A Great Success….
Over 220 AgGateway members and guests came together in Las Vegas for the 2011 AgGateway Annual Conference ensuring attendance reached record levels for the second straight year. We welcomed 88 first time attendees to the event this year as well, a great testament to the value of work being done by AgGateway!
Throughout the conference, speakers addressed the theme of 'Winning in Ag with eBusiness . . . Maximizing Your Opportunities.' President and CEO of Helena Chemical, Mike McCarty opened the conference by discussing the global and national factors driving today’s agricultural industry and how Helena has found ways to maximize its opportunities for success. Presentations by Richard Douglass, Industry Director, Smarter Commerce - Manufacturing at IBM, David Lane (AGDATA), Frank Rydl (Key Cooperative), Rick Rice (XS, Inc.) and Terry Griffin (Griffin Consulting) on eSolutions to business challenges provided a wealth of information for our conference participants. Rounding out our line-up of speakers was the renowned Global Futurist, Jack Uldrich, who challenged us all to 'unlearn' our ways of thinking and to look at the everyday to find opportunities to advance eBusiness within our organizations.
In addition to this great line-up of informative speakers, conference attendees participated in many Council, Committee and Project meetings. This opportunity to meet together face-to-face is one of the more valuable aspects of the Annual Conference. Evening networking sessions rounded out each day's events and provided members a chance to unwind and get to know each other a little better.
Sponsorships are very important to the success of the Annual Conference, and this year we were fortunate to have more sponsors participating than ever before. Not only did we have four Platinum Sponsors (BASF, Monsanto, Mosaic and AGDATA), but we added two new Gold Sponsorships (Raven Industries and Oracle). Thanks go out to all our sponsors for helping us to provide a valuable learning and networking event for all our members.
Finally - Presentations, Photos, and a Final Participant list from the conference will be available December 1 , so make sure you stop back then!
The 2011 Conference Committee