National Beef Ambassador Team Onsite

Chuck Zimmerman

Cattle Industry Convention 8As 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: Audio File Amanda Nolz Interview (2MB MP3 file)

Audio, Beef, Cattle Industry Conference

Early Committee Meeting

Chuck Zimmerman

Cattle Industry Convention 6Although 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.

Cattle Industry Convention 7While 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.

Cattle Industry Conference

We’re Bearly Started At The CIC

Chuck Zimmerman

Cattle Industry Convention 3The 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.

Cattle Industry Conference

Checking Out The Lay of the Land

Chuck Zimmerman

Cattle Industry Convention 1Here’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.

Cattle Industry Convention 2If 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.

Cattle Industry Conference

National Biodiesel Conference Blog Announced

Chuck Zimmerman

National Biodiesel BoardIt 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.”

Ag Groups

Ag Marketing Needs Rural Broadband

Chuck Zimmerman

ZimmCast53-Tim GanschowI 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: Download MP3 File

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.

Agribusiness, Internet

Blogging From The Cattle Industry Convention

Chuck Zimmerman

2006 Cattle Industry ConventionIt’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.

Ag Groups

Retired Journalism Prof Shows Arrogance

Chuck Zimmerman

AAEA ByLineIn the latest issue of the AAEA Byline (you’ve got to be a member to read it) there’s an article on ethics called “Beware The Ethics Swamp.” It’s written by Elaine Shein. I think this is a great subject to do a series of articles on. Perhaps we should invite articles on the topic from multiple authors so we get different perspectives. Why? Because it’s so easy to get a one-sided view of an issue from one source. In this article Elaine writes about a presentation from a Nick Russell, who is apparently a retired professor of journalism ethics in Canada.

I get the impression that Russell is one of those traditional journalist guys who got to the station too late to get on the clue train. For example, here’s a list of the problem areas in journalistic ethics he mentioned in a talk last fall. “Topics included polls, freebie trips, plagiarism, digital images, convergence and online journalism, particularly blogs.” Whoa. Not “the blogs.”

Here’s a selection from the story in a section called, “Web of Lies?,“Journalists should look at who writes information on the Web: what’s their expertise and agenda? Are they “wanna-be writers” in a world where the gatekeepers are gone? “There are no editors so they can do what they like,” warned Russell.” Sounds to me like you’re one frustrated journalist with no gate to keep anymore. That just comes across a little too arrogant for me.

How about this one. “And then there are weblogs or blogs where everyone can be a journalist or a critic. There is a great danger when audiences accept blogs as legitimate journalism. Blogs are not always accountable. Often they are daily, they invite reader input, they’re unedited, they show initiative and they often are easy to create with format templates.” Excuse me. Can you say, “I am so arrogant?” I guess we’re all just idiots and have no way of knowing the truth of what we’re reading. Gee I wish I had a gate keeper to sort out what I need to know for me.

Here’s a final one. “They are an online collection of short stories, Russell said, but he also stressed often they are “egotistic, self-centered” and rubbish.” Yeah. Well let’s look at some magazines, newspapers and look at and listen to some radio and tv. None of that egotistic, self-centered rubbish there, eh?

Sorry Mr. Russell but your ranting about blogs doesn’t leave me with any impression other than how arrogant you are. I’m glad you weren’t teaching at the college of journalism I graduated from. I’ve only been in the business for a little over 20 years but as a blogger I guess I’m just one of the people who left the gate open. Frankly, I accept and like the fact that it’ll never be shut again.

ACN, Media

PETA Is Getting Udderly Ridiculous

Chuck Zimmerman

Milk Gone WildProving once again that they are completely without brains or any moral compass, the folks at PETA have created a website to attack milk. If it wasn’t a good idea to know what the wackos are up to I sould suggest you just ignore it. It would almost be funny if they weren’t so ignorant and just plain disgusting.

This Milk Gone Wild website is a crude takeoff on the even more filthy and perverted Girls Gone Wild trash videos. They have women exposing themselves but endowed with bovine mammary appendages. There’s just too much trash to even discuss. In fact, I saw an alert to it on Ad Jab and only visited long enough to get a sense of this crap that this group has once again put out.

Dairy