Blogging From iPad

Chuck Zimmerman

Chuck and CindyI’m just playing with my iPad. Got my camera connection kit which includes a USB dock connector as well as an SD memory card dock connector. So I experimented with connecting my compact flash card reader and it works!

Since my Nikon uses compact flash I can now download pics from it to my iPad and edit them with Photogene, upload to Flickr (iPhone version, no iPad version yet) and then add to my post. I’m not using the WordPress app though. It’s not ready yet as I already found out. I’m just logged in via the iPad Safari browser.

Now if I can just figure out an easy way to link to an audio file I’ve edited on here. I’ve got the Caster audio editing app but haven’t figured out how to get that file to a web url. The one added below is the test file I emailed to myself and added from my Mac.

Uncategorized

New Mexico Wins Student NAMA Competition

Cindy Zimmerman

The Aggies of New Mexico State University were the winners of the student NAMA competition this year. This is the second time the Aggies have won the top honors, but it has been awhile – so they were celebrating big time!

Other top winners in the student NAMA awards included Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, which took first place for Outstanding Student Chapter; and Iowa State University, which received first place and $3000 for their chapter as the John Deere Signature Award winners; and Mike Gustafson regained his title as “Hard Ass” judge of the year – three times in the past four years!

Curt Blades of Successful Farming was honored as outgoing NAMA Careers chair for his years of working with the student NAMA chapters. He was presented with an engraved beer stein for his heroic efforts!

Congrats to all the winners!

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the 2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference
is sponsored by: Successful Farming. They know.

NAMA

Successful Farming Has Customer Insight

Chuck Zimmerman

Successful Farming TeamAgricultural media and marketing is a team sport. Here is the Successful Farming team in the Agri-Marketing Conference Connection Point. Believe me when I say it’s not easy getting them all together and I know we were still missing a few. I’ll let you guess who. These folks are constantly on the go.

One of the team members I spoke with during the conference was Scott Mortimer, Publisher, Successful Farming. He is included in the photo. Successful Farming partnered with us again this year to provide coverage of the event.

I asked Scott what their support of NAMA means to them. He says it is very important to the future of the industry and they contribute more than just dollars but staff support as well. He says it this way, “We not only support NAMA with our pocketbook but our people.”

In light of the changes in communications technology Scott says the company continues to work on customer insight to understand what the needs of their readers and agribusiness partners are and then developing solutions around that. They do this via market research which really helps drive their business. This includes multiple Successful Farming Market Research Panels. They have new research available now which you can obtain by contacting them.

You can listen to my interview with Scott below.

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the 2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference
is sponsored by: Successful Farming. They know.

Audio, NAMA

AGCO Blog

Chuck Zimmerman

You learn things at a NAMA convention. I ran into Sue Otten, AGCO, and learned that they now have a blog.

Could Sue (right) and Jamy Johnson look happier over the fact that they’re now blogging for AGCO?

I’m Sue and we’re thrilled to launch AGCO’s blog. Agriculture is a strong community-oriented industry and a perfect fit for social media. Farmers are not competitive, but quick to help each other. I have early memories of lots of neighbors helping build our cattle shed. Today’s Facebook-YouTube-Blogger sites are becoming the modern-day equivalent of helping neighbors. Farmers visiting these sites help extend agriculture knowledge across the worldwide landscape, offering a helping hand of advice, information, pictures, comments, experiences to global neighbors.

Uncategorized

NAMA Recovery

Chuck Zimmerman

Like a lot of people, we’re in NAMA recovery mode. Catching up on email, unpacking. You know what its like.

I’m still learning how to use my iPad. Using it for this post btw. I think I’ve got all my photos and interviews archived now. Time to work on some new posts! I just got the adapter that allows me to connect to my camera or connect an sd card. I’ll be using it this weekend and will let you know how that goes.

National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the 2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference
is sponsored by: Successful Farming. They know.

NAMA

Leading Chapter Leaders

Chuck Zimmerman

NAMA Chapter LeadersChapter leaders attending the NAMA convention get some special motivation and training. This year one of people doing the training was Luann Pisarik, J. L. Farmakis (left). I’m just guessing by all the road signs in the room that they were navigating road blocks to get to their destination.

Luann says they had a varied group and their goal was to provide a networking opportunity to discuss common challenges. The theme was to “look at the road signs.” She says “everyone drives” and they hope to help these leaders reach their goal. She says chapter membership and getting people to meetings is a common concern.

You can listen to my interview with Luann below.

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the 2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference
is sponsored by: Successful Farming. They know.

Audio, NAMA, Uncategorized

NAMA 2010 Marketer of the Year

Cindy Zimmerman

Stephanie LiskaWith all the focus on new media and new ways of marketing, the winner of this year’s NAMA Marketer of the Year is one who uses the oldest method of marketing known to man, and the one that still works the best – word of mouth.

Stephanie Liska, co-founder of Beck Ag, grew up on a farm in Iowa and is married to an agronomist, so she knows agriculture. “Word of mouth is not knew to agriculture or to business,” she says. “Purdue University has validated that the most influential person that a grower or a veterinarian or someone in our industry looks to to make a decision on what they are going to use or recommend is their peers.”

Stephanie has been involved in NAMA since she was a student at Iowa State University and was chairman of the NAMA conference last year. She also credits her faith and her husband for supporting her with the business.

Listen to an interview with Stephanie in the player below.

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the 2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference
is sponsored by: Successful Farming. They know.

Audio, NAMA

ZimmComm Booth Drawing Winners

Chuck Zimmerman

Sara SimsAt this year’s NAMA Connection Point we gave away a Barnes & Noble Nook eReader and a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder.

Here’s Cindy with Sara Sims, Valmont Irrigation, who won the Nook. She said it’s another gadget her daughter can teach her how to use.

We also drew Kathryn Tokarz, Penn State University, for the digital audio recorder and will get it to her this morning.

We saw a lot of good friends and clients once again during the Connection Point and would still recommend companies consider participating next year. It has always been well worth it in our opinion.

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the 2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference
is sponsored by: Successful Farming. They know.

NAMA

Cindy Gives John The Bird

Chuck Zimmerman

John Walter Successful FarmingWe all know that John Walter is a social media superstar. Now he has his very own Twitter Bird. Cindy presented John with Ollie the Twitterbird at the end of the NAMA Connection Point trade show.

Cindy found the birds online several weeks ago and we brought some along to decorate our booth. After drawing for our main prizes we also drew names for the birds. So now we can say we’ve given John “the bird.”

John is editor of Successful Farming’s Agriculture.com and our sponsor for AgWired coverage of the NAMA Convention.

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the 2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference
is sponsored by: Successful Farming. They know.

NAMA

NAMA Agribusiness Leader of the Year

Chuck Zimmerman

David SeehusenNow that the NAMA Connection Point is over maybe I can find some time to get caught up on my posts. The attendance here is tremendous and the activity level has been at an all time high.

We honored an outstanding leader in agribusiness, David Seehusen, Land ‘O Lakes, with NAMA’s highest honor, the Agribusiness Leader of the Year Award. David has made significant contributions to the industry and made a really fantastic Earth Day speech which I will be adding to this post as soon as I get a copy of it. Dave included a lot of statistics about food production comparing today to years past. He made a great point of saying how new technology can continue to increase food production to feed a growing world population but only if farmers are allowed to use it.

You can now listen to David’s speech below.

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the 2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference
is sponsored by: Successful Farming. They know.

NAMA