The 2010 NAMA Boot Camp will take place August 17-19 at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center in Kansas City.

If you are interested in sponsoring a session or event at the NAMA Boot Camp, please fill out the sponsorship confirmation form at www.nama.org/programs/bootcamp-spo.htm or contact Jenny Pickett at 913-491-6500 or via e-mail at [email protected].

The deadline for submitting nominations for the Professional Development Awards of Excellence is July 20, 2010. These awards will be presented at the 2010 Trends In Agriculture meeting, October 5-6, at The Marquette Hotel in Minneapolis, MN.

The Professional Development Awards of Excellence were created in 2001 to demonstrate NAMA’s commitment to the four professional development areas.

Below is a list of the past Awards of Excellence recipients:

Marketing Communications
2009 – Lou Ireland
2008 – Paul Redhage
2007 – Pete Kovac
2006 – Steve Engle
2005 – Bev Larson
2004 – Neil DeStefano
2003 – Sarah Vacek
2002 – Ken Anderson
2001 – Doug Headley

Product/Species Management
2009 – Gary Robertson
2008 – No award was given in this area
2007 – Klaas Okkinga
2006 – No award was given in this area
2005 – Dennis Gehler
2004 – Wendy Elliott
2003 – Brian Markwardt
2002 – Tony Klemm
2001 – Tony Solon

Public Relations
2009 – Deron Johnson
2008 – Beth Andersen
2007 – Greg Smith
2006 – Barry Nelson
2005 – Janice Person
2004 – Kendal Frazier
2003 – Mike Ricciuto
2002 – David Buchholz
2001 – Ken Gordon

Sales
2009 – Pete Weil
2008 – Vernon Benes
2007 – Bill Heffron
2006 – Anita Vanderwert
2005 – Margaret Wallace Oldham
2004 – Allen Barkve
2003 – Cliff Becker
2002 – Bob Deiss
2001 – Tom Taylor

Nominees for the Awards of Excellence must be NAMA members. Nominators should target individuals with direct planning and execution responsibilities in the respective Professional Development Area from agribusiness and related companies. If you have any questions regarding these awards, please contact Jenny Pickett at [email protected].

To download the nomination form in an Adobe .PDF format, visit http://www.nama.org/awards/2010PDAapplication.pdf.

You can also fill out the form on-line at http://www.nama.org/awards/pdaonlineform.htm.

How do you differentiate your brand against competitors with bigger budgets and marketing departments? Embrace who you are and play to it, according to the presenter at the Iowa Chapter’s last meeting on May 21.

Shannon Latham of Latham Hi-Tech Seeds, an independent soybean, corn and alfalfa seed company based in Alexander, Iowa, provided a case-study look at how the company’s small-budget marketing and communications campaigns (including social media, internal and dealer communications) have created big time results. Shannon is responsible for the company’s marketing, communications and event planning initiatives that target internal and external audiences.

Learn more by visiting www.lathamseeds.com, and check out Shannon’s blog at www.thefieldposition.com.

The MoKan Chapter met over lunch at the Webster House in Kansas City on May 25 for a lesson on how to best understand and utilize social media.  Adam Coome, President of Infegy, Inc., presented “Analyzing Social Media – Measuring Success and Utilizing Results.”  Infegy, Inc. is the developer of Social Radar, a web insights and social media research analytics platform.

Social Radar, created by Infegy and used by businesses and politicians, tracks over 4 billion conversations and the software can be used to analyze conversation sentiment – positivity and negativity of feedback.  Coome noted that the sentiment gauge is 85+% accurate, the highest in the industry.  An example he shared with the audience was that a recent Gallup Poll took 2 days to survey 3026 people whereas Infegy analyzed 10,000 social media messages in less than 30 seconds for the same results.