My Old Kentucky Home

Fresh off my presentation at the Animal Agriculture Alliance and a quick stop in Chicago for an IPR/Page Society talk, I'm looking forward to heading back to Lexington, Kentucky next week for the Alltech 29th Annual International Symposium. I lived and worked in Lexington for five years and it will be great to catch up with some friends, clients, and colleagues.

The Symposium is interesting because it brings together companies from every link in the food supply and distribution chain, and you're just as likely to meet a lifelong farmer as you are a celebrated biochemist.  Of course, I wouldn't know the first thing to do on a farm or in a laboratory, but there's a place for me here too - the people who attend Symposium want people to understand the value of what they do, so communication plays an important role here.

I'm excited to serve on a pair of panels for the symposium - one on food marketing and branding, the other on crisis communications.  I confess I'm a little intimidated by the impressive reputations accomplishments of the other panelists (The crisis panel alone features Gavin Megaw, Liz Kynoch, and Patrick Wall), but I see my role on each panel as challenging convention a little bit. Without giving too much away, I want to bring the people at Symposium into direct, unfiltered contact with the people and the experiences I think they should care about most.   It's a bit of a gamble but the organizers and other panelists have indulged me so I'm very grateful.  

Of course, if the ideas flop everyone knows it's my fault, so I guess there's no pressure on them.  Stay tuned.