We’ve been talking with Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) Vice President of Agricultural Services Charlie O’Brien about AG CONNECT Expo since it was first announced at Ag Media Summit in July 2008.
Now we are starting the second AG CONNECT Expo, which will be held every other year after this year, and Charlie says the show has really come together this year to be what they envisioned. “It’s certainly a larger footprint than we had last year,” Charlie says. “It feels like people really stepped it up a little bit more this year and it’s really looking good on the show floor this year.”
Charlie says it worked out very well for them to team up with American Farm Bureau, as well as other groups such as the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, to have co-located events. “That’s kind of been the strategy all along is to have key meetings associated with it and then have the trade show and the educational events as part of the trade show. We’re trying to be as efficient as we can with everybody’s time.”
Listen to my interview with Charlie here: Charlie O'Brien
This afternoon John Deere held an AG CONNECT Expo media tour of their exhibit while providing an overview of their latest product offerings. I spoke with John Deere’s Tim Merrett who says the show is a great place to display new products like their new Interim 
The trade show floor is now open on preview day at AG CONNECT Expo. We had quite a crowd waiting to come in which bodes well for the exhibitors here. The show opens up for general admission on Saturday and runs through Monday afternoon.
Preview day for the second 
In this week’s ZimmCast we’re actually going to review some statistics for ZimmComm online activity in 2010. Cindy joins me and shares some of the numbers we put together. Let’s just say we’ve done a lot of agriblogging and farm podcasting!