Hello from Kansas City, MO.

It’s the first day of registration. You can see the staff is hard at work.

I didn’t get to play golf today but someone will have some pics for us which I’ll probably get to post tomorrow. Until then . . .

Since we’ve heard from the chairman, it’s time to hear from the vice-chairman for the NAMA Conference and that’s John Deere’s Barry Nelson. Barry let’s us know why he’s jazzed about NAMA and it’s a magical moment. So listen to what he has to say.

Barry Nelson Interview (3 min MP3)

Who better to get us Jazzed Up about the NAMA conference but the chairperson. She’s Laurie Christen, Colle+McVoy. You can listen to a short interview with her as she looks forward to the culmination of a year’s worth of work by her committee and the staff.

Laurie Christen Interview (3 min MP3)

Hello NAMA fans. The NAMA blog is getting “Jazzed up” for some serious action at the 2006 Agri-Marketing Conference & Trade Show. I’m Chuck Zimmerman and will once again be your NAMAblogger.

To get us started I thought you might be interested to hear from one of the convention keynote speakers. She’s Laura Ries, and she’ll be conducting a general session called “The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR.” That’s very important subject material to me and I’m sure you too. Laura works with her Dad, Al Ries, at their Atlanta-based marketing strategy firm.

My wife and partner, Cindy, actually conducted the interview and you can listen to it here: Laura Ries Interview (12 min MP3)

After the last session at the Forum I got to interview John Block, Food Marketing Institute, about his idea of what the next big thing in food marketing would be.

You can listen to my interview with the former U. S. Sec. of Ag here: John Block Interview

The final session was on Mad Cow, Oil and Fickly Consumers presented by Dr. Vincent Amanor-Boadu. That’s Dr. Vincent if you want to know how to pronounce Amanor-Boadu. He joked that kids ask him if he’s related to Eddie Murphy. He tells him that he is.

Dr. Vincent is the Director of the Ag Innovation Center at Kansas State University.

I’ll have a little more to offer but this is the end of the conference.

Since I took this pictures I thought I ought to post them. Actually I’ll try to find time to create an online photo album of all of them and post it later.