In honor of Andy Markwart, former editor of The Furrow, beloved member of the Quasimojo Band and AAEA, who passed away earlier this year, John Deere is creating and supporting the Andy Markwart Horizon Award. The idea is to create a fund over the next couple years from which scholarships can be awarded to students so they can attend either the Ag Media Summit or an international event like the IFAJ Congress.
Here at the AMS you can buy raffle tickets to show your support for the program.
I wish I had the camera Lisa Perrin, Holstein Association USA, has. On our river cruise we had lots of opportunity for taking some great photos.
Sometimes you get your picture taken, taking a picture. I’ve got lots more from the cruise and plan to have an end-of-the-event online photo album for all of them.
I was just minding my own business when Larry Dreiling, High Plains Journal, comes up and says, “Give me $20.” Say what?
I guess PIF just happens. For $20 I got a nice pack of note cards to support AAEA’s Professional Improvement Foundation.
You can get yours from any board member or through the AAEA office.
It’s a good thing we had a big boat for our dinner cruise. I don’t know how many people we had on board but it seemed like a lot.
Attendence looks excellent at this year’s Ag Media Summit. Our kickoff event was a cruise on board the Portland Spirit.
We travelled for hours and enjoyed great food, and wonderful fellowship.
What do you do when it’s about 100 degrees out and there’s a water fountain you can get into? You jump into it.
That’s what these kids (mostly kids) were doing in downtown Portland on Sunday afternoon. We had to walk past this fountain on our way to the Portland Spirit riverboat for our dinner cruise.
The kids were getting into the fountain as you can see here: 
Fountain Fun (15 sec wmv)
Moving up to gold sponsorship this year at the Agricultural Media Summit is BASF. Gold means sponsoring a lot of things. In this week’s program I interviewed BASF Communications Manager, Joy Watson, to learn what they’re doing and why.
Besides the Media Room, Joy says they’re sponsoring a reception and have a booth in the Info Expo. To help get the word out to ag media, the latest episode of the BASF Ag Media Update (podcast) was an audio invitation to visit the media room and stop by their booth and talk about the latest products from BASF. I heard the invitation on my iPod!
Joy also talks about their media-focused website, AgMediaCentral.
Pictured here outside the Media Room is (l-r) Me, Dan Muys, Quarry Communications and Joy Watson. The room has already seen some activity as things get closer to the kickoff here in Portland.
Listen here: 
ZimmCast 77 (11 min 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.
An industrial equipment manufacturer in Manitoba expects to save about 50 thousand dollars a year in heating costs by switching from natural gas to waste wheat straw fuel.
In 1999, Vidir Machine replaced the coal fired heating system at its Arborg, Manitoba manufacturing plant with a three million BTU wheat straw fueled heating system and the company is now installing a smaller one million BTU unit at its manufacturing plant at Morris.
The greenhouse gas displacement system, developed by Vidir Biomass Systems, relies on primary combustion followed by secondary combustion to get a complete burn. Read More
Welcome to the Ag Media Summit. Registration is open.
I heard that it’s already about 100 degrees outside. This evening we’ll be on a river cruise aboard the Portland Spirit. Maybe it’ll be cooler on the river or they will have air conditioning!
I’m sure I’ll get some good photos tonight and post them tomorrow.
It’s a beautiful day here in Portland. I got out early to run along the Willamette River walk.
I didn’t know they were having a major race or I would have signed up. It’s the Cascade Run Off.
I have absolutely no idea what the significance of the stag is that sits in the middle of a street a couple of blocks from the river. It’s an elk stag and it’s in what’s called Chapman’s Square.
This is my creative picture of the day. I walked back by after Church and took a midday picture of this dude.
If you attend my agriblogging and farm podcasting workshop on Monday morning here at the Ag Media Summit you’ll find out about “The Long Tail.” If you’re not going to be here then go out and purchase “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson. You might also start reading his blog.
Here’s a place where you can get a pretty good description of the Long Tail. One way of looking at it is “products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough.” Examples being Amazon and Netflix. If you don’t think this idea applies to agriculture then we need to talk.
I got my copy on the way to the airport today at a Barnes & Noble in Independence, MO. I haven’t made it very far but I know how important this book is to anyone involved in marketing in today’s world. This includes you agrimarketing professionals! Even the introduction is filled with some great stuff and I’m going to find time to bring some excerpts to you like:
The great thing about broadcast is that it can bring one show to millions of people with unmatchable efficiency. But it can’t do the opposite – bring a million shows to one person each. Yet that is exactly what the Internet does so well.
Increasingly, the mass market is turning into a mass of niches.
Seen broadly, it’s clear that the story of the Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance – what happens when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture start to disappear and everything becomes available to everyone.
