We started out the month with cattle producers in the Sunshine State for the 2011 Cattle Industry Summer Conference. The joint meeting of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and the Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB) in Kissimmee, Florida featured Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. Click on the photo for a larger version and see the CISC 2011 photo album for more. Posts about the CBB side of the meeting can be found on BeefBoardMeeting.com, where meeting photos, interviews and committee reports going back to 2007 are archived.

We also covered the AgCareers.com 2011 Ag HR Roundtable for the first time. The event was held on the campus of Purdue University and brought together representatives from agribusiness and academia to discuss how to recruit and prepare young people for careers in agriculture.

Another stop this month was in Toledo, Ohio for the CTIC Conservation in Action Tour, which featured a full day of visits in the area around Lake Erie. This rosy sunset over the Maumee River greeted us as we returned from the tour. I really love that photo – click on it for a larger version, and check out the CTIC 2011 tour photo album for more.

The Sturgis Motorcycle rally in South Dakota was definitely a first for us. Chuck covered that for the Renewable Fuels Association, which partners with the Buffalo Chip Campground to promote ethanol. See his photos from Sturgis here. No, he didn’t ride a motorcycle, but he did sleep in a very comfortable RV at the campground – it was an experience!

Without too much of a break, Chuck headed to Kansas City for the NAMA Bootcamp and then to Nashville for the AgChat Agvocacy 2.0 conference.

Cindy’s next two trips sent her from coast to coast. First to the Boehringer-Ingelheim annual swine health seminar in North Carolina. This is the fourth time we have been able to attend this event and it is always fun because it is so family-oriented. They invite their producer and partner clients and their families for a really nice weekend on the Carolina coast. It was a pirate theme this year and all the kids really enjoyed it!

Five days later, Cindy headed to Seattle at the request of the United Soybean Board to attend the U.S. Soybean Export Council’s first Animal Utilization Stakeholders meeting. The weather was glorious in Seattle and as a weird coincidence, Cindy got to attend the wedding of a very close high school friend who lives in Tacoma.

The month wrapped up with the biggest product launch in the 174 year history of John Deere in Indianapolis. Chuck got lots of great photos and video there. The photos have already been viewed over 2600 times and the three videos collectively have been seen almost 10,000 times! Cindy attended the GROWMARK annual meeting in Chicago, then we both got together and headed to Decatur, Illinois for the 2011 Farm Progress Show. Together we uploaded over 600 photos that have been viewed more than 3,000 times.

All totaled, we traveled over 16,000 miles in August, uploaded nearly 4,000 photos, and did more than 400 posts on all four of our websites. We are definitely looking forward to a break from the road and a little R&R on Labor Day before we get back at it in September!

We saw a lot of corn in July, starting with the Conservation Technology Information Center tour of the Indian Creek Watershed in Illinois, where we learned about a farm family that caters to corn connoisseurs, among other things. Check out the photos from that tour here, and watch for coverage from the Conservation In Action Tour, sponsored by CTIC and AGROTAIN, August 9 in northwest Ohio.

The following week, Chuck drove out to York, Nebraska to check out the FMC plot tour in that area, then turned around and drove all the way to Springfield, Illinois for the 2011 InfoAg Conference, where our coverage was sponsored by AgLeader Technology on Precision Pays.

Wyffels Hybrids kept us going from sunrise to sunset on two days in July – one in Illinois and one in Iowa – for their annual Corn Strategies. Cindy went to Dixon, Illinois and Chuck attended the Malcom, Iowa event. Lots of great photos there!

We headed for the deep south at the end of the month. Cindy went to Panama City, Florida to cover the Southern Peanut Growers Conference for the fourth year in a row, while Chuck attended the Ag Media Summit in New Orleans, thanks to the sponsorship of BASF and AgHaven.

August is shaping up to be a hot one as well. Heading to Florida for the Cattle Industry Summer Conference, to Indiana for the AgCareers Ag HR Roundtable, South Dakota for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally on behalf of the Renewable Fuels Association, Ohio for CTIC, Nashville for AgChat Agvocacy 2.0 sponsored by New Holland, Indianapolis for the John Deere product launch, Chicago for GROWMARK’s annual meeting and finishing up at Farm Progress show in Illinois.

See you down the road – stay cool!

We attended two NASCAR races this month and will end the month with the Iowa Corn Indy 250. It’s all about corn farmers and ethanol at these events and even though the home-grown fuel is a little controversial even within the agriculture industry, we are proud supporters. The use of 15% ethanol by NASCAR this year has provided a new venue to get a positive message out to the public, and the Iowa Indy race is now the only Indy competition that uses ethanol that was born and raised in the USA, since Brazil provides fuel for the other races.

Chuck covered the inaugural STP 300 Nationwide Series race at the Chicagoland Speedway for the Illinois Corn Growers while I went to my very first race ever, the inaugural Sprint Cup Series STP 400 at Kansas Speedway, on behalf of the National Corn Growers and American Ethanol. Together we took about 600 photos and got comments from a number of drivers and owners about the importance of using ethanol to help the country be a little less dependent on foreign oil.

Here’s a few quotes:

Family Farmers/Marquis Energy car driver Kenny Wallace: “E15 ethanol inside of our race cars is awesome. Ethanol is a high performance fuel, the emissions are clean, it makes horsepower, it’s good!”

Kansas race winner Brad Keselowski: “It’s just an added benefit that (ethanol) comes from America. That’s really cool.”

Team owner Roger Penske: “The reliability is there, the fuel mileage is there and you can see the performance, so I think it’s a win-win for everyone.”

Team owner Richard Childress: “I’m a farmer myself and I understand the livelihood of farmers and I think it’s great for America what they are doing to help us not to have to depend on as much foreign energy. I hope some day we can run it all on ethanol.”

Watch for our coverage from the Iowa Speedway in Newton on June 25, sponsored by the Iowa Corn Growers.

We started out the month in Denver for the Cattle Industry Convention, where we covered the event for both the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Cattlemen’s Beef Board. We did have a little trouble getting there, since our blizzard hit on the day we were scheduled to fly out of Kansas City. But, three canceled flights later, we did arrive and only missed the first day. We saw former Senior White House Advisor Karl Rove give the keynote address during the second general session and Larry the Cable Guy at the Cowboy Comedy Club.

While we were in Denver, Joanna was covering the Iowa Power Farming Show in Des Moines, thanks to the sponsorship of AgLeader Technology on Precision Pays. This is the second year we have attended that event.

Next stop on the agriblogging highway was Phoenix for the National Biodiesel Conference. This was the sixth year we blogged this event on the Biodiesel Conference blog, which we set up for NBB in 2006. When you go to that blog, you can go back and see all the photos and posts from the last six conferences – which is pretty cool. Of course, we also covered the event on Agwired and Domestic Fuel, and took lots of photos.

Chuck moved right from Phoenix to Louisville for the National Farm Machinery Show, with the sponsorship of both John Deere and New Holland for the fourth year in a row, and AgLeader for the second year. The weather was better this year in Louisville than it has been the past two years, so that was a plus and it resulted in record attendance for the show.

Not done yet. Next stop was Phoenix, again, for the National Ethanol Conference. This was the fifth year for this event, which is the annual meeting of the Renewable Fuels Association. The weather there was pretty un-desertlike on the first day, with rain and 40 degree temps, but it cleared up and was very pleasant for the rest of the event. We were treated to a spectacular desert sunset during the reception on the second night.

From Phoenix, we came back to Missouri and split up to attend the Agricultural Relations Council meeting in Ft. Myers and the Western Farm Show in Kansas City. Chuck got the bad end of that deal with a nasty ice and snow storm that came up out of nowhere to make for a treacherous drive to KC. But he made it there and Chuck did two social media seminars there plus we had a booth with some giveaways. Meanwhile, the weather was fabulous in Florida and the ARC meeting was a blast.

Speaking of Florida, we are starting out March with Commodity Classic in Tampa, which is where we are heading tomorrow. Hope to see you down the road in our travels!

We started out the month in “Icelanta” covering both the second AG CONNECT Expo and the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) annual meeting. The weather was okay for the first couple of days, but on the first day of the AFBF meeting we saw five inches of snow and ice hit the southern city with only six snow plows! It was an experience we will not soon forget. Farm Bureau has never had a meeting like it!

Besides the snow and ice, the highlights of the meetings included being part of a really great show for AG CONNECT with lots of content that we are still using on all of our on-line publications – and meeting Mike “Dirty Jobs” Rowe. He is really a great advocate for agriculture.

Check out the coverage of AFBF on Agwired here and all the stories from AG CONNECT Expo here.

We had the opportunity to welcome a new sponsor for Agwired and Precision Pays during the month of January – GROWMARK and their FS Green Plan Solutions. Chuck visited ​GROWMARK headquarters in Bloomington and Cindy attended a conference on the company’s “Pursuit of Maximum Yields” program in East Peoria. Look forward to learning lots more about this regional cooperative that started in 1927 and provides agriculture-related products and services, as well as grain marketing in the Midwest and Ontario, Canada.

At the end of the month, Chuck headed back to Atlanta for the International Poultry Expo, with coverage sponsored by our friends at Novus International. This is the third year in a row that we have covered this event for them and once again they featured a well-known sports figure at their exhibit. This time it was a football theme with NFL Hall of Famer Dick Butkus. The weather was much better this time!

While Chuck headed south, Cindy went north to Des Moines to attend the 5th annual Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit for the first time to enjoy a fantastic program that included two potential presidential candidates – Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum. The great event was made possible by sponsorships from Domestic Fuel supporters Growth Energy and the Renewable Fuels Association.

We are supposed to get back on the road this week, heading to Denver for the Cattle Industry Annual Convention and NCBA Trade Show, but that will depend on the weather as the forecast is calling for a major snowstorm. We’ll get there at some point to start off another big month of travel in February. Joanna is in Des Moines for the Iowa Power Farm Show this week and Chuck is scheduled to head directly from Denver to Phoenix for the National Biodiesel Conference. Later in the month, we’ll be at the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, the National Ethanol Conference in Phoenix, the Agricultural Relations Council meeting in Naples (yeah!) and the Western Farm Show in Kansas City. Praying for better weather everywhere and hope to see you all down the road!

You can find photos in my online photo album: NAAA Convention Photo Album

Thanks go to BASF for once again being our sponsor for this convention. The NAAA members serve a very vital role in the agriculture industry and I was happy to see them having a great year.

I was thrilled to be able to go and see Kip honored by the governor of Missouri for his accomplishment. His farm is located about 200 miles southwest of ZimmComm World Headquarters, so it was a seven hour round trip, and worth every minute of it. It is always a pleasure to see Kip, his wife Michelle, and their children Noah, Naaman and Narissa. It’s an even greater pleasure to do so at the request of our wonderful client BASF Crop Protection and our very good friend Pat Morrow.

BASF is encouraging people to send congratulations to Kip for his accomplishment on their Facebook page under the Super Soy tab. You can also send congrats by Twitter using the hashtag #supersoy.

View or download photos from Kip’s big announcement here:
Kip Cullers 2010 Soybean Record

With the support of RFA I was on hand to provide coverage on Domestic Fuel with photos and interviews as well as general session audio. Additional content will be used by both sponsoring organizations on their websites and for other promotional purposes, internal and external.

One of our presenters, Joseph Rueter, Curation Station, talked about digital brand communities. He suggested that companies tell a good story and give their customers a reason to want to be involved with the community.

You can see what you missed in pictures.

Thanks to Quarry Integrated Communications for their sponsorship of AgWired coverage of the conference.

I think Cindy conducted a record number of interviews this year at Expo. She also has photos for you to enjoy.

The WEG is a very exciting place for horse lovers and just because of the pageantry and varied activities taking place. John Deere held a media reception that included reining demonstrations in their own arena next to their pavilion. They displayed their full line of equipment to the over 1/2 million people who attended the games.

Enjoy some of my photos here.

Chuck was photographer and conducted interviews with each of the presenters. These made story posts on AgWired. It was great to work with BCS Communications and BIVI once again.

We received event coverage sponsorship support this year from New Holland and Pioneer Hi-Bred on AgWired and from Ag Leader Technology and John Deere on Precision Pays. Thank you sponsors.

Do you have an event you’d like us to cover? You’ll be bringing in award winning ag journalists, professional photographers and we’ll create some great online content.

I took several hundred photos and conducted many interviews with presenters and participants from a variety of countries. These are posted to the website and Alltech receives a copy of the photography and interviews. It’s a great deal and the most recent example of our unique brand of on location event coverage.

Dairy Solutions Symposium 2010 Photo Album

So I took over 1,500 photos, conducted 14 interviews and posted them along with a couple of video clips to our websites and the Iowa Corn Promotion Board Facebook page. They got copies for their own use too. That’s a hallmark of our event coverage! It’s kind of like an old fashioned live radio remote on the internet and you get high quality production at the same time!

You can listen to audio from the start of the race here: Iowa Indy Corn 250 Start

Here’s where you can find my photos: Iowa Corn Indy 250 Photo Album

Meanwhile, Cindy and Joanna will covering the Fuel Ethanol Workshop in St. Louis. They will be there Monday through Wednesday. So we’ll have a lot more photos and interviews to share this week via the ZimmComm News Network.

Chuck gets to close out the week working with the Iowa Corn Promotion Board for activities leading up to and including the 2010 Iowa Corn Indy 250 race in Newton, IA. This will be his third year of covering the event.

To start with, Cindy will be attending a BASF Sustainability Summit in Chicago. From there she’ll join Joanna Schroeder and John Davis at World Pork Expo working with sponsors Boehringer Ingelheim and Novus International. It’s going to be a busy week for the @FarmPodcaster.

Next week Chuck will also be on the agriblogging highway starting with the Corn Utilization & Technology Conference in Atlanta working with the National Corn Growers Association. From there he’ll head to the Carolinas to ride and drive new Gator Utility Vehicles with John Deere. Make sure you follow @AgriBlogger and AgWired to keep up with all the action.

Have you got us on your event’s schedule? We’d be happy to live blog your event while providing professional photography services!

You can find our event photos in our Flickr set: Normal CornBelters Home Opener

Top Ten Reasons to have ZimmComm cover your next event:

10. We “Tweet” u right – in so many ways. We have multiple established Twitter accounts with thousands of followers on several different topics and can help tweet your event to tweeps all over.

9. Flickr Photos up in a Flash – get your photos uploaded and out for media to use and everyone to see faster.

8. Google Loves Us – Search engines pick up posts from ZimmComm blogs fast and furious, both news and web searches.

7. We Flip for YouTube – short, web quality video clips give your event a YouTube presence.

6. Audio on Demand –interviews with key presenters and speeches can be available on-line to listen or download.

5. First Class Photography – we take high-res photos of everything so you don’t have to.

4. Targeted Exposure – We can post on your blog and one or more of our own – with audiences that include agribusiness, renewable energy, dairy, and precision farming. We can even design and build a blog for your specific event.

3. Event Blogging Trail Blazers – ZimmComm was one of the first pioneers of event blogging, starting with the National Biodiesel Conference in February 2006.

2. Multi-tasking is our Middle Name – We often do audio, video, photos, tweets, blogging and more at the same time – while chewing gum and balancing a book on our heads. Ok, we made the last part up.

1. Historical Preservation – Your event is archived for history on the web and we provide a digital copy of all photos, video and audio sent to you for the sake of posterity after the event.

A signature feature of our on location online event coverage is a photo album and I took quite a few during this event: President Obama POET Biorefining Photo Album

I’m not sure where I’ll be at actual inauguration time. Heck, I’ve got to look up what time it is. I haven’t really been that interested. However, I did download the new Ustream.tv app to my iPhone and it works great here at KCI Airport wifi. It requires a wifi connection but allows you to watch live streaming video like Agwired Live TV! They’re supposed to have a live feed from the event. You can already watch some live webcam video from the area.

Just think of the possibilities for events of your own!

Imagine having this done for your event or company.

Besides posting on these clients blog sites we’ll also be posting on our own, Domestic Fuel, AgWired and World Dairy Diary. These ZimmComm-owned sites provide you with a “sponsorship” opportunity to have online exposure even if you don’t have your own site to provide this kind of event coverage.

Let’s face it, there’s no more interactive, up to the minute, interesting, search engine optimized way to showcase your activities than with online coverage on the websites we create. Let me know if you’d like to discuss doing this for your company or group.

Online event coverage is already shaping up to be one of the biggest components of ZimmCom’s business. We provide that service for not only our own online publications like AgWired but also for proprietary client websites like Precision Pays.

If you’ve got an event that you need outside help with photography and audio or video production then keep us in mind. We’re your online media production company.

This week I’ve been blogging at the World Championship Appaloosa Show in Ft. Worth, TX. Pictures like this are to be found everywhere and I’ve got lots in the online photo album for the event.

I’ve never seen the American flag displayed in action on horseback while our National Anthem is being sung. It was very moving (no pun intended).

I’ll be attending the conference with longtime friend and former business partner (now client), Gary Cooper, Southeast AgNet. The activities take place at the Ontario, CA Convention Center.

Friday – Sept. 28, 2007
Keynotes & Conference – 9:00am-4:15pm
Exhibit Hall – 10:00am-4:00pm
Attendee Reception – 4:00pm-5:30pm
CultureCatch Salon – 8:00pm-11:00pm

Saturday – Sept. 29, 2007
Keynotes & Conference – 9:00am-4:15pm
Exhibit Hall – 10:00am-4:00pm
Expo Concert – 6:30pm-9:00pm

Sunday – Sept. 30, 2007
Keynotes & Conference – 9:00am-12:45pm
Exhibit Hall – 10:00am-1:30pm

This certainly goes for today’s media representatives who need that access and time to post their stories but I think it also applies to anyone who’s on the road at an event. We’re beginning to see more attention paid to this element of planning for events but there’s a ways to go.

I’ll be attending the Podcast and New Media Expo later this week. I would certainly hope we’ve got good open access there! Look for some posts from that event here and on AgWired.

As of right now I’ve spent 67 days on the road doing event blogging and Cindy has spent about another dozen. That’s quite a few and I think shows how interested companies and organizations are to have the story of their event unfold as it happens on their website or on one of ours.

I can go into so many reasons why this makes sense but I think I’ve done that before (search engine optimization, multi-media content, direct customer/member communication).

You can see examples of my most recent trip on Appaloosa Blog Spot from their National Show that just concluded in Oklahoma City. In 3 days I post 22 times on their site. Those posts contained 18 audio interviews, 1 YouTube video and an online photo album containing 155 high quality digital photos.

Online Event Coverage

ZimmComm New Media offers a company or an organization a unique way to provide customers and members with near instantaneous online coverage of events that includes pictures, audio and video interviews, video of product displays and demonstrations and text summaries of activities. All this multi-media content is posted onto the organization’s blog site or ZimmComm will create a site for the event. Pictures can be uploaded to online photo albums using services like Flickr which allow visitors to search for individual photos or watch them as a slide show. Video clips can be uploaded and made available via services like YouTube which provides the hosting and a simple player to display the content. The audio may be posted in a click to listen format or in a podcast format where it can be easily found and listened to with popular podcast software like iTunes. All the content is hosted within very highly search engine optimized software/services making it easy to find with key word searches. The site would have a built in RSS feed allowing customers to subscribe to the posts made onto the site. If ZimmComm builds the site we would install web tracking software like Mint which is a very easy to use web accessible statistics option.

A ZimmComm “reporter” will attend the organizational event armed with cameras, recorders and computer. Working under the direction of staff the reporter will take pictures, record video clips and interviews and then edit, upload and post the content onto the website at every available opportunity. The number of daily posts would be determined by the event and the time available for posting. Although the reporter will be equipped with a wireless computer data card it is recommended that the organization provide high speed internet access and a place centrally located to the event activities to set up a secure work station. This could be a media room already set up for the event.

After the event concludes all ZimmComm content (images/audio/video) is provided to the organization on dvd for archiving or use in other organizational communication mechanisms like commemorative event CD’s, newsletters, brochures, main website, slide shows, etc. A very cool idea is to pre-load the content onto iPods which may be given as gifts to significant customers or sponsors or used in drawings or other contests.