National FFA Convention to be live on Internet

In a sig­nif­i­cant tech­no­log­i­cal move for­ward for agri­cul­ture, the National FFA Orga­ni­za­tion will stream its 2011 National Con­ven­tion in Indi­anapo­lis Oct. 19–22 live online via the newly launched All­tech Ag Net­work on iHigh.com. The tele­vised con­ven­tion will be acces­si­ble real time via com­put­ers, iPads and all iPhone, Android and Black­Berry mobile devices.

As FFA mem­ber­ship stands at more than a half-million stu­dents through­out the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Vir­gin Islands, iHigh.com expects this to be their largest tele­cast ever. Yet the sig­nif­i­cance of the con­ven­tion broad­cast goes beyond record-breaking metrics.

“Agri­cul­ture is tak­ing the lead in com­mu­ni­ca­tions, mov­ing high tech to engage the world in its story,” said Billy Frey, gen­eral man­ager of the All­tech Ag Net­work. “iHigh.com’s unique plat­form enables it to, for exam­ple, on a recent Fri­day night, broad­cast more than 170 high school foot­ball games simul­ta­ne­ously and live to mobile devices free of charge. This is a capa­bil­ity far beyond many major sports orga­ni­za­tions and appli­ca­tions. FFA is now har­ness­ing this power, broad­en­ing its reach at a time when our grow­ing pop­u­la­tion is mov­ing increas­ingly far away from the sto­ries of the farm and the ori­gins of their food.”

iHigh.com, the Global Youth Net­work, is designed to pro­vide free feature-rich web ser­vices to schools, stu­dents and youth orga­ni­za­tions, and enables live stream­ing of events, mobile broad­cast­ing, unlim­ited photo uploads and more. Using iHigh.com’s unique feature-rich web and broad­cast plat­form, high schools and orga­ni­za­tions such as the National High School Rodeo Asso­ci­a­tion, U.S. Pony Club, USA Swim­ming, the Bass Fed­er­a­tion, BMX tracks, AAU and many oth­ers are able to share their events in real time with a global audi­ence that can access the stream­ing video on any com­puter or mobile device. Cur­rently, iHigh receives 1.3 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors per month with a growth of 30 per­cent just within the last 30 days.

“iHigh.com is a true sup­porter of FFA and exem­pli­fies this by pro­vid­ing the means to take our con­ven­tion mes­sage to tens of thou­sands of FFA mem­bers through­out the coun­try and beyond who aren’t able to attend the event,” said National FFA Orga­ni­za­tion CEO Dwight Arm­strong. “This is a major oppor­tu­nity for FFA and we are extremely grate­ful for iHigh.com’s exper­tise, resources and abil­i­ties to reach our mem­ber­ship in a new and mean­ing­ful way.”

“I am so pleased that one of the pre­mier youth orga­ni­za­tions in the United States, the FFA, has cho­sen to use the All­tech Ag Chan­nel on iHigh.com to reach their audi­ence in this ever-changing world of tech­nol­ogy,” said Jim Host, CEO of iHigh.com.

The broad­cast sched­ule for the 2011 FFA National Con­ven­tion is as fol­lows (times are listed in EST):

• I Believe — Open­ing Ses­sion at Con­seco Field­house — Oct. 19, 7:15 p.m.

• I Believe in Action — Sec­ond Ses­sion at Con­seco Field­house — Oct. 20, 2 p.m.

• I Believe in… — Third Ses­sion at Con­seco Field­house — Oct. 20, 7:30 p.m.

• I Believe in Ser­vice – Fourth Ses­sion at Con­seco Field­house – Oct. 21, 8 a.m.

• I Believe in Lead­er­ship — Fifth Ses­sion at Con­seco Field­house — Oct. 21, 12 p.m.

• I Believe in Excel­lence — Sixth Ses­sion at Con­seco Field­house — Oct. 21, 3 p.m.

• I Believe in Pos­si­bil­i­ties — Sev­enth Ses­sion at Con­seco Field­house — Oct. 21, 7 p.m.

• I Believe in Pas­sion — Eighth Ses­sion at Con­seco Field­house — Oct. 22, 7:45 a.m.

• I Believe in the Future — Ninth Ses­sion at Con­seco Field­house — Oct. 22, 1:30 p.m.

View the broad­casts live on the Inter­net or an iPad at ffa.ihigh.com. For mobile phone, includ­ing iPhones, Androids and some Black­Ber­rys, the broad­casts may be accessed at m.ihigh.com/ffa by click­ing on the media but­ton and select­ing your smart­phone type to view the broadcast.

Broad­casts will be view­able live and on-demand at no cost to the users. If there are any issues view­ing a broad­cast, please con­tact 859–514-3886 for tech­ni­cal support.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Oct 13 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.