How the Produce Industry Serves up Super Bowls All Year Long
February 7, 2021 It’s February, so let’s talk Super Bowl. The biggest NFL game of the year is upon us.
Here in Cleveland, where Meister Media calls home, I live for Super Bowls of a different sort. Each of my previous trade publications covered annual conferences that anchored their industries. For one week every year, my world would stop. Quite frequently in Las Vegas, New Orleans, Washington, and San Francisco.
The amount of work that went into covering those meetings before, during, and after was tremendous. There was coordinating plans with VIPs. Devouring conference programs as thick as NFL playbooks. And riding that line between blitzing expo floors and attending educational sessions.
But I never minded. To me, these weren’t just shows. Each was The Show. One of my top moments as a journalist was going to Orlando, walking every aisle of BOTH humongous convention centers (North and South), and shaking hands and trading business cards with every single exhibitor.
Today, things are different in many ways. For starters, American Fruit Grower® magazine covers a variety of crops and regions, which amounts to several Super Bowls per year. That isn’t going to change, but the more the merrier. The other difference, hopefully, is temporary — a pandemic that has forced nearly every meeting the last year to go “virtual.”
In December, the ag show season began with a bang. For the first time in my career, three significant shows — Washington State Tree Fruit Association Annual Meeting and Northwest Hort Expo, The Almond Conference, and Great Lakes Expo — occurred simultaneously. And because each was presented online instead of in person, I was able to cover all three from my home. It was unprecedented. It was ironic. But most of all, it was nice to be back in the game.