Thanks to Denny Eilers for providing me with photos of our Best of NAMA award winners for each category.

First up is Best of Show, Advertising
(Left to Right)
Tom Bigelow, Bigelow Advertising
Rick Radermacher, Bigelow Advertising
Chris Lund, AGCO Application Equipment

The next ones are Best of Show, Public Relations
(Left to Right)
Paul Durham, Martin/Williams
Kim Dawson, Syngenta
Kerry Henderson, Gibbs & Soell

And then we have Best of Show, Specialty
(Left to Right)
Richard Williams, Archer>Malmo
James Ward, Archer>Malmo
Mike Butler, Archer>Malmo

Congratulations to all winners and finalists!

NAMA Photo Album

During our Connection Point session tonight the finalists for the NAMA Student Marketing Competition were announced and here they are.

Florida
Nebraska
Purdue
Ohio State
Wisconsin-Madison
North Dakota State

They’ll be battling for the championship and we’ll have the winners announced right here.

NAMA Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the Agri-Marketing Conference is sponsored by:
and .

On of our Best of NAMA Award emcees this evening was Sally Behringer, Nicholson Kovac, Inc. You can ask her to explain the makeup and costume. There are more photos in the online album.

She and Kyle Bauer, KFRM, announced the winners of our annual awards. Thanks to AgriMarketing Magazine you can learn more online.

Winning Best of Show were:

*Specialty: Valent U.S.A.; agency: archer>malmo

NAMA Photo Album

The pre-conference workshop for NAMA 2009 on Wednesday was tailor-made for today’s challenging economic climate.

Kevin Ochsner of Adayana Agri Business Group was captain of the ship for “Charting Your Course in Uncharted Waters – Strategic Decision Making in Uncertain Times,” which focused on gaining insight into the key principals of scenario-planning. “Now, more than ever, we have to both personally and professionally have a process that helps us sort through some of that uncertainty to make decisions as good as we can,” Kevin says.

Kevin will also be moderating a break out session on Thursday afternoon on “Thriving During Times of Uncertainty and Change.”

You can listen to Cindy interview Kevin here: Kevin Oschner Interview (mp3)

NAMA Photo Album

NAMA Chapter Leaders had a workshop then a lunch this morning.

I didn’t make it to the workshop but I did make it to the lunch. I have my priorities you know. The workshop presenters were Paige Gilligan, Agrestic Solutions, and Diana Monsen, CAPC. You can see them in the photo bottom left. I interviewed them after lunch to find out what they did during the morning program. Basically, they identified a few chapter leadership challenges and broke the participants up in groups to come up with creative ideas to address them.

You can listen to my interview with Paige and Diana here: Chapter Leader Workshop Interview (mp3)

NAMA Photo Album

The NAMA registration desk has been very busy this morning and the staff is hard at work as you’ll see in this video clip. We’re having a great time blogging and tweeting here in the Marquis Level at the Marriott.

NAMA Photo Album

One of our student NAMA chapters had an unfortunate incident on the way here with a flight and did not make it in time to qualify and compete in the student marketing competition. Penn State NAMA came anyway and we salute their courage. Our judges went ahead and viewed their presentation and critiqued it for them.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a student competition but I shot a few minutes of the start of their presentation which you can watch here:

NAMA Photo Album