Advocating at Ag Day at the Capital

This spring, I am interning with Ohio Farm Bureau in their public policy department. For this position, I have been able to focus on some event planning projects in the area of agricultural policy.

On Tuesday, we hosted our first event of the year, Ag Day at the Capital. Ag Day at the Capital is an annual event that focuses on bringing farm bureau members to Columbus to learn about updates in policy and regulations that relate to the agricultural industry. These agriculturalists have the opportunity to meet with legislatures during a luncheon and also schedule individual meetings with their congressional districts to discuss pertinent policy topics for their local areas.

I assisted with the pre-event planning and logistics and worked with legislatures and farm bureau employees to help the event come together. During the day, I had a few minor responsibilities like assisting with check-in and seating legislatures in the Statehouse atrium for a luncheon. Because I did not have many ‘big’ tasks, I was able to do one thing I love: tweet.

Twitter has become one of my main resources of information and favorite ways to communicate with people! Not only does it allow me to enhance my creativity by stopping me from using over 140 characters, but I can also follow events and people in a timely way.

For Ag Day, Ohio Farm Bureau created a Storify account to piece together all of the details from the event in a fun, technological way. This helped guests and others who were unable to attend see some of the event from a unique perspective. To the right is the Storify story that was created for Ag Day.

You can visit the farm bureau Storify and see more tweets and posts from Ag Day.

I think the use of a Storify was a very innovative action for farm bureau to take. Not only is it unique, but also it is an easy way to piece together all of the thoughts and activities that were shared during Ag Day. If other companies and organizations begin to implement the use of platforms like Storify, it could help them standout in the public relations realm.

How do you think farm bureau did in their PR for Ag Day? What are your thoughts on Storify and other similar technologies?