To help thank Holly for her years of solid dedication to ACE, join us for a special reception in her honor in Scottsdale. It will be held Tuesday, Aug. 7, just before the evening awards banquet.

Let me briefly introduce our new partners. Deb Ryan, in the photo to the right, will serve as our executive director and will be the person we interact with the most. 

Deb will direct Celtic’s ACE team and provide budget oversight, governance and development expertise. She will oversee Celtic’s team in all aspects of the association, including membership, meeting planning, and fundraising, and will report to the board on a regular basis to communicate progress and ensure that goals are met. She brings more than 25 years of marketing, association and meeting management experience.

Deb brings with her a team of specialists who will assist her: Denise Illing with accounting, Stacy Nussbaum with meeting planning, Robin Doubek with member services, Marlene Byrne with annual planning, and more.

Marlene Byrne, Celtic president and CEO, will join us in Scottsdale for a few days, so be sure to seek her out and introduce yourself. Marlene will work with Deb to lead yearly strategic planning with the ACE board and to create a roadmap for business planning, projects, marketing and finance.

The search committee and ACE board were extremely impressed with Celtic’s experience and ideas for membership recruitment, member services, fundraising and strategic planning, and I join them in believing ACE is in excellent hands for the future.

Before the conference, continue to work with Holly Young for member needs, and we’ll share Celtic contact information in the future.

I look forward to seeing many of you in Scottsdale!

Suzanne Steel, ACE president

Make the most of this year’s AMS/ACE Conference

We hope you are making plans to join us in Scottsdale on Aug. 4-8 for the Ag Media Summit. ACE has joined forces with the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, the Livestock Publications Council, and the Connectiv Agri-Media Committee to offer an outstanding selection of more than 70 educational sessions. In addition, there will be an InfoExpo trade show, an excellent chance to network with ag reporters and ag-related organizations.

Here are a few tips to help you make the most of this great opportunity.

•  Bring plenty of business cards. More than 700 agricultural communication and media professionals are expected to attend this year’s conference, triple the number that typically attend the ACE conference. Many will be from agricultural media outlets, and some will be your alumni.
• Take advantage of the multiple networking opportunities. Attend the Famous Welcome Party and, if this is your first ACE conference, the first-timers’ reception. Introduce yourself to at least one person you don’t know during each session you attend and dung the breaks.
• Review the breakout session descriptions before you arrive. With so many options, you may face some difficult decisions on what to attend.
• AMS is the largest gathering of agricultural editors and journalists in the country. Be prepared with a pitch or two to promote a program or research project from your institution.
•  Attend one or more of the Learning Community meetings. At these meetings you can meet other ACE members with similar interests as you. And, if you want to get more involved with ACE, the Learning Communities are a great place to start.
•  Are you looking for an intern, new employee, or a potential graduate student? Look no further, undergraduate and graduate students will be in attendance as members of Agricultural Communicators for Tomorrow. Some might even be coming from your university. Reach out to them. Make their day and ask for their resume.
• Extend your stay and attend the post-conference diversity workshop. Dawn Gilpin, an associate honors professor of public relations and social media for Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications, will help participants develop strategies to communicate effectively with diverse audiences.
•  Follow up with contacts after the conference with additional information and pitches. Regardless of whether you provided a pitch or just exchanged business cards, you’ll want to follow up with contacts to help establish a relationship. You’ll probably may just want to add these folks to your mailing lists at list.
•  Make a vacation of it. The summit takes place at the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale. There are activities for the family at the resort and in the Scottsdale/Phoenix area.
• Make sure you take advantage of the early registration discount. Early registration ends June 22. For more details and to register, visit http://agmediasummit.com.

ACDC: a resource for historical agricultural communications

The Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC) at the University of Illinois makes archived agricultural communications materials more than a collection of untold stories and insights.

ACDC is a growing collection of approximately 45,000 documents that involve agriculture-related journalism and communications in the United States and more than 200 other countries. It is a resource for students, educators, researchers, and policy makers.

Many national associations of agricultural journalists and communicators archive historical records through ACDC. Those include the National Association of Farm Broadcasters, Agricultural Publishers Association, American Agricultural Editors’ Association, Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow, Agricultural Relations Council, Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association and Farm-City Council. The collections may be viewed on the ACDC website under “Archival Collections.”

ACDC staff review these historical materials and prepare citations for posting and online access. Please contact Lulu Rodriguez at lulurod@illinois.edu if you, your students, or others you know would like to consider collaborating in, or otherwise supporting, this special research initiative and outreach service.

Lulu Rodriguez, Director, Agricultural Communications Program
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign & ACE Research Director-elect

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