By Ashlyn Rochester, ACN Communications Specialist
Julie Deering, the AMS Steering Committee Chair, Pam Caraway, ACN’s President-Elect, and Shelia Grobosky, AMS Program Chair, all met on July 10th to inform ACN members about the Ag Media Summit, what to expect, and what to pack.
Julie’s AMS Suggestions
- It’s a fantastic opportunity for networking and rubbing shoulders with those across the field of agricultural communications, whether it’s media and publishing, content, marketing, or freelancers, and so no matter what your role is, it’s just a great opportunity to meet others who are doing similar things or if you’re thinking about
maybe changing lanes, etc. It can give you some good perspective in just talking with others who are in the in the same swimming in the same lane so to speak. - The educational sessions that are provided here are second to none. We have a great committee, who’s been working hard and diligently on that for the last several months.
- This is the 25th Ag Media Summit and so we have a milestone to be celebrating. We’re going to kick things off in Kansas City with our famous welcome party at this time; it’s going to be prohibition-era style. So bring your costumes and fun. You’ll want to download the Cvent app because you’ll need a passcode to enter the welcome party .
A couple of things that are a little bit different that you might want to make note of as we’ve switched some things around.
- We’ll have the student awards luncheon on Monday.
- On Tuesday, our traditional banquet will be at lunch, so we’re going to do our awards recognition banquet at lunch.
Shelia’s Education Highlights
We have five blocks of great, engaging, and educational programming over Monday and Tuesday that cover all areas of professional development, including writing, photography, design, public relations, and general skills.
But we also are integrating a few changes there:
- On Monday, we have an extended session covering AI, artificial intelligence, and communications.
- On Tuesday, we have an extended session with an award-winning photographer, Fred Watkins, coming in on Tuesday afternoon.
- We also offering a Growing Professionals Panel for people who are just getting started and maybe in their ag com careers.
- We do have a networking breakfast on Monday morning.
- The newsmakers panel this year is talking about bridging the gap between technology and research, which, of course, is a huge technology evolving.
- Journalists can go interview our panelists and specific sponsors
- Last year, we had the note-taking boards, and we will have that again.
Pam’s Notes on Tours and Sessions
- On the Kansas Ag tour, you’re gonna get fabulous opportunities for writing as well as learning a lot about Kansas Ag, and you’re going to meet some people that you wouldn’t even meet otherwise.
- We have a networking session specifically for first-timers, and that’s at five o’clock, before the big roaring 20s Welcome Party.
- On Monday, we have speed networking in the morning, which is new for us. It will help purposefully move you around to different things.
- On Tuesday, we will be looking at the ACN PIF business meeting and awards breakfast.
I encourage people to come to this for two reasons. One, if you’re not there, we’re going to nominate you for a committee. I’m coming in as president so I can promise you that will happen. And to come see who’s winning the awards, because that’s going to give you an opportunity to go speak to somebody, everyone’s eyes looking for an icebreaker, right? We also will be talking about how to get more involved.
One of the questions that frequently comes up is what was the appropriate thing to wear?
- most people dress pretty much business casual.
- There will be some folks dressing up a little more for the awards lunch on Tuesday, simply because they’re gonna be a lot of people who are going up on stage or who hope to go up on stage, if they win one of the big awards.
Watch the recording in Memberclicks when you log in and register for Ag Media Summit today!