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

Our NAMA President-Elect, Susie Decker, Farm Progress Companies, spoke to students at their lunch today. She made a very nice gesture and gave out her “tractor numbers” to the group and told them that whoever found them should bring them to her and she would give them her tractor.

In case you don’t know what that means, AgriMarketing Magazine provides scale model tractors each year in each NAMA Connection Point booth. All registrants get a number and if you find a tractor with your number on it, you get it. This year we have McCormick MTX150 Tractors.

After Susie spoke, luncheon emcee, Curt Blades gave out some of the NAMA student scholarships and announced the student marketing competition semi-finalists. They are competing now and include:

Wisconsin-Madison
University of Florida
New Mexico State
Iowa State
Michigan State
Virginia Tech
North Dakota State University
Purdue
Wisconsin-Platteville
Mississippi State
Ohio State
Nebraska

Goog luck to all of them!

NAMA Photo Album

The 2009 Agri-Marketing Conference is underway in Atlanta, GA. I’ll be your NAMA blogger once again this year and hope to bring you as much of the conference as I can so you will almost feel like you’re here.

I have started a Conference Photo Album which will be added to over the coming days so check it often.

For you Twitter happy people out there please use or follow the #NAMA hashtag to keep up with what the Twitterverse is saying about NAMA and the conference.

A big thank you goes out to Successful Farming for sponsoring the NAMA blog this year.