened.  are you do you have a podcast?

Jason Ross : Well, we did have a podcast.  I find that I find that podcasting. So for me personally,  my real niche is instant news. So it’s around curating news, pushing news out. I do a lot of interviews that coincide with stories. I emcee and host conferences, and I put things like that for my type of platform. At the moment, a structured podcast doesn’t necessarily work, but I really love appearing on podcasts, and sometimes my stories are people reach out to me and say, well, we love that story on that particular topic. And,  we’d love to have you on there. And, you know, I find that my little niche in the ecosystem at the moment is that as opposed to actually hosting the podcasts, right.

Mindy: Uh, podcasts work sometimes podcasts don’t. I like I’m not an auditory learner, but I like the aspect of the podcast. You can just listen to it while you’re driving or whatever, or doing housework or, you know, whatever you’re doing, you can listen to it. So I was just curious if you all were had your little toe in that or.

Jason Ross : Yeah, you know, we’re sort of we’re sort of we jumped into it, but then we recalibrated. So we’re now looking at that to coincide with events coming up and some information around projects. Right. But what I find really interesting is that, you know, you can write, you can publish a podcast on Spotify or Apple,  or all different platforms, or you could put it on YouTube. Now, what I find interesting is that a lot more people will actually, if you do it correctly, they’ll look on it on the on the Spotify Apple links as opposed to YouTube. I guess people don’t actually like to physically see, but I don’t understand why there’s nothing wrong with looking at us today. But,  I think people like that aspect of just putting it on their earphones, going for a run, doing errands around the house.  I love, I love, I personally love podcasts.

Mindy: I like the, the, you know, having it on YouTube, having it on Spotify. I used to be an educator. So I’m all for, you know, do different types of presentations to address as many learning styles as possible, which increases your demographics. So I’m always, you know, not everybody,  learns by reading. And so the more you can provide that information in different ways, the larger the reach. So,  but looking towards the future, what are some of the emerging trends and upcoming innovations in the timber industry that you are most excited about?

Jason Ross :  that’s a good question. You know?  we wrote a story about this a few weeks ago looking at the because I guess my background is in the in the commercial construction industry.  so one of those ghastly evil people that dealt with a lot of steel in the past, but I’m sort of a I’m sort of a born again timber timber supporter.  but you know, what I’m very interested to see is how the world adjusts to a post Portland cement concrete world and how we can better optimize and utilize the timber stock that we have in the ground to actually get low carbon and net zero buildings and how we can develop our cities, particularly in the likes of India, Africa, Indonesia, the next wave of of major developments, because I think that the next 20 years, particularly if you look at the FAO with the fact that we do have a timber shortage around the world, it will be very interesting to see how,  some very sophisticated and clever companies are using forest fiber differently to get more efficient results.  and I think that, you know, whether it’s in the North American market or the European market or, heaven forbid, in the Australian market,  we’ve all got the same challenges, and that is to better utilize the forest stock that we have in the ground to get to where we need to get to. Well, I think.

Mindy: That’s, you know, really across the board, I think the idea that we have limited resources, you know, we need land to grow trees. But in North America, our land is just between,  increased property taxes for farmland, which is crazy to, uh, people not wanting to stay in the farming industry because, you know, as a small farmer, they can’t compete with subdivision development. I mean, there’s a competition between forest production, crop production and urban development. And so the more land that is eaten up for urban development, the less land we’re going to have to grow the things we need. And the more trees that are taken down is going to reduce the amount of timber. So I’m with you. I can see hitting a tipping point.  because I’m not really that much of an advocate of fake wood. Uh, you know, it has its purpose. I still like Mother Nature made stuff, but at least where I’m at, I see this, this, this tug going on, and it’s been going on for a long period of time,  between the urban development and and, uh, crops and trees, types of things.  I just hope we as a society come to terms with that and, you know, not have to. When I was a kid, there was a book written about you had like, we would go to zoos to see animals where you went to, like, a tree zoo to see trees because there were no trees left, but, you know, little patches of trees because it was all taken up. All the land was taken up. So hopefully,  people will start changing their ways and we can start really managing and getting the most out of the trees that we have.

Jason Ross : I’m going to annoy a few of our, uh, learned listeners that are very passionate about urban forestry. But,  there was an article that we published last week from the University of California in and Berkeley that looked at the fact that in downtown L.A., because they’ve planted the wrong type of trees, apparently in the cityscape in the city areas, it’s now actually absorbing the pollution. So even though they’ve had all these,  requirements over the last 15 years to reduce emissions through fuel and so forth, the trees are actually are actually sucking in the pollution and actually keeping it in as a blanket during warmer, warmer periods as time. So, you know, we’re learning about all these things as we go. And I think that, you know, as an industry and as a science, the sophisticated levels of sophistication are improving all the time., which is I think is very interesting.  So I think, you know, whether it’s, you know, how we deal with urban forestry, with the, with the urban heat effects or the,  the wood shortage as well for mass timber or, you know, carbon stocks with the carbon markets as well. We haven’t even spoken about the carbon markets yet. Right, right.  it’s there’s so much there’s so much to talk about. Right.

Mindy: And I think,  I was teaching a class for another client, and I had kind of a unique spin on on teaching these classes to senior citizens. But,  Johnny Appleseed, I don’t know if you know who Johnny Appleseed is, but he was a guy that went around North America distributing apple trees is kind of the gist of it. And,  it was in the 1800s and we were grafting back then, but Johnny Appleseed belonged to a religious order that felt that the grafting caused pain to trees, so all his apple trees were started from seed. But my point is, we’re learning about how trees communicate, how trees protect themselves, how they share resources through the root system. And,  as you said, we’re learning all the time, not only about our environment, but about the trees that share our environment.  so and and I’m with you on, on having urban, you know, urban forests.  you know, it drives me crazy in the community I live in, they call them tree lawns. We have these little bitty strips of grass, you know, sidewalk in the road. And, you know, we’re going to play in a tree there and it’s going to live there for 25 years. No it’s not, you know. So yeah. Or you know, Bradford Pears are big issue in North America and they’re everywhere. And  when I was in graduate school, they were doing research on like, uh, Japanese honeysuckle and bush, and it actually changes. Those are the quick learning plants, landscapers planting them everywhere. But it changes the ecosystem in the soil. And if you can take them out, but nothing will grow back in that space. So again, we’re learning more and more about our mistakes. We need to take responsibility and try to fix it. So,  but  what potential impacts do you foresee these innovations having on the industry and the environment? So,  you talked about, you know, learning more about the environment. Do you think I just as an example, do you think AI is going to have a large impact on the wood industry, or do you think this is just a fad?

Jason Ross : No, we Mindy, we actually wrote about this last year was one of our most popular stories for 2023. and that is the disruption of AI.  You know, often we think of AI. You know, I write a lot about, you know, prefabrication and the fact that AI is being used by architects and designers to design buildings and, and, and and modulate the, the construction process. But AI is now being used by forest growers as well, and foresters to actually plant seeds to prepare for,  fire seasons,  to monitor,  tree growth, etc..  I think forestry is going to be amongst the most industries most impacted by AI.  and I think it will be for the better.  it will allow us to better prepare for bushfires and wildfires in the North American market. It will help us fight those wildfires as well.  and it will help us recover and better optimize our lands as well. I’m all for AI, as long as they don’t take our jobs.

Mindy:Look, yeah, I was kind of on the fence on I. I can see how easy it could be manipulated to provide incorrect information.  yeah, but you always need that human touch to make sure that it’s, you know, correct type of thing. So. But it’s evolving. It’s like drones where I have four drones and drone technology since I bought my drones has just gone crazy.  and, you know, using sonograms on trees, that’s just amazing to me that they’re using that type of technology. So,  but yeah, I agree with go ahead. I’m sorry.

Jason Ross : I was gonna say this. I was gonna say sorry. There’s actually a company called Collective Crunch.  and they’re, and they’re doing some really interesting stuff with drones.   and and I,  and look, uh, I agree with you. I’m. When I first heard about I, I mean, because look, in my industry, in publishing and video journalism and, you know, we do video, as I said, we do audio, we do written,  there is a lot of issues with AI, particularly with robotic content generation. Mhm. But the great thing is at the moment with AI is that you can tell when something’s AI generated. Yeah, and I believe that’s going to be the case with forestry as well. You know, you still require the human touch, you know, like even that there’s driverless,  logging trucks now being invented in Europe, but it still needs to be controlled by someone. Mhm. It just means that instead of sitting in the truck itself, they may be sitting in an office or in a, in a like a control center doing the material.  we there is a balance that needs to happen.

Mindy: Right? I think it’s like, you know, when, when home computers first came out and then, you know, the internet and, and, you know, sort of like the pagers, then the cell phones type of thing.  I is not going anywhere. I was I had a couple of,  clients that just wanted I work, that’s all I want. And I was like, no, you know, that’s not what you’re paying me for. And I’ve kind of I’m not completely embraced that. I understand,  the reason behind it it’s time is is normally what I hear. It’s quicker to do that. But,  in some aspects it takes me longer if If I do something utilizing AI, because then I have to go back in and check it, and I if I had just wrote it out, I would have been checking it as I was writing it. But AI is not going anywhere, and I think from a scientific perspective,  it can save time and we may need to save time for, you know, whatever the situation may be. But,  I’ll give you I’ll give.

Jason Ross : You an example, Mindy. So, say that you’ve put together some research on a topic. You know, if you’ve put a white paper together or you’ve put a scholar paper together, if you are someone else that’s looking to find an answer, you might say,  you know, what was the temperature at this point at that point? Mhm. I think the value is that the AI will be able to capture the information that you’ve provided, and if it can verify that that is credible, which they can do, because you know, the, the search engines and the AI bots, they know when it’s generated by someone and not by a computer. Mhm. Because there are keys to doing that. If that means that that person can get your information that’s been verified and double checked faster, and it back links to the original source. We’ve had Wikipedia for 15 years now.

Mindy: Yes.

Jason Ross : And it hasn’t it. And you know, you can just go onto Wikipedia and change the page. You know, the great thing about AI is that they actually they actually provide that screen before it gets to you. Right.

Mindy: Well, I just unless it’s a tool, just like anything else. I just I’m an author of three books and just this idea. This idea. I’m just gonna put this topic in and let the computer write my book for me and take.

Jason Ross : No, no, that’s never going to happen.

Mindy: But,  I just, uh. Yeah, but it’s here to stay. It’s just something we have to learn to work with and evaluate and that type of stuff. So,  but as an educator, I’m still, you know what? You need to sit down and write that paper, you know?  yeah. Versus, you know, the way that AI has been used in the past. So. Yeah.  we.

Jason Ross : Yeah. Sorry.

Mindy: Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

Jason Ross : Well, I was going to say I’ve got an example of that. So we put an article, we put a series of articles together,  earlier this year looking at the Notre Dame restoration in Paris. Mhm.  so we wrote a series. It’s quite interesting story. You may or may note that they’ve effectively recreated the, the cathedral based on middle age construction practices. It’s fully PFC certified.  It’s the first historic site to be certified through a forest certification scheme, which is quite interesting. The AI bots from Google and Yahoo actually used our content to write the AI generated response. So this is what I’m saying, that as an industry, if we’re, you know, and obviously the AI bots verify that against because, you know, you backlink it to the New York Times, etc., etc.. But if you want to get your message out there and you and you are telling the truth, it’s a really powerful tool to get your truth to audiences quickly without having to go through an expensive PR person.  which I think is quite good. That’s what I meant by the democratization of media. I think that helps smaller industries like forestry, where we just can’t compete with people that have a lot of marketing spend expenditure, and we want to get our information across well.

Mindy: Periodically I check myself on social, you know, I type my name in and see what pops up and stuff. And,  I was I was kind of impressed. I had an AI prepared bio of me and I was like, I got so important. So it was kind of like, huh. You know, that’s interesting type of thing. So,  yeah, I’m still old school, I guess you could say. But, you know, I jumped. I jumped on blogging before blogging was cool. I jumped on freelancing before freelancing was cool. You know, I, I was telling businesses, you know, this is what you need to do. This is why you need to do it. You need blogs. You need a YouTube channel, a hyperlink of together. You know, that type of thing. So it’s just another tool in the toolbox that you know is the pros and cons. There’s pros and cons of the internet. There’s pros and cons of every single thing. And it’s just something that’s just going to have to be, you know, people are going to have to decide how they they feel, how businesses feel about using the I but I I’m in agreement with you. It’s um because I don’t have a lot of money for PR, so if I can have, you know, I do it for me. It’s wonderful, you know, type of thing. So how can professionals in the forestry and arboriculture field prepare for these changes and stay ahead of the curve? So what would be some recommendations that you would give some small, let’s say business owners as far as because, you know, every business needs to be online now. So that would be one thing I would say would be top priority. If they don’t have a website, they need to have one. What are some other suggestions?

Jason Ross : Well, I think, you know, you mentioned the website. You know, a lot of businesses in our industry still actually don’t have websites. You know, I,  it’s because my content goes around the world. I’ve got a lot of,  a lot of people, for example, in the Brazilian market. And they say that actually a lot of their traders actually are not on the internet, believe it or not.  and I think you need to be on the internet, but it’s not just about being on the internet. You do need to have you do need to have some content that’s running through the site.  and, you know, the beauty is, you know, if you look at LinkedIn and, and I say to people, if you do nothing else, have a LinkedIn page, you know, put some comments on a LinkedIn post every so often because Google actually now indexes LinkedIn posts as web pages. So if you want to just put some short form information out there,  you can actually get your information seen on, on,  on the Google and search engines just by posting on LinkedIn. But I do think that it’s not just enough and don’t be scared. So a lot of people that I come across, you know, in this part of the world, they might go, well, look, I like the idea of posting content on my site, or I like the idea of talking about something that’s really important, but it doesn’t sound perfect.

Jason Ross : Nothing’s ever perfect, you know? And at the end of the day, something is better than nothing. And I always say to people like, you know, and, you know, I find this for myself, you know, like, I might put a some content out into, into the, into the world, you know, whether it’s a newsletter I do every day or whether it’s on LinkedIn or whether it’s on Google News or whether it’s on YouTube or whatever it is, I put something out there, you know, I might actually correct it, you know, and that’s okay. You know, people often say to me, look, you know, what you’ve said is wrong here. And I said, well, that’s great. You’ve told me you’ve seen it. It means other people are probably seeing it. It means that I can make the change, and that means that we can correct the information. And I think that, you know, we often can overstate our importance. You know, what we’re doing is important. Everyone in the world is not going to see it. So if you if you’re doing something, it means that you can actually improve it. And once you once you take the leap and start, it becomes easy to do it again. And you actually a lot of people enjoy doing it.  and I think that’s really important because you’re building communities as well.

Mindy: Right? I think it it boosts people’s confidence to be able to share their knowledge.  I mean, I was I was fortunate when I started my journey with blogging and stuff like that that there weren’t, you know, blogging back then was used as diaries and stuff like that. And I just knew businesses and there were a few businesses that were, uh, utilizing blogs. But I’m with you. It’s better to put something out because you’re human and humans make mistakes. Then have analysis paralysis. And, you know, and this is a wonderful article, but I’m afraid to put it out there because there might be a mistake. And I have a friend that runs the New York Marathon, and I’m a runner. I run the Triple Crown of running in Louisville. And so just small talk. I asked him how he did it. The New York Marathon again. Just small talk. He knows I’m a runner. And he looked at me. We were at a at a Boy Scout camp out, and he looked at me and he said, well, what were you doing on, you know, the weekend of the New York Marathon? And I was really kind of taken back, you know, and he said, I did my best. How I finished doesn’t really matter. You know, I my goal was to cut off two minutes off my time and, and,  so you know, it understanding that we’re never going to put anything out there, perfectly understanding that there’s always going to be a negative Nancy somewhere about what you’ve written and just put it out there and do your best and, and correct it if there is a mistake and just move on.  but I deal with a lot of people who have that analysis paralysis. And I’m just like, just put it out there, you know? Yeah, it’ll be alright.

Jason Ross : It’s a lot. It’s live, it’s organic, it changes, you know, like especially if you’re just posting on a blog on your site, it doesn’t have to be timestamped. So if you want to put something on your site and you come back to it later on, that’s great.

Mindy: Right? Right. I mean, I just, you know, it frustrates me almost to a point. I’m just like, just, you know, just do it.  don’t be afraid of it. Uh, you know, I when I do when I started my journey, I always use my first name for a different reason. Not. Not in fear of a mistake, but a different reason. But I’m just, you know, people are skimming the internet and stuff like that, and if you do find you made a mistake, they probably don’t realize you made a mistake and just go with it type of thing, unless it’s something really drastic. But, you know, just information. I’m very much an information provider. I think businesses should provide a level of education to their clients. And yeah, it’s probably not the best professional move if you make a mistake on your area of expertise. But hey, we’re all human, you know, you’ve got to get that information out there or you’re just going to be left behind.

Jason Ross : So I was just going to say, Mindy, another important thing to for, uh, our learned listener is,  you know, I talk to a lot of people and they say, you know,  what? You know, what’s this thing about Facebook or LinkedIn? And how should we use it? You know, should we just post on our company accounts? Now, this is something that’s a bit controversial, but to get maximum reach with the way the algorithms now are, you really need to post it from your own profiles as well. If you’re a business owner, you should post it on your own profile as well as your company profile, and look at groups called subgroups. You know, because subgroups, you might find a group, you know, whether it’s login timber connection, that’s a very popular one in this industry, the mass timber construction LinkedIn group as well.  there are a number of agricultural groups as well on the LinkedIn groups,  that you can actually post your content into. And people do respond and they’re not negative. They’ll actually respond and they’ll give you support and they’ll actually give you some insight into where you can improve or where you’ve done a good thing on your blog as well. And that can be really,  I found personally myself that’s that’s been very useful for me.  as I’ve, I’ve learned the process.

Mindy: Right. Well, you know, and having, having a peer review or, you know, something like that to, to help some somebody who, you know, may have some questions or is just starting into this. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’ve worked with business people that, you know, have written this content and it’s still on their computer four months later because they’re afraid of posting it, you know, because they’re afraid of a mistake. And that’s, that’s just paralyzing. Why waste the time is kind of my philosophy on that. So, um. What common issues do professionals in the industry face and what solutions would you suggest?

Jason Ross :  Now that’s a good question. It depends where you are in the world. So in this part of the world, in Australia, the biggest issue facing the industry at the moment is wood shortage.  which is probably a problem everywhere, to be honest with you. Yeah.  a lot of the native forests are being locked up.  the governments are taking over. I know Joe Biden is looking at a policy for old growth forests. They’re already locked up here, but he’s now the state or native forests are also being closed. So you’re finding a lot of timber being imported from America?  actually. So, uh, American oak, white and red oak is now being imported into Australia as a substitute for Australian hardwoods. And it’s being used in, in doors and so forward.  So log shortages is a big issue.  just getting labor is a big issue.  getting young people into the industry is really challenging.  I know that, uh, Mindy, you’re involved with forest degrees.

Mindy: Degree, but I have a background in forestry also, so. Yeah.

Jason Ross : Okay, gotcha. But,  you know, getting younger people into,  into actually, industry is a challenge.  and, you know, whether it’s the pathway of the academic pathway of a forestry degree or it’s getting apprentices into the manufacturing process as well.  it is a challenge that,  you know, I know that the UK has a problem with it. The US has a problem. Australia. New Zealand has a problem. Most of the Western world has a problem.  but if we don’t have labor to build, to manufacture, to grow, then we don’t have we don’t have a resource.  and I think that’s the that’s the biggest challenge that facing in the next decade, as well as the log shortage, of course.

Mindy: Unfortunately, like in AG, in my case, it has had a negative, uh, image for many years. So, uh, a person who wasn’t raised on a family farm, you know, but wants to farm there. They’re going into something else because farming is dirty and, um. Yeah, unfortunately. But I had a client. I wrote the competencies for carpentry skills for Iowa State because they want to revamp, they want to restart their journeyman program where a junior in high school would start in the program. And then,  when they graduate, they would have one more year of apprenticeship and then they would be a journeyman, which is a very nice paying job. So I do see, at least in North America, some,  little flashes of hope of getting young people interested in these fields that have have not always been the most positive thing, because people don’t consider them as professions. You know, in North America they’re considered vocations, not professions. So,  hopefully that will continue to change.  and I see the change because not everybody can afford to go to college. So. Yeah, but you can’t I mean, I was when the carpentry,  apprenticeship program and Iowa State when the senior graduated and they were making it, was paid. They were making 75% of what a journeyed carpenter would make. And that’s a really good salary for an 18 year old, you know. Yeah. So,  you know.

Jason Ross : It’s interesting because it’s a real I mean, carpentry, I mean, carpentry is a great industry to get involved with because it exposes you to so much of the value chain, you know. You know, whether it’s whether it’s actually, you know, in the woodworking industry, whether it’s actually in the construction industry, whether it’s in the fit out industry,  you get a you basically get a 360 degree view of the whole construction process.  but, you know, I’m interested to see what’s going to happen in the next 20 years because, you know, this I’ve really had probably I’m 36 now and I’ve probably had four degrees. I’ve had four careers, so who knows, who knows where the next? You know, the next ten or 15 or 20 years will take us. and that’s what we were talking about before with I, you know, like, I mean, you know, what we consider a carpenter today could be different in the future. Or, what we consider a blogger, a humble blogger could be different. journalist could be different.  a business owner could be different as well. Right.  Which I think is quite interesting.

Mindy: Well, I did some work for NASA in my early career, and,  you know, I give talks and, you know, seeds will travel. I used to grow plants that went up into seeds that went up into the International Space Station, and they brought them back. And I grew them and tested them. And because we can’t take every medicine with us, it’s just not possible. But we can take seeds, we can go back to herbalism and go that route. But, you know, we don’t like you said in 20 years we could have a colony on Mars, and you’re going to have to have buildings in some form or fashion.  you know, I’m really excited about the possibilities of, of some changes, some positive changes of. Of what? Like you said, the job description. What is a carpenter in 20 years from now? What is a blog or what’s a teacher? Because education has changed. Crazy.  you know, I, I get I had another person I was interviewing and I asked them if they were using virtual reality to show clients the tree damage, and they were like, we never thought of that. And I was like, well, you know, virtual reality is not cheap. But, you know, that would be another option to to show your point with your client. But I think I I’m not even going to stretch it 20 years. I’m going to say in five years from now, the world that we know is going to be so different because of technology and advancements and, you know, etc., that we’re just not even going to recognize it. We can’t even wrap our mind around what it’s going to be like.

Jason Ross : So for example, is, you know, look at, you know, five years ago was 2019, you know, you think about how much the world’s changed in five years, whether it’s I everything right. It’s insane. I find that every year now it is three years fast. It’s the world spins 3 or 4 years faster every year in terms of innovation and change. Right? I mean that we’ve we’ve we’re just we’re about to launch a rocket made out of timber or a satellite made out of timber into space.

Mindy: Wow. Wow.

Jason Ross : So, you know, it’s amazing how,  how things are changing. And that’s just in this industry. I mean, there is more to there is, of course, more to this than just this industry.

Mindy: Right, right. It’s just, you know. Yeah. The human imagination is is crazy. But, uh, yeah, I, I’m, I’m curious. I’m not going to send it to 20 years. I’m going to say five years. What our world’s going to be like.  so hopefully we won’t have to go to parks to just see trees. Hopefully we’ll be able to, you know, I, you know, look out your window and see a tree. So finally, what advice would you give to someone who is just starting out in in the timber and wood based industries? What would be your top three?

Jason Ross : Sure, I would say the first thing is to keep your options open because you never you really never know what’s around the corner. You could start,  in a particular part of the industry and end up in a completely different part of the industry. I personally know many people that start in, for example, they might start in forestry as a as a forestry assistant, and they end up running a pulp, a multi-billion dollar pulp company. It does happen. And it’s very, very it’s a very open ended market. Second, I would say is never doubt yourself, but always listen to advice.  In this industry, there’s a lot of very, very capable, experienced people that have been there and done it. That’s not to say that what they’ve done in the past is the right thing to do to go forward, but I personally believe that you learn a lot based on shared experience of others. So instead of making the mistakes yourself, you’re best to to benefit from the mistakes made from others.  and I think that in this industry, people are very, very happy to help. And the third I would say is,  we need more of you convince your friends to join as well, because it’s the only industry I know that you could start. You could get a secondment from, you know, Australia to Canada to help in the wildfires. You could then you could then end up in, in Eastern Europe or in Central Europe looking at,  the, the spruce there.  you could end up working on a eucalyptus project in China.  it is truly a global industry. And of course, you could go to the American market and look at some of the massive pulp plants you’ve got in the South as well, or the mass timber,  manufacturing procedure processes that you’ve got in Oregon as well. So,  I think it’s the most global,  open minded, interesting, changing industry.

Mindy: Right? Right. Yeah, I totally I think forestry and ag are right, you know. Right. They’re kind of side by side in that.  and there’s, there’s many what a lot of people don’t realize. If you have a forestry degree, that doesn’t mean you’re stomping around in the forest all day long in the rain, heat. And, you know, there’s so many different angles that you can take with having a forestry background or a science background or an ag background or, you know, even,  a journalistic background helping companies involved in the forestry industry. But,  it’s not one dimensional anymore. Like it it used to be,  you know, people used to get a, uh, take a job, and that’s the job they have for the next 20 years, and it’s just not the way it is now.  so thank you so much, Jason, for sharing your insights with us today. It’s been a fascinating discussion, and I’m sure our listeners have gained a lot from it. To our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to Timber Talks for more insightful discussions on forestry and arboriculture. Don’t forget to check out Wood Central for the latest news and resources in the timber industry. Until next time, this is Mindy signing off. So, do you have any questions for me?

Jason Ross : No. You did a really good job.

Mindy:  I try, you kept.

Jason Ross : You kept. You kept me in check, which was really good. And, uh, you kept me and you didn’t. You didn’t. I don’t know if you raised any questions that weren’t on the script, but you did a really good job navigating around.

Mindy: Well, I did answer a few. I I’ve learned a lot in just talking to different people, the different technologies.  so I always kind of find it. You were talking about sort of the mentoring thing when I,  I’ll be 60 this year. So way, way back when.  I just I was going to be a vet and when anyway, that was my game plan, but I had to go to college. So I went to a rural school, and I, we had an ag program, and I went to my counselor and I said,  I want to take AG. And she said, no, Mindy, you can’t. Girls take home ec and boys take shop. And I was like, what? You know what? So, you know, I went to anyway, I was the first female that my ag department at my high school had to let in because somebody wasn’t my parents. Somebody had sued,  for the right for their daughter to be an AG. So, you know, I, I went to college, and I kept hearing about. You need a mentor. You need a mentor. Well, I, you know, I went to through Pre-vet didn’t get into vet school, changed my major, went into ag, searched and searched for a mentor, and I was like, I can’t, I can’t find him.

Mindy: I’m just going to wing it and just go for it and do my best. So,  even today I was at an event with my son’s Boy Scout troop, and I saw this dad with an FFA shirt on, and I walked up and I said,  your your child’s in FFA. And he was like, yeah, is your is your child in FFA? And I said, no, he goes to a city school. And  the man just looked at me and I said, I’m an ag teacher. And his jaw just dropped. I said, you’ve never met a female Aggie, have you? And we just kind of. I kind of laughed about it. He was just kind of disgruntled about it. But, you know, I,  I like the fact about getting mentors and a few people I’ve talked about. I’m from their discussions. I’m seeing more women coming into this field. So I’m really excited about that. I have a granddaughter that I have a granddaughter that lives construction site. She loves the boom we when she sees a boom, it’s like Jamal. They go around and around. So. And her name is Rosie. And I was like, Rosie’s going to have her own construction site on Mars, you know, type of thing. So, you know, so, you know, it’s.

Jason Ross : It’s with the ag stuff,  you know, you think about all the big money is now. I mean, I didn’t mention this, but I mean, a lot of the stuff that we write about is the transactions of some of these forest estates and timberland estates and the agricultural estates. There is so much money that’s being piled into agriculture now. I’m surprised that it’s not more fashionable because you can make you know, I’m not people aren’t driven by money, I’m not driven by money. But there’s a lot of opportunities in agriculture more than what is in a lot of other. And you don’t you don’t even have to live in the country, even though who wouldn’t want to to actually to be involved?

Mindy: Well, I have an A degree. I have my three science and three different minors. I have a master’s degree.  and when I went and got my master’s, my, my advisor said, Mindy, you’re on on this end of the spectrum and the Masters is, you know, is conflicting, but there is a lot of opportunity for the standard definition of what a farmer is. Or, you know, even with me working with farmers and not being on the farm type of thing, there’s still unfortunately, that illusion that, you know, women, women have an ulterior motive. I’ve been faced with that numerous times. You you’re doing this so you can marry that rich farmer. Yeah. No. No type of thing. But, you know, between. No, no, between genetics and,  I’m a I’m not an advocate of GMOs, but I do like genetics, you know, plant breeding.  but I.

Jason Ross : Talk about that today. We could, we could we could have mentioned that in the podcast, if you want. That’s a very controversial topic. Yeah. Gmos.

Mindy: Yeah.  yeah, I I’m not. Yeah, yeah. I was eating corn yesterday going we at on the farm with my dad and I said we all know what this is right. It’s a GMO. We just kind of laughed about it. But yes, it’s very controversial.  and I was all for it when I was at Purdue, because that was the Purdue was involved. And gene splicing lysine, which is a limiting amino acid in the human diet to sell corn to Africa to aid and,  food shortages over there. And I was all for that. But, you know, I think we need to kind of step back and reconsider that possibly, you know, type of thing. But, but.

Jason Ross : And the other thing I was going to mention on the interview, and I’m glad we put I put a story up today about all the all the Russian plywood that’s entering America. And because it’s so, because it’s that’s very controversial,  at the moment is the because, because they don’t actually have the US haven’t actually got any sanctions on timber from Russia and a lot of people don’t know that. Wow.  it’s one of the only industries that that,  that doesn’t have sanctions,  between us and Russia. And it’s one of the only timber sanctions that isn’t actually us is one of the only countries that doesn’t have this timber sanction against the Russians.

Mindy: That is interesting. Well, I had a person I did a podcast with that. Uh, he was doing,  not gene splicing, but it was,  can I I’m just going to call it what we call it an AG. It was controlled breeding for certain tree species, and he was having a house built, and he happened to look at some timber. And it had it was cheaper for the builder to have timber brought in from Costa Rica than it was to buy timber in the US. And I was like, that’s just crazy, you know that? That’s just crazy. But and it’s.

Jason Ross : Crazy because then the Americans are now the US are now exporting timber to Mexico.

Mindy: Right? Right.

Jason Ross : And for some reason it’s cheaper for them to export it to Mexico than it is to sell it in America.

Mindy: Right? Right. I mean, again, I think that’s that transparency. I think with as evil as the internet can be, I think that the internet does.  I think part of the our political climate in North America has been spared because of all this information that’s on the internet. You still have to decide if you believe it or not, you know?  do you believe in unicorns as an example? But,  you know, I think it’s, you know, certain important people’s dirty laundry is being posted on the internet, whether you agree with it or not type of thing. And,  so I think because of that, the positive move is it’s going to,  allow people to really kind of see and contemplate about how things work, whether you’re talking about timber being exported, whether you’re talking about food being, you know, that type of thing, what’s actually going on, and does it really make any sense to do that? So.

Jason Ross :  yeah, it’s a challenge because,  you know, I’ve got a, I’ve got another I’ve got a site that I operate called Off Site Central and I’ve got one called Design Central. So because a lot of my side of things is very much at the end user of the products as well as I’ve got a lot of forestry, but I’ve also got a lot of the end user.  and you know, there’s a lot of debate about, you know, circularity of timber versus steel. And, you know, I try not to get into the whole timber versus steel thing because, you know, steel is actually starting to to their act together with the green steel as well. So which is a good thing.  And you need. You need steel and timber together.  and I think that, you know, as an industry, this industry, and it’s, I don’t know if it’s similar in AG, but they can get two one eyed and they think,  it’s timber or nothing. It’s not timber or nothing. It’s how we can best use what we have because there’s not enough timber to waste it.

Mindy: Right. Well, that’s an ag. We have this. This drives me right crazy. But like, every fast food restaurant has a particular, like, chicken breast size. And if the chicken breast is too small, it’s discarded. If it’s too large, it’s discarded. And it’s discarded. A lot of times it’s not used for something else. And there’s so much egg waste that could be used. You know, we have we’re one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but yet we still have people that are going hungry. And, you know, an orange that isn’t the size of a baseball is still edible, but it’s not turned into juice. It’s just disposed of because it doesn’t fit this ideal model of what an orange will be like. So I’m hoping that through information that people will start seeing us because,  but that whole process has been going on for a long period of time. I personally don’t have an issue. If there’s a lot of meat hanging over my bun, I think I’m getting more of a value. But there’s a whole food science to that. Kind of like the Goldilocks syndrome. And if it doesn’t fit that pattern, the consumer won’t buy it. So,  but just like you said, utilizing our resources more efficiently and getting the most we can out of our trees, you know, we need to do the same thing in AG. We need to do a better job than what we have in the past.

Jason Ross :  if you’re saying that, you know, the ag sector is far more advanced than the timber sector, the forestry sector, if the ag sector really has to get a move on, what does that say about the forestry sector? Well, I.

Mindy: Just think well, I think both industries need to, to maximize their, their crop, whatever that may be. But that’s right. But just because well, my dad had four water maples topped and three of them didn’t make it, but they have,  they’re very valuable wood now and the past it my dad would have burned it, but it’s got decorative insect holes in it. And so it’s very valuable now to soft wood. But my point is, you know, he’s going to have these trees. Well, my husband’s going to take the trees down and we’re going to mill them out and, you know, utilize that wood and more decorative things. And but in the past we would have just burned the wood because it would have been considered waste wood and in a bag, instead of throwing those apples that aren’t perfect and using them for hog feed, we can turn them into apple juice. We can, you know, give them to a senior citizen center. We can, you know, that type of thing.  because there’s so much there are so much waste that is thrown away because it doesn’t fit that perfect model that you know, we could solve, in my opinion, come pretty close to solving hunger, the hunger issue in North America. If we just took that produce that wasn’t perfect and repurposed it versus throwing it in the landfill. So,  yes.

Jason Ross : Well, well, Mindy, I think I will retire to sleep. I’ll just go. I’ll just walk back to my office at home. But as I said, I. I really appreciate this and thank you for having me on. I had a really good time. No problem. I promise you, I’ve got to send my headshot, which I will do, but I can guarantee you without a shadow of a doubt, you will get promotion.

Mindy: Okay. All right. Well, it’s not promoting me. I can tell.

Jason Ross : You of all of all your guests. I can tell you I’m probably the one that can guarantee you that you’ll get promotion.

Mindy: Well, like I said, this isn’t my project. It’s somebody else’s. But,  it’s been. I’m just.

Jason Ross : You could pass that on. You could pass that on. You can just go.  look, the good thing is, Jason said that we’ll get promotion.

Mindy: I will pass it on. So I will talk to you later. Thanks.

Jason Ross : Bye. Have a lovely rest of your Tuesday. You too. Or Wednesday for me now?

Mindy: By Wednesday? Yeah. Talk to you later.