One of the seminars at the Ag Relations Council meeting focused on “Ethics in Public Relations” and one of the panelists was Gary Myers, founder and past president of Morgan & Myers. Gary is still providing council to the agency. I spoke with him about his thoughts on this subject and his suggestions for young people entering the profession.
You can listen to my interview with Gary here 
The ZimmCast is a weekly AgWired podcast which you can subscribe to using the link in our sidebar.
Now that the Ag Relations Council meeting is over it’s time for the Ag Media Summit! To get the work underway it was board meeting morning. In this picture it’s the Livestock Publications Council board meeting. They actually started last night and were just finishing up this morning.
At the same time this morning the American Agricultural Editors Association board was meeting. I’m sure we’ll get some news from their meetings over the next couple days. I’ll pass along whatever I learn.
This afternoon there are several seminars taking place and the opening reception which will be held at the Sprecher Brewery.
The last panel on the Ag Relations Council program was on Lifestyle Producers. Speaking were (l-r) Gene Hemphill, New Holland, Brad Schu, Purina Mills and Jeff Young, Bader-Rutter. Each presented information about what they’ve learned from research and ways they’re using that information to market products to this very diverse market segment.
At the Ag Relations Council business meeting president, Jeri Omernik, reported that there are currently 74 members and that the legwork has been done to organize and set up new procedures to jump start a solicitation of new members and re-institute the Golden ARC Awards program. She said that the transition from having NAMA oversee the organization is complete and they’re seeing a lot of renewed interest from past and potential members.
German Fest wouldn’t be authentic without polka music right? So that you can get the flavor of the event, here for your pleasure is a cut of polka music from one of the live stages at German Fest in Milwaukee.
You can listen here
So what do you do at German Fest? You find a good beer and sit down with friends and enjoy. Here’s some of the happy group from the ARC meeting doing just that.
You never know who you’ll run into at an event like German Fest. As we were wandering around we noticed Emery Kleven, current president of the National Association of Farm Broadcasters taking a photo. Emery’s not here for ARC or AMS. Just “Festing” along with thousands of his best friends.
The Ag Relations Council group headed to German Fest by trolley just as soon as business was over.
On a beautiful day in Milwaukee the Ag Relations Council was inside discussing ethics in public relations. Interestingly, I checked my subscriptions afterwards and found this one at Adjab on this very subject called “Advertising and editorial get a little cozier.”
Allow me to rant for a moment. While the ARC panel is going on I thought I’d see if I could get a document color printed here at the Hilton. No color printers on site. The concierge sent me on a 15 minute walk to Kinkos. Guess she didn’t know that it closes at 2pm on Saturday. So on my 15 minute walk back I did take this picture of the Milwaukee Riverwalk area. It had a calming effect on my feelings at that moment. It’s hard to see in this little photo but Usinger’s, a fine Wisconsin sausage maker is in the background.
Hopefully I can get my document printed on Monday morning.
