Dear @memberdirectory,
I don’t know how many of you know me, but I am a big supporter of Growers Network principals.
I think as members of a professional association we have responsibilities to the whole community as members.
We have three big groupings of members, Vendors, Professional Growers, and Amateur Home Growers.
Each of the above groups needs to be supported by each other.
The vendors and suppliers are a wealth of information. We would not be growing without a healthy supply chain. Vendors remember each grow operation is different. On size does not fill all. Also, the amateur growers need your best information. Not everything is about a sale. Traditional horticulture, know the home hobby growers are big money if you sell professional products, for home use. Peter fertilizer is a great example. The general perpose Peter professional peatlite special in 50 lbs bags is the same as the 1/2 lbs tub that a home gardener can buy. WR Grace double there fertilizer sales when they started selling there professional line in amateur sizes, I one year. Think about this.
Amateur growers or home hobbiest, I love you guys. I as a professional learn more about growing great plants, from home growers than professional growers. When I want a picture of a perfectly grown specimen plant. I turn to you guys. I feel as a professional floricultuerist, I have the obligation to supply you the best hard science I can. This will make you better growers. But, you home hobbiest need to remember, that things you can do in a home grow, do not scale in comercal production. They just don’t. Sorry.
Professional growers, we need to start acting like professionals. There are no magic recipes to grow a plant. Period. There are lagitimate differces in our individual growing styles. But, secrets or intellectual property, I am calling you out. Science is science. If we, as responsible professionals, want the reputation and the total quality of all our grows to be consistent week over week and year over year, we need to start acting like our big brothers in floricultue and horticulture. We need to openly share knowledge in an organized way. Think school team projects, they were designed to have us work together. Until, we can get the schools and government officials to help us be better growers we are going to have to self organize. In both an industry lobby which we have, https://thecannabisindustry.org
I think membership is prohibitely expensive. They need more classifications. At a minimum our lobby group should accept amateur supporters, collage students and professors at $50. But, we need a professional growers association like AmericanHort this organization is two completely separate companies. One is the lobby arm, you can opt in or opt out of precipitating in support. Some years I did not support, ideas the lobbying arm promoted. I have always supported, the educational nonprofit company, I have supported it since college, first as a student member and later as a professional. I have spoken as both a student and a professional at the annual short course and conference.
The responsibilities of @nick and The outstanding GN team is the give us a place to be social and they try hard to disseminate great information look at Industry insites of GN. This is world class information, but it is today’s version of a trade magazine crossed with a social network.
Why am I spending all this time writing this post? I feel we need need a nonprofit organization to support the production and education of any interested party. This organization will not advertise or make money. Think of it a a reference library and seminar room. GN is our social and business heart for cannabis. But we don’t have a place where government employees, especially extension agents, perticipate legally. Government employees can not be a member of GN legally. We need the smart plant people, they work for or accept federal government money. This imposes real restriction on there activities as professionals.
We need a nonprofit organization. I am creating a nonprofit with the help of my family foundation. www.pot-thoughts.info will be this location. It will directly link to GN, if nick allows for remote authentication. I expect to link to some of the great conversations on GN. But, about 1/2 my time on GN is repeating the same answer over and over. That was fine when I was trying to understand the needs of cannabis as an industry. But, now we need part 2. If an amateur what reliable recommendations on how to grow at home like a professional, we have a place to point them too. Second, we need a place to peer review ideas, products and understand what we know and we don’t know. In my other life, if I had a hard problem, I could tern to my professional associations and ask for suggestions from peers and educators. They always responded as I did when some asked something that I am a subject mater expert. You can even find a lot of my work search for ebkayes. (It does not work on google 
, I spent a lot of money, 5 figures, delisting myself from 3 big search engines.)
Pot Thoughts will be such a place. It is not a replacement for Growers Network!
Mission statement.
A Professional open source community to explore cannabis related research and development for professionals in floriculture.
The Cannabis Think Tank for professional floriculturist and related sciences.
If you want to volunteer for a non-profit organization that focus is hard scince of grower Volunteer . The site is a work in progress, it will have an official launch date of April 1, 2019. Some behind the sences work needs to be accomplished.
How can you help now? Look at the new site and tell me what you want? The future board of directors will make these disisions. My hope is Big Nick, will be on the board of directors. If anyone from the cannabis lobby will return an email without me spending $5k to be a member. PM me. Or email me at Info@pot-thoughts.info should reach me and the future administration. I purchased the domain for 20 years and have setup a perpetual renewal through my familys educational trust. They will do the annual audit and federal and state paperwork for as long as the organization is going. Currently we are working on the bylaws of a new 501c. With the government closed your guess is as good as mine, when I will have the EIN for the new company. My guess is I will spend less than $1500 a year in administration fees. This is not my first rodeo or fifties 
. I have done this type of work full time since closing my greenhouses in 1996, for a big fortune 50 global technology company. If you worked for a corporation, your company used at least one of our services. .
Have a great weekend. I have fun things to do, need to fix my unified messaging system. Work flow is fun.
Warm regards
From those voices in my head
Ethan Kayes
Check out the only CV I will provide A short history of Ethan B Kayes
cc @Hunter, @Farmer_Dan, @FarmerK, @tom4, @growernick, @fdousty, @eyal, @microbial_farmer, @neville , @MK3_Pharms and big @nick
