Tag Archives: agwired

Demystifying blogging

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My buddy Chuck posted the following to his blog (AgWired) today:

“Hi there AgWired fans. This morning I’m doing a new media presentation with the folks at John Deere and their agency, BCS Communications. This is an example post for the presentation.”

So what? For many (most? all?) of the people in the room, updating a web page is a Dark Art. Magic. At the very least, a pain in the ass. Some person or persons (or a committee) has to approve the copy and then send it to the web people and –eventually– the web page gets updated.

Chuck just logged in to his Word Press account. Bangs in the copy above…hits the submit button…and publishes for the world to see. It took less time than it is taking me to tell you about it.

I’ve used this analogy before but it’s a good one. When a room full of execs see a demo like this (I wasn’t there but I’ve done a few of these)… it’s like the scene in every Tarzan movie with the Great White Hunters “make fire come from stick,” or when they crank up the movie projector (where did they plug it in?) for the pygmies.

AgWired: Guerilla video

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I refer you, once again, to AgWired for a good example of how easy it is to add video to your blog or website. Chuck Zimmerman is covering the International Poultry and Feed Expos in Atlanta. His posts include –as always– still images and audio. But he is increasingly dropping in short video clips.

He’s just roaming around the floor in this clip but he could just as easily have stopped to interview an exhibitor or speaker. The operative word here is “easily.” He ran the video through Windows Movie Maker (free) for a quick edit and a title…uploaded to YouTube (free)…and then embedded their flash player in his post. Done.

Contrast that to dragging around a cameraman and sound guy (expensive) who have to get back to a studio for post-production (expensive: time and money). Then you gotta get it to the TV station or cable channel and blah, blah, blah. Chuck is carrying everything he needs on his back and if the expo hall is wifi’d…all he needs is a place to sit down.

AgWired blogging from Germany

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The Hardest Working Blogger in Show Business, Chuck Zimmerman, is in Berlin, covering the annual meeting of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists. IFAJ is “a non-political, professional association for agricultural journalists in 29 countries.” As far as I can determine (and Chuck is aware), he is the only person blogging this event.

You gotta figure that at least some of the attendees have laptops and digital cameras with them. Not one blogger in the bunch? Maybe there’s coverage of the event at the official IFAJ website…nope.

Old Media types can’t understand why I’m even asking? Bloggers can’t imagine attending something like this and not putting up a couple of posts.

Skype from Norway

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I just spent half an hour chatting with Chuck Zimmerman who is in Oslo, Norway covering the annual meeting of the International Federation of Agriculture Journalists. More on that in a moment…

The purpose of the call was to play with Skype (and teach Chuck the correct pronunciation of fjord). Chuck’s had a Skype account for a while but –like me– really didn’t know a lot of folks using the service. I’m guessing a half-hour telco call would cost a few bucks, but the Skype-to-Skype call was free. And the quality was damned good. I’m not gonna post on this again until I can include some sample audio.

One final observation on Chuck’s coverage of the IFAJ conference. Of the approximately 200 journalist attending, Chuck guesses 95% are print and the rest are PR folks and a few radio types.

I’m guessing most of the attendees are there to drink beer, eat cheese and have a good time. Which, I assume, Chuck is doing, too. But not one of them is blogging the event. Chuck is doing it because the folks at Pioneer are paying him but, still…

Anyway, Skype was slicker than snot and I promise to get you a sample for those that haven’t played with this amazing service.

This is how all events will be covered

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AgWired’s Chuck Zimmerman shares a story that illustrates the power of the blog. Syngenta (a big biotech company) had Chuck come in and blog a “media day” event a couple of weeks ago:

“This event started around 8am and was finished around 3pm. I posted 20 times including over 20 pictures and 5 audio interviews and they were all on AgWired before the end of the day (same day). Many of the posts were done during the actual presentations.

At the end of the event I burned all the pictures and audio to a CD and left it with them. They can post them onto their own website and it’s my understanding that is exactly what they plan to do. Their investment in this is minimal and yet they have immediate multimedia content that’s online before the other media attending even get home to their offices.”

No studio. No camera crew. No editors. One guy with some consumer grade gear and a truck-load of hustle. Is this journalism? I have no idea. And the people at Syngenta don’t care (as long as what Chuck posted is accurate).

If I were in charge of media at Syngenta, I’d ask everyone that covered the event to send me a link to their coverage (or a copy of the magazine article or a video clip of the TV piece, whatever). Then I’d make up a little matrix showing the coverage; when it got “out there”; and what kind of Google ranking it produced.