Getting to Know Janice Person aka JPlovesCOTTON

Thanks for stopping by and wondering enough about this site to check out the page about me. My name is Janice Person but thanks to my using JPlovesCOTTON on some social media channels, a lot of folks call me jp these days. It is the shorthand I use to sign things with and I’m the one who chose to use initials on social media so I’m good with the abbreviated ID. My blog is about my passions and I love celebrating people who rock.

My Passions

When folks ask me to introduce myself, I usually think of my passions — photography, travel and agriculture. Putting all those things together its understandable that differences in culture are intriguing to me…. I can spend a lot of time soaking up things. It’s almost always a colorful adventure!

Photography

My first “real” job that gave me a regular paycheck was a way to get my first SLR (a Pentax 1000). I carried that camera everywhere shooting things that were everyday objects or new sights. Today I can have several cameras on me at once — shooting with my Canon DSLRs, a Canon point and shoot, and more. My mobile phone has long been my camera too! I post photos a lot of weeks in the photo category and routinely post on Instagram as @JPlovesCOTTON. I share those photos through a widget in the side bar (down and to the right) and once a week or so, I post them here on the blog. Monthly I’m trying to put together videos…. I’m already looking forward to the year end and seeing the year blow past in a video. I should mention virtually every photo on the site was taken by me too…. I love pictures!

Travel

I got the travel bug early in life…. probably from the first trip I remember making with my family. Camping in the Smoky Mountains, a trip to DisneyWorld and visiting Miami! Trips like that open one’s eyes and I’ve been looking for ways to get that feeling again & again ever since! I’ve been to a lot of countries overseas that makes people wonder how I picked them…. first time out of the US was to the Soviet Union, since then I’ve been to Japan, Turkey, Italy, Malaysia, India, China, England, Israel, The Philippines, The Netherlands and Belgium. I’ve also done some great roadtrips in the US doing an Oregon-Central California drive and from St. Louis to Montana on another! I post on this to the travel category and have a page for some of my big trips. 🙂

Agriculture

I’m a city girl. Born and raised. From generations of city folks. Interesting since I now have such a passion for agriculture. I’m really lucky in that I didn’t need to let go of any of my passions for the city! But I added farming while doing an internship with a family friend during college. He gave me a chance to meet my first cotton farmer and I realized I wanted to work with folks I really liked being around! Cotton communications became the major thrust of my career & the crop a major passion. I’ve written a lot of blog posts about cotton and have quite a few linked through my cotton 101 series.

When I began getting active in social media though, it opened up the possibility of daily conversations with farmers of all sorts and I’ve been able to visit a bunch of them! Usually when I visit, I take time to share something here. Some that come to mind are Chris who showed me around my first hog farm, the Wagners who let me work cattle, my brother who runs his organic coop, cotton farmer Jay Hardwick in Louisiana, the almond trees Brent tends, or dairy farmers Dino Giacomazzi, Ray Prock and Annie Link who have shown me their farms.

My Background & This Blog

I’ve lived in a variety of places — grew up in Memphis, went to college in Enid, Oklahoma before returning to Memphis for grad school. Once I was able to get a reasonable paycheck, I took a job in suburban New York (White Plains if you know the area) for four years before making a really dramatic shift and moving to the Mississippi Delta.  I had a chance to live in Memphis again for four years (seriously, that was awesome) before making a move to St. Louis in 2011.

I found blogging by accident and yet, it was seemingly always meant to be. I just didn’t know what it was at the time.

This is just my blog. Ideas that come to mind. I do this blog because I love sharing stories of the colorful world I get to experience. and the rockin’ people I get to meet. I’ve been lucky enough to find a spot in the world where I work with great people and topics everyday and have for a very long time. That gives me a different perspective sometimes. The information I’m posting here is based on things I generally find interesting to share with family and friends. The opinions here are my own (except on the rare occasions when I post something from a guest). Feel free to agree or disagree. I just want a place to capture some things as they run through my mind and to create a forum to discuss those things. There is more along this line on the “Rules/What Flies Here” page.

My current job is one that lets me pair my enthusiasm for agriculture & communications. And my personal involvement with social media led to my being more involved in social media for Monsanto. But this blog is my personal ideas shaped by travel experiences, people I meet, my camera’s catching something and a couple of decades of working in agriculture. I usually write a few posts over the weekend to share during the coming week. For work things. you can occasionally catch me writing for the Monsanto blog Beyond the Rows as well as quite a few other communications efforts there.

If you would like to know about the way I view and approach social media, you may want to list to the podcast interview Truffle Media’s John Blue did or listen to my presentation from 140conf small town. If you’d like to get in touch, there are lots of ways to do that on the contact page.

Your Role Here, Should You Accept It

If you have interests in the kinds of things I write about, I hope you’ll come to the blog often and that you will share your thoughts through commenting. I’ve learned so much from other people contributing their ideas and providing their experience. That makes the blog so much richer than if only I talk. You can help me know what to write next.  I’d love to know if you have questions about cotton or farming in general. Or maybe you are into travel and thinking about going somewhere I’ve been, what do you need to know? And if you have something cotton in your world that stands out, I’d love a cotton guest post on it (examples from other readers)! As you read something… is there something I missed?