Life is short. We want our lives to count. We hope to make a constructive difference and build a better world. To do this in watershed management, as in most things, we need amplifiers.

Early century electrical genius Nikola Tesla conducted some fabulous experiments. Many had to do with using resonant frequencies and feedback to amplify raw power. In one of these, he used the entire Earth as a conductor--it's a nearly perfect one. He timed exactly how long a pulse of electricity, injected into the ground, took to go around the globe and return; about 0.8 seconds. Then he put a quick, high-voltage shot of current into a ground rod connected to Earth. Each time it came back, he'd take that power and add another shot, and put it back into Earth, at just the right time, like pushing a swing. After a few days of this, so much power had built up at the injection point that dazzling lightning bolts of electricity were shooting 180 feet high!. Tesla used a conductor, a connection and careful timing to set up a self-reinforcing feedback loop--an amplifier. (Don't try this at home; Tesla disrupted electrical systems over huge areas with this trick).

Amplifiers come in many forms. They help you be heard and get things done. We all have access to systems that can amplify. It can be surprising how many things work as amplifiers. Tools like microscopes and computers have obvious functions in increasing our capabilities. Yet we can also think of other things as amplifiers. Companies, agencies and organizations, collaboration, and even our personal work styles can be thought of as amplifiers. Becoming aware of what we have at our fingertips and which amplifiers we can develop can help us to increase our effectiveness.

How do amplifiers work? Most amplifiers, like Tesla's fantastic lightning machine, and Mother Nature herself, use conductors, connections and timing to create self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms (SRFMs).

Nature is full of conductors, connections and SRFMs. Topsoil formation is a good example. As soil complexity and fertility builds, it grows more biomass, which contributes more organic matter, which builds more complexity and fertility, thus more biomass, and so on. The connections are incredibly intricate and the timing is mostly long timescales. Self reinforcing feedback can go in a degrading direction too. Gullies get worse because of self reinforcing negative feedback. Watershed restoration is usually most effective when it disconnects and thus interrupts negative feedback loops, and taps into nature's many positive SRFMs.

Most anything we see exists because conductors are connected with the right timing to create and maintain SRFMs. Stable patterns reflect dynamic integrity. Systemic integrity causes energy flow within the bounds of the system, which tends to preserve its integrity. SRFMs are ubiquitous in nature.

There are many sorts of amplifiers we can identify in our work. A few I've noticed include, institutional, collaborative, memetic and personal.

Institutional amplifiers abound for watershedders. For many of us, the company, school, organization or agency that we "work for" is an amplifier; it works for us too. The company gives us a variety of capabilities that we don't have working on our own. Do you teach? Your students are an amplifier for you. The watershed councils forming all over the place are connection machines, sizzling with potential.

Collaborative amplifiers are crucial for good watershed management these days. Connecting with good thinkers and designers, especially those who don't think like you, can launch your perspectives and work to new levels. Someone who really knows the land, or how people work best, or how to get things done is a conductor. People connected together in the right ways, making diverse contributions, with common purpose can lead to lightning bolts of enthusiasm and effectiveness. There's danger too, worth recognizing, where negative groupthink--a SRFM--sets in.

Memes are self-amplifying ideas. Memes are ideas that are contagious, and thus spread -- they are like genes, but replicate through the connected minds of people. They persist and mutate. "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty," dreamed up by Ann Herbert, is now planet-wide. "Nature bats last" has that memetic quality. The idea of watersheds has become a meme, in a fuzzy sort of way. This one needs more emphasis and shape from those who understand watershed process, and that's where we come in. This memetic door is wide open now.

Things that people already understand or believe is a conductor. If you connect to a known concept or belief, you can build on it, maybe inducing a SRFM. Educators tell us that if you are introducing a new idea, you must to attach it to a familiar one if you are to get it across. Time the pulse and add a new one.

The recent surge in watershed awareness is something that is ripe for amplifying. There's something started here, the conductivity is high. Good connections, timed well, could keep this exciting trend in human thinking sparking. Where are the key places to push?

The WWWeb has opened some remarkable new amplifier potential. Our modest WMC webserver has responded to requests from 49 different countries. What a conductor and connector.

Personal Amplifiers: Doing your work with devotion is an amplifier. This is just a personal belief on my part. I can't prove it, but I recall a great sage saying that, "Work done without devotion is like sand, shifting and unstable. Work done with devotion will endure." Yes.

Feeling good about what you do is an amplifier. Environmental work can lead to despair. Don't let it. Listen to the rain, watch the water flow and do what you can. Pursue meaning in your life that is not dependant on outcomes you cannot control. Feel good about your work and the amplifiers will come to you, because you are a conductor.

There's inner amplification that can happen too. Exposing yourself to great thinkers will balloon your mind. Remember what Earl Ruby said: "Those who don't read have no advantage over those who can't."

There's power in conflict, which is so common in our business. Mostly this power gets dissipated into waste heat, or it creates negative SRFMs, and we end up with some really weird and extreme positions that people actually come to believe, because the conflict amplifies them. Yet, when the power of conflict is connected with finesse, encouraging cycles of reciprocity, creating mutual respect and success, the resulting lightning bolts can forge diamonds; strong, durable and beautiful.

So, if you are out to make a change, consider your amplifiers. Notice where the conductors are, connect them, and time things to set up reinforcing loops. Amp up.