Cattlemen’s Beef Board COO, Monte Reese talks about why they decided to blog the convention in an interview I conducted with him this afternoon. He starts out providing an overview of the convention as it relates to the Beef Checkoff.
You can listen to my interview with Monte here: 
Monte Reese Interview (3MB MP3 file)
I interviewed Jay Truitt, NCBA Vice President of Government Affiars, (pictured on left) about the issues affecting cattlemen.
Jay talks about issues like the environment, foreign trade and offers his ideas on the resolutions we may see passed here by the end of the meeting.
You can listen to my interview with Jay here: Jay Truitt Interview (3MB MP3 File)
As I was wandering around I ran into the National Beef Ambassador Team. The overall winner and the 2006 National Beef Ambassador is Amanda Nolz from Mitchell, SD. I interviewed Amanda about the program. She describes the competition and what she and the team of ambassadors will be doing throughout the year. She has her own cattle and discusses how the work she’s doing will benefit all cattlemen. The program is sponsored by the Beef Checkoff.
You can listen to my interview with Amada here: Amanda Nolz Interview (2MB MP3 file)
Although it is early in the week, there are meetings already in progress for the early birds. This is the NCBA Allied Industry Council and New Product Council getting together to hear the latest. These meetings are all very open.
While they’re here I guess they get a look ahead at next year and get the opportunity to sign up for the trade show.
Next year’s convention will be in Nashville.
Registration is light this afternoon as cattle producers begin showing up and checking in.
I’m sure these folks will be out eating a good steak this evening. I had to check on the restaurant I ate at last night. It’s Sullivan’s Steakhouse. I highly recommend it. They’re located at 1754 Wazee St. but call for reservations – 303-295-2664.
The Denver Convention Center is the where all the activity will take place this week for the Cattle Industry Convention and Trade Show. They’ve put up some pretty strange artwork around the outside like this huge blue bear that’s peeking into the windows. No one I’ve talked with understands the significance of the bear. I guess it’s just “art.”
It’s still pretty quiet here today. I’m checked into the media room and arranging for some late afternoon interviews which I’ll have posted by this evening.
Here’s my home for the week. Got in this afternoon and had a long blog training session with one of our clients. It’s not public yet but will be soon. Then we went to supper and ate one of the best steaks I’ve had in a long time. You sure better be able to get a good steak here this week.
Today at the Cattle Industry Convention there wasn’t a lot of activity. I did a little wandering around this evening to walk off the steak. I probably won’t have much to offer until tomorrow afternoon though. I’ve got a morning follow up blog training session before heading over to the convention center to check on the activities.
If you’re coming out it’s easy to get around thanks to the Schering-Plough Shuttle service. I’m sure I’ll be using it.
It sure seems like the ZimmComm blog announcements are coming out hot and heavy lately. There’s still more to come too. Today we were able to announce one of our latest projects – the National Biodiesel Conference blog. This site was built for the National Biodiesel Board and I’ll be blogging the conference on it as well as right here on AgWired. I’m pretty sure Cindy will be reporting on activities from the conference on DomesticFuel as well.
“Because there is so much happening at this conference, we were looking for a way to provide information not only to interested parties who are unable to attend the conference, but also for those who are attending and can’t make it to everything,” said National Biodiesel Board CEO Joe Jobe.
I’m very excited to be working with the NBB. They’re doing some exciting stuff and we’re going to bring it all to the blogosphere. Besides the blog though we’ve also set up a podcast series. You can subscribe to it now with this url: http://zimmcomm.biz/nbb/nbb-podcast.xml. There’s an introductory interview already in the series and I’ll be posting new interviews as I get them at the conference next week. In addition, I’ll be recording a live XM Radio broadcast at the end of the conference featuring guest Willie Nelson. It will round out the podcast series.
So as Willie says, I’m “on the road again.”
I know I already did a program with audio from Tim Ganschow. But that was using excerpts from a speech he gave. Last week I got to sit down with him and conduct a more informal interview and ask questions about how rural broadband access will affect agricultural marketing. In this week’s program Tim reviews the current status of rural broadband internet access and talks about what he calls the “pent up demand” that exists on the part of farmers who want to utilize it for the benefit of their agricultural operation.
You can listen to this week’s ZimmCast here: 
The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired which you can subscribe to using the link in our sidebar. You can also now find the ZimmCast on CoolCast Radio or subscribe in iTunes.
It’s time once again for the Cattle Industry Convention. This week I’ll feature on-site coverage here on AgWired. But in addition to that I’ll also be blogging on the Cattlemen’s Beef Board blog. This first ever effort to use a new media option to more openly communicate Beef Checkoff information to cattle producers should be interesting. I encourage you to visit and let me know what you think.
We’ve created individual pages for each organizational committee that contain the meeting agenda and minutes from the last committee meeting. Like regular posts, these pages also have a comment feature. We are inviting producers to comment and pose questions, ideas and suggestions. They have already started to do so.
I will offer some information in follow up after the conference is over because this seems to be an idea that would have application to many other organizations.
