Ag Media Summit: notes from Kentucky

Blogriculture received some attention at the Ag Media Summit this year from Louisville, Kentucky. Chuck Zimmerman of ZimmComm New Media highlighted our blog and website more than once in sessions he did on blogs and podcasts.

We appreciate that, Chuck.

One of the things he decided to play for a packed room of ag communicators was our Washington state reporter Scott Yates' Farmers' Rap that was posted to a podcast in April this year. Zimmerman also featured the rap in a recent post on his AgWired site. Scott's tribute to farmers received a lot of laughs but also built up quite a fan base... several people said later they looked forward to returning to their workplaces to play his rap song to their fellow employees.

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Gary West, our hardworking internet/blog/podcast guru and my fellow blogger on this site, received recognition during an awards ceremony last night here. Gary received first place for website design from the American Agricultural Editors' Association. Congrats, Gary! Capital Press received several other awards (scroll down through today's Blogriculture posts to see more or click here), including for writing and photography. There were a record number of entries this year in the competition, so we are very proud of our staff accomplishments at this prestigious competition.

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Speaking of awards, the Ag Media Summit tried something different this year: an American Idol type of talent competition. The talent was impressive, including magic, humor and music: I will post later a bit more about who won, but most of us believe the winner could do very well in the real American Idol competition.

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In an earlier blog, I had written that there was to be a day of tours here in Kentucky. Unfortunately, the airlines weren't cooperative. Never try to connect two or three times in one day across this country ... like so many other travellers, I ended up not making it through all of them smoothly. Delta overbooked its flights, and while spending extra time begging people to give up their seats voluntarily so the plane could take off, I ended up missing my connection in the next city. So I ended up spending Friday night in Chicago and couldn't get my next flight until Saturday evening when the next open seats were available. This was well past the ending of the tours ...

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Airlines, airlines, airlines. Besides people complaining about internet connections at my hotel, the second biggest topic of discussion was the problems with airlines across the country. We lost a keynote luncheon speaker because of delays and cancellations of flights: former secretary of agriculture Dan Glickman was supposed to fly here but spent several hours in an airport before finally being told there was no hope of him flying here in time for even the next day. Northwest airllines especially received a lot of complaints as pilots didn't show up to work or showed up late to fly: many of our conference members were affected.

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Photographer Mark Rozin from Capital Press received major kudos from this year's summit, including the prestigious Photographer of the Year title. Rozin had an incredible portfolio of images from the past year. Stay tuned to our newspaper and website to see which images helped influence this decision from his peers. Congratulations to Mark on his impressive award.

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Capital Press has for a long time published cartoons from Leigh Rubin, a gifted and very funny guy from California who does the Rubes cartoon. Rubin did a couple of sessions at the Summit about the business of creativity. Late last night, during a reception after the AAEA awards, he chatted with several of us. Rubin shared what it was like to get rejection letters in the past for his work, and said he still has a favorite one: the book company he had approached to do his cartoons had not only turned down his work, but in the same letter declared it had just turned down a book offer for another cartoonist whose work was similar to his: Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side cartoons. Of course, we had a good laugh about how the company was bragging about who it turned down ... and we all wondered if the person who made these decisions was still working for that book company. On a more serious side, Rubin is inspiring: he demonstrated that one should never give up, no matter how many people may criticize your efforts at success.

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There will be a lot more on this blog and on the Capital Press website in the next few days from the summit. This includes photos, stories and audio from some of the sessions, as well as a visit to an orchard/winery in Indiana from Sunday night. Stay tuned.

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One last thought: as mentioned in an earlier blog, there were a group of journalists from the Republic of Mali that were here. They were welcomed by the rest of the summit's participants, and we had some great talks with them about their country, agriculture, journalism, politics and even what views of America they will take home. I did an interview with one of the editors and will post that later to our website: It was interesting to hear what viewpoint he had of America prior to coming here, and what he plans to write about this country in the future. Perhaps one of the images that helped show how we can build relationships across the world is a snapshot of something that happened last night: as the last few people left the ballroom after the awards celebration, and hotel staff cleaned up the room, Barry Nelson from John Deere stood around a table with some of the people from the Republic of Mali and they shared something they had in common ... a love for magic card tricks. When the guy from Africa did one of them expertly, he smiled broadly, gave a huge laugh, and high-fived Barry and anyone else nearby. It was one of the those moments you wanted to capture forever.

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