This happy looking group is the staff of Southeast AgNet, the company putting on Citrus Expo for the first time this year. It’s not the first time the Expo has been held but it’s the first time this company has managed it. It came along with their purchase of Citrus Industry Magazine. Pictured are: (l to r) Robin Loftin, Lee McCoy, Betty Sanders, Gary Cooper, Katherine Bush, Randall Weiseman, Carole McKenzie. Not pictured but here also are Sherry Fisher and Ernie Neff.

Southeast AgNet is a traditional media company that’s beginning to explore the new media waters. Southeast AgNet, the parent company is a farm radio network in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. They’ve long been a client of ours and owner Gary Cooper was our business partner once upon a time when we lived in Florida. Cindy produces a number of daily reports for the network. But now they own a magazine and have a large trade show.

And in addition to that they have a blog which they’re unveiling this week at AgNet Online. They’re currently directing people to it through their company homepage but it is a stand alone website. This is their start into the new media world and they’ve got lots of plans for it. I put the site together for them not long ago and have been working with them on training and development. This week they had me down to “blog” the Citrus Expo and our next step is to start podcasting. There’s no question that we’re going to see more and more of this as time goes on. I’m happy to see my former business partner, now client, taking the lead in the southeast!

You can see the Citrus Expo blogging we’ve been doing. Today we did 20 posts that contain pictures, stories and interviews. I got about 17 of them up and am working closely with Randall who will probably be doing more of this for them as time goes on.