Behind the scenes with Matt McClellan

Managing editor Matt McClellan plays Pyramid for charity.

Fun for a good cause
Staffers from GIE Media publications Nursery Management, Greenhouse Management and Garden Center had the privilege to play Pyramid for Charity, hosted by BASF at this year’s OFA Short Course. Through our sharp wits, which were in no way dulled by three days on the trade show floor, my boss and I won $500 for the Wounded Warrior Project. Editors from other trade magazines also played. In all, the media teams brought in $3,850 for charity.

Rise of the robots
We got to chat with John Kawola, CEO of Harvest Automation about the HV-100, the company’s first agricultural harvesting robot. The robot, affectionately known as Harvey, runs on two lithium-ion batteries and is fully autonomous. Harvey kept busy throughout the three days of OFA Short Course, often attracting a crowd as he did his work. I can’t blame them. There was something mesmerizing about watching the little guy zip back and forth. Check out our video of the robots in action at bit.ly/NMrobots.
 

Proven perennials
One of my favorite parts of going to a big trade show like the Short Course is checking out all the new plants. I spoke with Susan Martin, director of marketing communication for Walters Gardens about four new perennial introductions that were turning heads on the floor.

Watch the video here: bit.ly/NMWaltersPW.

And visit our website for more videos from the 2013 Short Course.
 

Trending topics
The Twitterers among you already know that the Short Course (or #shortcourse) is a social media maelstrom. For those who haven’t jumped on the bandwagon, here are a few of the best tweets that were flying past our timeline. And if you decide to jump on, remember to follow @NurseryMag for our Tweets!