Farm Futures Business Summit: Event Planning For An Audience That Grows
Corporate event planning and production never stops! Event professionals work to plan and execute trade show and corporate conferences year-round. Any event planner will tell you that there are no two corporate conferences that are the same. From varying industries to speakers to the venue, there are unlimited ways to produce corporate conferences. In the Midwest, a popular corporate event topic is agribusiness. At the beginning of 2020, Wired Production Group was proud to produce an engaging agribusiness conference for Farm Progress in Coralville, Iowa.
Through live events, digital products, publications, and more, Farm Progress is known as the largest and most diversified agriculture information business in North America. Farm Progress is connected to more than 2 million United States farmers and ranchers. The company has been operating for more than 100 years and is proud to provide almost 20 farm publications with agriculture news and marketing solutions. Farm Progress owns and operates the Farm Progress Show, the United States’ largest outdoor farm show, plus a variety of other world-class events, including Farm Futures Business Summit.
As part of Farm Progress, Farm Futures is the leading farm magazine in the United States. Nationally, it is considered the first source of farm risk management and marketing information. Each year, the Farm Futures Business Summit brings together agribusiness professionals at the conference to network, discuss current farm and ranch issues, and provide business training to farming professionals.
Months before the Farm Futures Business Summit, event organizers from Farm Progress started planning the conference with our client account managers. In the initial event planning stages, the event organizers coordinated a basic schedule of events to determine what stage design, video, lighting, and audio needs would be needed. In the venue, there were several spaces being used for events over the course of three days. This included a more intimate setting for a one-day special finance training session and a larger space for the two-day general sessions.
Before the conference attendees rolled in, our audio engineers, video production specialists, lighting designers, and stagehands worked to set up the two separate event spaces. The event production staff worked with the venue staff to coordinate load-in times and the room design to accommodate the conference attendees. With over 30 speakers, the attendance was expected to be high and stage design with screens would be needed for optimal viewing.
During the conference, our live video production team was able to work with the speakers to ensure their presentation content was ready to display at their scheduled times. This included a variety of different types of content — from PowerPoints to JPEGs to PDFs to videos — and our team was dedicated to presenting them flawlessly. Our on-site audio engineer worked with the video team to ensure that there was appropriate walk-up music for the presenters and background music for in-between the conference events. Coordinating the microphones — both wireless and lapel — with the speakers was also the responsibility of our audio engineer. The space was perfect for sound and kept the attendees engaged.
After three days of jam-packed agribusiness information, our crew wrapped up the event and headed home. We truly enjoyed learning from and working with Farm Progress and producing the Farm Futures events. Congratulations to the Farm Futures planning team on another successful conference in 2020. We look forward to following their events in the months and years to come!
For more information, please visit the Farm Progress website.