Cathy Erickson To Manage O&B Des Moines

Chuck Zimmerman

Cathy EricksonOsborn & Barr Communications has a new managing director for its Des Moines office.

Cathy will serve as the strategic lead for Iowa-based accounts, and will manage the overall productivity and growth of the Osborn & Barr Iowa and Upper Midwest operations.

“Cathy brings to the agency a wealth of marketing knowledge and understanding of the Iowa, ag and rural marketplaces,” said O&B Senior Vice President Hugh Whaley. “Her event marketing expertise will be a great addition to our service offering for current and potential clients.”

Prior to joining O&B, Cathy served as director of marketing and events at Clear Channel Radio in Iowa, where she gained extensive management, promotion, media relations and public relations experience with clients including John Deere, Iowa Soybean Association, Owens Corning and Petco. Most notably, she produced the WHO Radio Great Iowa Tractor Ride from its inception through its ten-year anniversary, Under her direction the event grew to immediately sell out every year, draw 27 sponsors annually, and was replicated by Cathy in multiple Clear Channel markets.

Agencies

iPhone Drawing At NAMA Booth

Chuck Zimmerman

iPhone Drawing at ZimmComm New Media/Truffle Media Networks NAMA BoothHere’s a reason to go to the NAMA Convention and stop by the ZimmComm New Media/Truffle Media Network Booth. How would you like to be one of the first people to get an iPhone?

We’re conducting a drawing from our NAMA Convention Trade Show booth for an iPhone.

The winner will receive their phone as soon as they’re available. A service plan is not being included. We’ll conduct the drawing at the conclusion of the trade show but the winner doesn’t have to be present and I’ll announce it right here.

So if you want to find out more about how to include new media options in your communications plan, you know where to go. Hey, you just might be a winner!

NAMA

E Energy Adams Live Webcam

Chuck Zimmerman

E Energy Adams WebcamAfter putting a link to E Energy Adams in my last ZimmCast post I took a closer look at their website and found out I could take a closer look at their ethanol plant under construction. If you’ve ever wanted to watch an ethanol plant being built, well now you can.

They’ve got a very cool live webcam set up which allows you to control it (pan, tilt, zoom, etc.). This is a still photo from just a couple minutes ago. You have two choices of what kind of stream you want to view, Motion Jpeg or Mpeg-4. You can watch as the crews are hard at work. If more than one person is on at the same time it puts you into a queue so you wait your turn. Then you’ve got about a minute before your time’s up.

I’ve been discussion webcams for ag applications with a number of people lately and thought you might be interested in seeing this one.

Agribusiness, Ethanol

Ethanol, EPIC and Indy

Chuck Zimmerman

ZimmCast-112 - Ethanol at IndyThis past weekend I got to spend some time in the home state attending the XM Satellite Radio Indy 300. It was historic because it was the first race powered by 100% ethanol fuel. No matter who won, ethanol won. In fact, if you checked out the coverage on ESPN2 they called it the Ethanol Indy 300.

While I was there I interviewed Bobby Rahal, Rahal-Letterman Racing, for his thoughts just before the race kicked off. You can hear him in this week’s program. Of course he might have had a few choice words after the race too since one of his driver’s, Jeff Simmons, spun out in lap 93. I also spoke with Jack Alderman, Chairman of E Energy Adams, an ethanol plant under construction in Adams, NE and a brand new member of EPIC, my coverage sponsor. Jack says they joined EPIC because the industry needs a promotional champion and small ethanol plants can’t do it themselves.

BTW. This is my first ZimmCast fully edited in Garage Band on the Mac. I did it using 4 tracks of audio and after getting some more self-training time in. I think I’m getting more acclimated to to the Mac world everyday.

You can download and listen to the ZimmCast here: Listen To ZimmCastZimmCast 112 (8 min MP3)

Or listen to this week’s ZimmCast right now:

zimmcast112-3-28-07.mp3

The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired which you can subscribe to using the link in our sidebar. You can also subscribe in iTunes.

Audio, Ethanol, ZimmCast

IFAJ Star Prize Contest

Chuck Zimmerman

IFAJ Star PrizeIf you’re an agricultural photographer then it’s time to enter the IFAJ Star Prize contest.

The entries are now open. You can find out more information by visiting the IFAJ website or emailing Katharina Seuser.

The competition closes May 1, 2007. The IFAJ Star Prize is sponsored by John Deere.

IFAJ

Growing Goodness Online Community

Chuck Zimmerman

Growing GoodnessHere’s a new website/community called Growing Goodness or the Farmers Market Channel. It looks like supporters of Farm Aid are behind it since when you open the site you get a Farm Aid YouTube video clip. If you’re looking for a good example of an online community you might want to check it out. There are a number of links to organic farm websites for example. You can visit their Vlog here.

Growing Goodness™ is a community-based broadband TV network for viewers with extremely passionate interests—beyond what cable television can provide.

Our mission is to create more public awareness and active interest
in our local farmers markets.

• Explore the U.S. farmers market world
• Generate farmers market awareness and active interest
• Increase understanding of community affairs and events
• Foster lifelong skills for good living
• Spotlight excellence in goodness

Farmers Market Channel™
Hosted by the community members our Farmers Market Channel™ spotlights farmers, locally grown produce and neighborhood farmers markets.

Post Update: I heard from Keith Gengler who originally brought the site to my attention that my story has one little correction as follows: Thanks for the blog story (http://agwired.com/2007/03/27/growing-goodness-online-community/) every little bit helps. Farm Aid is not behind this project not as of yet anyway… we are simply reporting on their most amazing and generous contributions. Our PRIMETIME content changes frequently. Growing Goodness is a grass-based movement and is powered by the Growing Goodness community as seen listed and linked throughout the site.

Ag Groups, Farming

Beach on a Phone

Chuck Zimmerman

Ft. Lauderdale BeachThis picture shows you why I miss Florida. This is Ft. Lauderdale beach on Sunday where I went for a power walk in the sand.

That’s one of the reasons I didn’t post much after Saturday’s late night, rain-delayed, IRL race.

Sometimes you just need a little relaxation. All I had with me was my Palm Treo but it does pretty good in sunlight.

Uncategorized

ABEF Online Auction Nears Deadline

Chuck Zimmerman

ABEFThere’s only one more day left in the NAMA Agribusiness Educational Foundation (ABEF) online media package auction. If you haven’t looked at it, now’s the time.

I think it’s interesting that all the media packages are print with the one exception of an NAFB News Service donation. Don’t we have any farm broadcasters willing to submit a schedule to support the ABEF?

Thank you for your interest in the On-line ABEF Silent Auction. The On-line auction includes media packages and service items only. All other items donated to the Silent Auction, including art, wearables, sports, entertainment, logo items, etc. will be sold at the onsite Silent Auction in conjunction with the 2007 Agri-Marketing Conference & Trade Show, April 11-13, in Dallas.

All proceeds from the Silent Auction support the NAMA Student Careers Program which involves 37 collegiate chapters across the U.S. This program provides scholarships and the Student Marketing Competition in conjunction with the Agri-Marketing Conference, and the Outstanding Student Chapter and Advisor awards.

To view the media and service auction items click on view by “Company” or by “Media Type” on the left. Then click on the item of interest to you in the list. A full description of the item will appear in this window. Click on the “Show Bids” button to view all of the bids on this item. Click on the “Place Bid” button to make a bid on the item. You will receive an e-mail confirmation of your bid.

NAMA

20 Years of Colossal Pork BBQ

Chuck Zimmerman

Great Pork BarbeqlossalThere’s been a lot of years of BBQ pork goodness at World Pork Expo. This year the Great Pork BarbeQlossal will celebrate a milestone.

The Pork Checkoff’s 20th annual Great Pork BarbeQlossal contest is the Saturday of World Pork Expo, which runs June 7-9 in Des Moines, Iowa. This annual contest highlights barbeque techniques from across America.

“More than 90 teams are expected to compete in this year’s Great Pork BarbeQlossal contest,” said Jay Foushee, a pork producer from Roxboro, N.C. “To celebrate 20 years, we are going to recognize all the past BarbeQlossal winners and invite them back to compete again. We have yet to have a repeat winner.”

Due to popular demand, the Big Green Egg scramble competition is back. On Friday evening, six selected teams will be provided with a mystery basket that includes a mystery pork cut. The teams will grill on a Big Green Egg grill and compete for the grand prize of a Big Green Egg grill.

For the Checkoff’s Great Pork BarbeQlossal contest, teams will highlight grilling and barbeque techniques in at least one of the four cooking categories: Whole hog; shoulder; loin/loin end and ribs. In order to earn grand champion honors and a share of the $37,000 in cash and prizes, contestants must cook a shoulder, loin/loin end, ribs and an entire hog with a dressed weight of 45 pounds or more cooked while in one piece or in two halves.

Ag Groups, Pork

Mac Conversion Update

Chuck Zimmerman

AppleHello from South Florida. This has been my first trip with the Macbook Pro and I thought it would provide a good context for an update on my conversion experience. First of all, I thought that in a week or so with the new box I was pretty well prepared for this but it has been a challenge. When you’re on location doing “live” posting of images, video and audio you’ve got to be able to edit, upload and post fast. Almost as fast as say an Indy car at full throttle.

My biggest challenge has been audio editing. The built-in Garage Band software isn’t quite as intuitive as I thought and then there’s the file conversion factor. I start with an MP3 file and need to end with an MP3 file. To use Garage Band I have to convert the file to edit it, then convert it back to post it. I don’t like that. I’ve also found the conversion process a hassle since there are so many settings in each program to deal with. I was using iTunes to do the converting and found out that I have two different iTunes libraries on my hard drive. I have no idea why. So I downloaded the free audio editing software, Audacity. Then I found out it needs an extra MP3 plugin with I had trouble finding and installing. It took me 30 minutes to figure out how to download/install/use the software and this was done in a working newsroom with high performance race cars screaming by outside. I’ve also found some compatibility issues between the MP3 files created in Audacity and some other programs. So, I’m still working on this issue.

For image editing I’m using Photoshop Elements and that works great as I mentioned before. For video, I only shot one little video clip but editing it with iMovie HD was a snap. Very cool tool. It uploaded to YouTube and works just fine. The only thing was I was missing some kind of little plugin for Quicktime that took me about 45 minutes to find and download. My little Casio Exilim shoots .avi files and all I could get to start with was a white screen with audio until I found this little plugin through an online user forum. Works great now though.

So there you have it. I made it through my first road test with the Mac and survived. Now my last issue besides the audio editing thing is being able to use my Sprint broadband account with the Mac. I think I know the answer to it but I haven’t got it taken care of yet.

Uncategorized