Recent updates

SwineCast Update for January 12, 2011, Locate Your McRib?

John Blue — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:56:24 +0000

SwineCast will be joining you at the MN Pork Congress (St. Paul, Jan 18-19) and the Iowa Pork Congress (Des Moines, Jan 25-26). In addition we'll be sharing Farmscape.ca coverage of the Banff Swine Seminar, courtesy good friend Bruce Cochrane. Be sure to check back regularly, or better yet set up your free downloads via iTunes to carry SwineCast with you [iTunes link].

Be sure to hear the conversation with Chris Novak, CEO of the National Pork Board, as we discuss strategic communication efforts currently underway to increase consumption in the U.S. Good stuff, and a link to the McRib Tracker website!

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SwineCast^® Conversations

Audio: Is "Pork. Be Inspired" Inspiring Consumers? - National Pork Board CEO Chris Novak discusses the "Pork. Be Inspired." campaign along with other strategic marketing efforts.
Audio: How Does Pork Translational Research Work? - Ken Engle, Prairie Swine Centre, shares update on efforts to get research into production.
Video: What Are Hog Densities in the US? - Dr. Enrique Mondaca provides PRRS ARC&E updates from the 2011 International PRRS Symposium, focusing on the hog densities at the state and county level in the US.

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Ned Arthur
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Truffle Media Update for January 5, 2012, Learn How Social Media Is Being Used by HSUS.

John Blue — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:12:37 +0000

Do you want to capture your agriculture conference presentations for those that could not attend? Truffle Media can help you build your Conference Connection today.

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Marketing and Agriculture Posts To Help You

Audio: Do You Have Leadership Traits? - Ian Davis, retired Managing Director at McKinsey & Company, recently shared his top five leadership traits with Stanford's Graduate School of Business students. Ian has consulted with major international management leaders, seeing very good... and some not very good management teams. This half hour program is a great thought provoker for your management team and might be a good point of initiation for the 'up and comers' that are ready for advancement [audio][video].
Learn How Social Media Is Being Used by HSUS - This presentation by Carie Lewis, Director of Emerging Media, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), offers a great view in to how HSUS is strategic in its use of social media. While you may or may not like the HSUS, they do have a plan and know where they need to go. Everyone in agriculture needs to leverage this HSUS information to help advocate (a.k.a. agvocate) their agriculture, farm, and ranch story.
Hacking The 2012 Farm Bill - From the Food + Tech blog: The Farm Bill Hackathon brought together (in person and virtually) 120 designers, data scientists, developers, marketing professionals, food policy experts, and USDA employees, to “hack” one of the most important pieces of legislation in the U.S. – the Farm Bill. Over the course of 12 hours, 5 graphics and 4 tools were produced, addressing issues as diverse as support to new farmers, the effect of subsidies on global hunger and how to crowdsource Meatless Mondays.
Via SwineCast: 2012 Pork Events Coming Up Soon! - Reminder that the Minnesota Pork Congress is January 18-19, in Minneapolis, MN, followed by the Iowa Pork Congress, January 25-26, in Des Moines. Both of these opportunities offer ways to connect with the experts and discover more on the trade show floors.
DairyCast audio: What is Weather Insurance? - Kyle Perry, Climate Corporation, shares how weather based coverage works above the current US Federal programs. APH database may be tracking yield data that is behind with current crop yields. This presents a risk of not covering yields above the historical trends. The Climate Corporation provides financial instruments to protect those higher yields.
PoultryCast audio: Communicating Food Safety Difficult When No One Listens - Communicating with consumers is challenging on most topics, like food safety. Tony Flood, International Food Information Council, says creativity is key.

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The Truffle Media Networks team
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Learn How Social Media Is Being Used by HSUS

Truffle Media Networks — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:45:22 +0000

This presentation by Carie Lewis, Director of Emerging Media, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), offers a great view in to how HSUS is strategic in its use of social media. While you may or may not like the HSUS, they do have a plan and know where they need to go. Everyone in agriculture needs to leverage this HSUS information to help advocate (aka agvocate) their agriculture, farm, and ranch story.

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Taking Online Dairy Advocacy to the Next Level

Truffle Media Networks — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:25:08 +0000

How can you utilize social media in agriculture? What steps should you take when general media portrays farming operations in a negative light? This webinar offers some guidance, tools, and resources to help. Webinar from Dairy Management Inc. and myDairyToolkit.com, December 14, 2011.

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Truffle Media's 3 Words for 2012

Truffle Media Networks — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 02:36:31 +0000

I was recently reminded of Chris Brogan's "My 3 Words for 2011" (plus 2010, 2009, and 2008) and thought how I would apply this to Truffle Media Networks.

One of the recommended approaches is to

"think long and hard about what these words will mean for you, how you can sum up an entire PERSPECTIVE into these words, and how you can use them as guideposts for your actions in the coming year."

So in this spirit I take a jab at creating the three words and share the deeper why.

Delegate. Great companies can't do it all. There are some tasks that just are not a good fit for a company to take on. Yet they have to have the task completed. They find someone to take on the work and get it done. Delegate, outsource, assign, whatever the word, they found the balance of getting tasks done.

Delegate. My grandmother was a great delegator. She was able to accomplish many great things in her community because she was able to discover the talents of her friends, family, colleagues, and associates, and, when the time came, make the ask. Part of delegation is learning to let go of the task and accept the outcome of the completed task. My grandmother was good at that. Yes, she had a set of standards. But she incorporated those standards into her talent identification process.

Delegate. Truffle Media Networks is a small organization with lots of ideas. We have to prune the ideas to a manageable level but still there are tasks we just don't have the internal resources to do. Historically we have killed ideas because we didn't have the people power. But that also meant we killed off possible products, maybe for the wrong reason. We need to look at what we truly want to do and figure out how to get it done. Delegate.

Deliver. That is what you expect from your local pizza place. If they don't deliver you stop ordering from them.

Deliver. You expect delivery from your home town newspaper. However, delivery gets a bit more complicated with a newspaper. The first part of deliver is "Did the paper get delivered this morning?", an easy thing to confirm. But newspapers must also deliver on the stories, and this gets very subjective in the news media business. Is the paper delivering on my expectations as a news channel for me? Is the newspaper delivering in its mission to be the neighborhood information and editorial source?

Deliver. The Truffle Media Networks team has been in the digital agriculture media world since late 2004. The aim originally was to leverage these things called iPods to bring relevant ag information and updates to top tier agri-producers, with the tag line "Podcasting With A Purpose". In late 2009 we changed the tag line to "Ag Media You Can Use" because we believed ag information for information's sake was not helpful, but ag media that you could actually use was definitely needed. However, in 2011 we don't believe we have really lived up to that tag line. So we either de(live)er on that or move on. Deliver.

Visible. I see my US mail delivery people certainly weekly. I know when they (there are two, sharing the route) will arrive. I know what to expect and they know who I am. They are visible.

Visible. I don't see my congressperson very much. I sometime forget who it is, except when they want to get (re)elected. Even then they are not visible in my part of the world. They are selectively visible whenever they want something.

Visible. Truffle Media Networks is visible in a variety of ways but are we visible and remembered? We attend ag focused events. We share an email update with our audience in a regular basis. We participate in ag related social media communities. But are we selectively visible, only showing up when we want something? We believe to be truly helpful we need to be visible when we don't need something. We need to be visible to help agri-professionals do their job better. Visible.

Delegate, Deliver, Visible. These are the three words Truffle Media Networks will use as guideposts for 2012. What are your three words?

Happy New Year,
John Blue