Farm Progress 2009 Live Tweetup

Yesterday I attended my first tweetup! The event took place at the Country Financial Booth at the Farm Progress Show (#FPS09) in Decatur, IL. It was great to shake hands and talk in person to the people we have conversed with many times through Twitter.

As we in agriculture are aware, social media has provided us with mechanisms to interact with other professionals in the agricultural market place. We are sharing our knowledge, disseminating factual information, and learning from one another. We need to continue to leverage these tools moving forward.

During the tweetup I met the following individuals:

@mpaynknoper - We all know Michele, if not personally, then through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, etc. She is the founder of #agchat.
@Mica_Monsanto - Mica is a PR rep for Monsanto. I enjoyed talking about agriculture and past social media interactions. I like her sense of humor and appreciated her take on some of the current issues with agriculture
@KateOnline - She also works for Monsanto in Public Affairs. It was a pleasure to meet and talk with Kate about her activities in the SM realm as is pertains to agriculture.
@Kath_Monsanto - Kathleen is the SM specialist for Monsanto and conducted a SM presentation at the Monsanto auditorium during #FPS09. She is working hard to leverage the SM outlet. Nice to meet you Kathleen!
@TruffleMedia - I have always thought John posts relevant and informed content....getting to meet him in person was, and is, a bonus.
@agchick - Tricia is just an all around good person, a farm girl, and quite funny. I can appreciate a good sense of humor; it helps when debating issues
@JacksonFarms - I always enjoy meeting with farmers, and Mike was no exception. We talked about how crops were looking in our areas, technology, SM, and a variety of other topics. Thanks for the good conversation Mike.
@AgriBlogger - I had a great time discussing agriculture, from production to marketing, with Chuck. Be on the lookout for interviews and updates from #FPS09 on his website.
@Willie1701A - I actually met Willie briefly at the tweetup; however, I did get to spend some time chatting with him during #agchat that night. Another person with a good sense of humor and knowledge of agriculture.
@KurtLokenvitz - Kurt and I spoke in length about potential projects. It was a pleasure to meet you Kurt.
@ArlanFF01 - I actually spoke to Arlan on the phone prior to meeting in person to discuss social media and agriculture. I believe his article on the social media and agriculture topic will be coming out soon. Check it out online.
@cornguy - I read his blog entries, as should you. It was good to shake hands and discuss how our efforts to spread the message of agriculture are doing.
@HelloCountry - This is the Twitter account for Country Financial. A big shout out to Country Financial for hosting our tweetup at their booth!
@KAOjr - This was the first interaction I had with Ken, and it was excellent. He and I exchanged information on our companies and ourselves. I was not following Ken prior to the tweetup. That has now been rectified. Good to chat Ken!
@jjatfp - Jeff helped organize both the tweetup and the conference room for #agchat. Thanks much for the effort and time. Jeff and I also spent time discussing our companies. Thanks for the fruitful discussions and good sense of humor Jeff.

I also had brief introductions with @vmdavis @ken4corn and @shanedailey. I hope to meet them again at a future tweetup and spend some more time conversing.

You should be following all of the above individuals. If we want to expand the reach to a broader audience, we need to follow people. Following people on Twitter will contribute to expanding your network.

Now that I have met these individuals in person, it is going to add more to their tweets. I am looking forward to more interactions with them as well as everyone else in the twitter network.

In light of such a wonderful experience, I am going to generate a Google calendar with the upcoming trade shows for the end of this year and all of 2010. I invite you to DM me your email address so I can share the calendar with you. This calendar should give us a good overview of upcoming events as well as allow us time to plan any future tweetups, which I HIGHLY recommend we conduct. I will also provide the link to view the calendar if you prefer. If so, let me know and I will DM the web address your way. Lastly, if there are any events you would like added to the calendar, please let me know as I am sure I have not included all events. The more that gets added, the better chance we have of conducting a tweetup.

I want to pass along my thanks and gratitude to everyone I met at the Farm Progress Show. It was a pleasure to meet you, a pleasure indeed! I am looking forward to meeting more of you at future trade shows and/or tweetups. To all farmers, have a great harvest season. Here's my hope that we have a prolonged fall!

There may have been other folks I did not include in this post; it is by no means intentional. It just means that I missed you. If you are not added to the list, please feel free to scold me immediately!