National Convention

THE 84th NATIONAL CONVENTION

Oh boy, where do I even start? National convention... or should I say "The 84th National FFA Convention!!!"

This was truly a life-changing experience. We stayed overnight at the FFA Enrichment Center on Saturday night, then traveled to Indianapolis on Sunday morning! When we arrived at our hotel, one of the first people we saw was Mr. Shane Jacques himself!

We spent the entire first day going to workshops and eating. We started off the morning doing a 'conversation' workshop with Mr. Ryan Foor, had a wonderful 'social media' workshop after dinner and wrapped up with a 'delegate process' workshop at the end of the night.

On Tuesday all of our state officer friends from the mid-west finally arrived and we started the national delegate process. I was on the committee for the 'restructure of the delegate process'. I thoroughly enjoyed this process! I am not just saying that, but I felt that what I was doing and my input would effect the entire future of the National FFA Organization and agricultural education. What I did through the delegate process truly makes a difference in the life all of the members yet to come!

Now, National Convention wasn't all (fun) business, but was jam packed (literally) with over 50,000 FFA members, exciting sessions, career fairs, sponsor dinners, swing dancing, key-note speakers, time to meet members and catch up with friends.

So you would never guess where the Iowa delegates were seated in Conseco... front row seats. Aww yea! This being my first national convention, I was UBER excited (I'm pretty sure I was excited for more reasons than it being my first, BUT...)! One person who definitely helped 'spruce things up' was Ben Zelle.

This guy never ceases to amaze me, whether it be from his incredible energy, to his determination to finish a race (even after dehydrating because he gave blood a day before), to his inspirational words. Thank you Ben and keep on prodding me in the right direction from time to time!

National Convention was truly amazing and life-changing simply because of all of the energy, excitement and passion conveyed from the members, advisors and staff. What I enjoyed most, besides talking with other members and officers, was listening to the whole variety of speakers. One speech that particularly sticks out to me is the address by National FFA Secretary, Landan Shaffert. Landan talked about how you must step with faith. I can not use words to describe my feelings and the emotions that swept through me during Landan's inspirational address. You'll have to watch it for yourself. Go to 1:44:24- https://www.ffa.org/Events/NationalFFAConvention/Highlights/2011/video/Pages/Session-3.aspx. Once you watch his retiring address, you will understand what I was feeling.

Friday night, I had the wonderful opportunity to talk with Landan in the hotel lobby. I had introduced myself just days before. These several moments spent with him may seem small, but they have truly made my mind spin for the better. Landan's faith and belief is truly inspirational to all.

With Friday also being the last night of convention, of course I had to grasp every opportunity to catch up and enjoy my time with other state's officers. You could say that would entail of talking, going to 'Steak & Shake' (twice) and swing dancing all in one night until the sun should have been coming up!

The 84th National FFA Convention was the opportunity of a lifetime and I am a better person for attending it. I have to give a shout all of my amazing FFA Family! Thank you for making this year an incredible journey. I'll see you all along the way.

GROWMARK/ SCHOOL/ BOARD MEETINGS/ SLCDO/GFU CURRICULUM/ FFA BRAIN AMALGAMATE

*GROWMARK CONFERENCE*

GROWMARK created the opportunity of a lifetime for many at the end of the first week of school. Lindsay, Patrick, Mr. Lammers, Mr. Nattress and I headed out in a silver little car to Chicago. After six hours of Pat and I sleeping on Lindsay's shoulders (she wasn't thrilled), we stepped out of the car in (literally in) the nicest hotel I have been in my entire life, the Hilton, Chicago. The first night we met many business leaders, youth leaders and The Band Perry.

The next morning we had breakfast with several agriculture leaders. This opportunity was AMAZING. We learned why people chose to advance in their career. We also learned how the leadership position they were put in has impacted their lives and we learned what exactly they do, not just what their 'title' was. This was an incredibly impacting conference and great opportunity that I wouldn't trade anything for.

*BOARD MEETING*

Today was our first ever Team Ag Ed board meeting. As the Iowa FFA Association, we had tons to discuss and policies to pass. A meeting to a 'regular' person may sound boring, or really boring... or EXTREMELY boring. But I didn't feel this for one bit during this meeting... at all. Being actively engaged in a certain opportunity or issue that would impact others for all the future to come is quite an experience. I am thankful for being put in a position that makes this possible.

*STATE OFFICER TEAM MEETINGS*

We have had LOADS of topics heading the discussions of our officer team.

1) State Leadership Conference for District Officers

-Curriculum

-Event Organization

2)Chapter Visits

-Goals (What do you want?)

-Where and Who

-Curriculum

3)Greenhand Fire Up

-Curriculum

4)State Leadership Conference (a.k.a. State Convention)

-Sessions

-Themes

-Events (New opportunities for members? Workshops? Flash mob? What do YOU want to

see? What would get YOU excited?)

-Speakers (Any recommendations?)

-'Stinger' Videos: Quick video clips to create excitement for SLC! (Please give me IDEAS!)

*TONIGHT*

Tonight (right now) we are reflecting as a team a chapter from our Habitudes book. Tonight's story was about the 'Personal Laptop'.

"Our minds work like a computer. They only spit out the

data they have been fed. Garbage in, garbage out. Leaders

are disciplined about what they invest

in their mind and heart."

This message just reminds me, personally, that what may be the 'norm' is not always (and more often than not) right. We need to look into ourselves, our believes, and our personal beliefs to determine for ourselves what is morally right.

Start generating ideas for this year's theme "I BELIEVE" for State Convention and send me your ideas. Make a difference and make this year what YOU want it to be!

RAGBRAI & IOWA STATE FAIR

Wow- I haven't posted for almost an entire month! Time sure does fly... So much has happened since then.

RAGBRAI- BLUE LEMONADE STAND
Ragbrai seems like an eternity ago, but it sure was a BLAST! I joined on the route Wednesday night. We stayed over night at the Enrichment Center, then headed out to set up our BLUE LEMONADE stand. Patrick arranged for us spot in a lovely couple's front yard. They sold pie, which was a big hit for people who were stopping by for a break. On Friday we set up right on top of a hill and the sun was booming! This means bad for bikers; great for us! I had so much fun just talking to all the different types of people. We saw everything from 'regular' bikers, to livestrong folks, to a tandem banana, to families of 5 with 3 of them under 8, to people in their 80's, to Californians, to... I could probably go on all day. It was simply amazing to talk to the great variety of people and hear their story. I truly believe anyone can ride RAGBRAI if they put their mind to it!

IOWA STATE FAIR

We are officially on day FOUR of the fair, which really means day seven for us. Before the fair 'officially' started, the streets were full of vehicles and it was hard to maneuver. Now that the fair is going on, there are hardly any vehicles, but the numbers of people is incredible! I am having a blast! The other day I worked the swine show all day with the pork ambassador, pork queen and princess. It was a long day, but tons of fun! Since then I have been 'working' at the FFA Display in the Agriculture Building and in the FFA Headquarters. 'Working' in the display is a blast! I love talking to all the people and telling them about agriculture today. We have displays set up showing where the different cuts of meat come from on an animal. It is just fun to help people understand little things like this.

While in the display the other day, I had a little down time, so I started a poll of the ULTIMATE question in agriculture today...

What came first... the chicken or the egg?

After asking well over 200 people, it became clear... The CHICKEN came first according the variety of fair-goeres. It was great to hear the many theories and reasoning behind different people's answer. It was also a blast to ask little kids and see what their take was.

Besides HQ and the Display, I ushered the Jason Aldean concert, spent time getting to know ushers, and helped and talked to the stage attendants around the fairgrounds. Yesterday we also helped out with the traditional parade of champions and got to escort all of the fair queens for the fair queen contest. It was just a fun time to talk to all of these beautiful girls and see their desire and passion for agriculture. Hearing about the process they went through to become a fair queen reminded me about running for state office and I give them 'props' for going through the entire process and having fun with it.

Since us four guys were walking around the fair in tuxes, we got quite a few questions and many looks. We decided to have some fun with it and escorted Shaniel and Sarah through the grounds like we were their body guards. We would even put our wrist up to our mouth and talk like real 'spys' or 'guards' do... :).

At night we just chill and wait for the ushers to get done with their concert. Then we go out and eat some amazing pizza with them and just talk. It is so much fun hanging out with all the ushers and just enjoy the fair with a great bunch of people. Last night several of the group leaders and I stayed up until talking until 3:00 in the morning! When you have fun talking, it is so easy to lose track of time and just have fun.

The Iowa State Fair is going GREAT and I LOVE talking with all of the youth and people coming together to celebrate the great state of Iowa.

Discussions at the E.C., State Fair, & Ragbrai

ENRICHMENT CENTER

At the beginning of July we had a state officer family dinner. This was loads of fun to get to talk to everyone's family and see where they come from. The parents told an embarrassing moment about their state officer child (which will come in handy sometime) and filled the room with laughter. A delicious main meal was provided by Lindsay's parents (THANKYOU) and everyone definitely walked away with a little food baby (thats what we younger generation call a full stomach).

Staying at the enrichment center is usually a fun time. Lindsay and I went for a run. We also watch movies as a team upstairs on the couches. We just hook up a computer to the T.V. and walah! We also went to see Cars 2 as a team. I would tell you how it was, but I might have dozed off for a little bit. It is just fun to hang out with the other state officers and get to know them.

On Monday we had our first board meeting. Some people hear the words 'board meeting' and think that if you go to one, you will be 'bored'. That wasn't the case for me on this one. We actually discussed some interesting topics and it was fun to see all the pro's and con's of a particular item. It was also fun to talk to board members about ideas for our district and other ag related issues.

STATE FAIR

Earlier this week we had our first state fair meeting. In the morning we worked at the fairgrounds and cleaned out the FFA Headquarters. Patrick and I dug a nice little trench (we like to call it a river) just outside of the building with hopes that it will reduce the accumulation of water around the Headquarters. In the afternoon we met with Mr. Lammers and Mr. Spencer about our display and what we all need to do at the fair. We have some GREAT new ideas and fun activities going on at our booth in the display building, so you have to make sure to check it out!

I have also been talking with Mrs. Gruis about the 'logo' for this years theme- I Believe. She has told me more about graphic design and how to create effectively than any classroom lecture could have told me. It has been fun talking and working on various designs with her. It is fun to have someone doing the exact thing that I would like to do in the future to talk to.

RAGBRAI

At Ragbrai the state officers are giving out ice-cold water and BLUE lemonade. Patrick and Michael have just about everything lined up for this and are getting ready to go! This will be a fun week and I'm sure quite the adventure. Stop on by for some FFA BLUE LEMONADE!

DISTRICT FUN DAY

On the district level, at our meeting the other day we decided that we will be having a Northwest District-Wide Fun Day! We will be playing sand volleyball in Ocheyedan on Saturday July, 30 at 10:00 AM. Teams will consist of six people (guys or girls, members or advisors). Registration costs $20 per team. Dinner will be provided! To register, contact me at sbrockshus@iowaffa.com. Come on out for an AMAZING day jam-packed with fun! This is a GREAT opportunity to connect and meet other members from around the district!

Team Ag Ed

About two weeks ago the Iowa FFA Foundation held their annual golf tournament for sponsors. This year it was a GREAT success! Our role as state officers was to help out in any way possible. To do this we:

1. Helped with registration and sold mulligans
2. Mingled and got to know our sponsors on a personal level
3. Helped run a live auction during the banquet

This was a GREAT experience and opportunity to CONNECT with businessmen and industries that directly work with agriculture today.

Iowa's State Officers at NLCSO with National FFA Officers Tiffany and Riley.

Our next event was National Leadership Conference for State Officers (NLCSO). It was an honor to hold this great event for the state officers from Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, and of course, Iowa. This conference helped us develop and hone in on the qualities it takes to successfully advocate and lead our state to a better understanding of agriculture. Rodd Whitney of Monsanto enlightened us with the major issues of agriculture today in a very interesting and engaging way.

Here are a few notes that I jotted down throughout the week.

*Henry Groseclose= THE FATHER OF AGRICULTURE

*Agricultural Education can happen without the FFA, but the FFA can NOT happen without Agricultural Education.

*There are more agricultural production farmers in China than there are people in the U.S.
-(But those 400 million farmers in China only have 9% of the worlds workable soil to produce on... While the US has 28% of the worlds workable soil)

*Every time you go to sleep, by the time you wake up in the morning, there are 210,000 more mouths to feed.

*The #1 issue in agriculture today is FEEDING THE WORLD.

Iowa FFA State Officers working with State Officers from other states.

This past week has been a GREAT time and we have all taken back many VALUABLE memories that we can carry with us during our time of service to the FFA and even after our period is over. Thank you everyone for making this a great week. Lets go Team Ag Ed. Agricultural education is the base for the FFA. Agriculture is important and necessary to FEED THE WORLD. Go out and be advocates for LIFE. Peace out FFA. BELIEVE. -Steven Brockshus

NW District Leadership Conference

Last week we had our Northwest District Leadership Conference! It was a BLAST! To get ready for it, the day before, our district officer team met and we talked things out. We discussed how things would run and what materials we would all need. Then we made a "quick", fun Walmart trip for supplies and supper. Then we set up all the rooms and went back to Mr. Weber's house. We also went to his school and picked up our district T-shirts and polo's! Mr. Weber then grilled us some delicious burgers- THANKS!

That night we discussed curriculum and facilitating tips. We played an amazing game of Apples to Apples and had a fun time with it! When the other state officers, Sarah, Nicole, and Michael arrived, we talked and talked and talked about FFA and life. We discussed how the other district's DLCs went and some more hints and tips to be successful.

The next morning we all got up nice and early, cleaned and had breakfast, then headed off to DLC to finish setting up and be ready. We got there about 45 minutes before registration started and hung up posters, set up tables, and took additional supplies to the rooms.

At about 8:00, members and advisors started rolling in. We had a great turn out and a variety of people show up and have a great time! We had Dan from the foundation present for one of the workshops. The advisors also had a workshop with Mr. Weber and went on a tour of Dordt College. The district officers split up with one state officer to facilitate one workshop the entire day. In the morning the state officer did more of the presenting and as the day went on our district officers stepped up and did the facilitating! It was great to see how much everyone grew and increased their participation throughout the day. THANKYOU to EVERYONE who attended DLC this year for making it a fun experience for everyone. I truly appreciate your cooperation and involvement!

Throughout the day members from across the district met new people and made new friends. Each chapter discovered new activities they could do to get their chapter members more involved. They also came up with a chapter mission statement and several SMART goals. It was fun to see what members had for ideas of how to improve the FFA. It was also great to see discussion of what we could do for some district wide fun day activities!

A thanks goes out to Dordt College for providing us with outstanding facilities and great meal! Also, thank you to all the state officers who helped the day run smoothly; Sarah, Nicole, and Michael. Thank you Mr. Weber for guiding us through this, providing a home for the night and also a delicious meal. Thank you members for attending and making it a GREAT day! I would like to give a special SHOUT OUT to all of our district officers, Cassie, Caroline, Josh, Shelby, and Marshall for stepping up, believing in youselves, and doing the right thing to impact others. It was fun to see you take over the workshops, facilitate, and lead the members. You are all doing great things and have made many lasting memories with FFA members throughout the district. Without you, our DLC would be nothing. THANKS!

Be sure to CHECK OUT our district webpage and our *new* FACEBOOK page! Please post any ideas for chapter activities, chapter goals, district goals, and district wide activities that we could do. The more ideas we have, the faster we can improve and the more fun we can have as a district. Thanks! Peace out FFA! BELIEVE.

Using Graphic Design Skills to SERVE

Seeing that I am going to school this following year for graphic design, I have taken it upon my self to meet the designing needs for the Iowa FFA. The first thing I designed for the FFA (besides on the chapter level) was our T-shirt for the NW district. The revealing of these will be at District Leadership Conference this Friday!

The next thing I designed was our state officer business cards. The plain old white ones are classy- but we decided to spice things up a bit and do the old switch-er-roo. I designed seven different styles and types of business cards. Then I sent them out in a Google Doc to my fellow state officers for a vote... and wallah! Now I am in the process of putting in people's information and sending them out to Shaniel to be printed!

The latest and most challenging task I took up was to design a 'logo' for this year's theme... BELIEVE. Being in the state of Iowa (and a Cyclones fan) the first idea that popped into my head was to make a logo that is somewhat based off of the current Iowa State logo. This presented a major challenge. I wanted it to be the same font and everything. I tried taking an easy and less creative approach to this task. After several hours of research and frustration, I realized that the font was made 'in-house' and was not available to the public. At this point I almost scratched the project all together.

The next day I thought I looked at things in a more positive manner and thought I would take a different approach to the same task. Using multiple designing programs, I got creative and went away towards my goal. Once again, I was excited to tackle this project. I got a bit carried away and designed 13 variations of a logo for our theme BELIEVE. Once again, I sent it out to all of our state officers for a vote.

At this point I received something that I did not expect. A suggestion from another state officer to make the logo even better. This got me extremely excited, because I had never thought of it. I quickly went at it and within minutes I had e-mailed out two new designs. Needless to say, our final design turned out LEGIT!

I just sent out the final design, so be looking for it on many various objects throughout the year, especially on our semi-trucks that we sell! Thank you everyone for your input and support!

Being able to put my skills and abilities to use for something greater than my self is an honor. I very much enjoy designing things of various sorts and I am thankful for the many opportunities to do so for the state of Iowa. Thank you FFA. Peace out. BELIEVE.

Communication Training

So- the next 'major' event we had as state officers was communication training! This was much more 'relaxed' (if you could call it that) than BLAST Off Training. During this training we met as an officer team and talked about everything going down for the summer and how we are going to tackle it. We also met with the Iowa FFA Foundation and learned the ins and outs of how it all works. Then we took on the task of completely re-constructing District Leadership Conference curriculum. With the help of Randy, we learned many useful skills on how to facilitate a workshop. He also gave us the best constructive criticism to help improve DLC. This took waaaaaaay longer than anticipated, but I am so glad that we worked together as a team and used everyone's ideas to (*hopefully*) make this a success!

During this week we also learned proper dinner etiquette. This was a very interesting experience. Who knew that you are supposed to eat french fries with a fork!? Or how about eat fruit with a spoon? Or my favorite, when eating soup, scoop it up pushing the spoon away from your body, then tilt the spoon upward and 'sip' the soup. When doing this one, I probably learned more ways to spill it on myself, the table cloth, and all over my face than how to actually 'properly' eat the soup.

After learning proper etiquette, we got to put our new skills to use first hand while meeting the Alumni for the first time. It was great to see so many people supporting us in everything we do. It's nice to know that someone's got our back.

That wrapped up our Communication Training, but I stayed at the Enrichment Center another night with Lindsay and Patrick (I just realized that I have forgotten to introduce you to our 2011-2012 state officer team, so we've got Lindsay, Sarah, Nicole, Logan, Patrick, Michael, and Marshal! And me of course!). This night we stuffed thank you letters for our many wonderful sponsors of the 2011 State Leadership Convention. We also had many deep conversations and fun bonding moments :).

The next day Patrick made me a wonderful breakfast of toast and eggs on a skillet. Then I was on the road to a meeting with a potential sponsor for the NW district's T-shirts. After that I rode back to my home-town school, boarded a bus, and journeyed off for our FFA chapter's Jr./Sr. Trip. Now I'm happily blogging from Orlando, FL. "We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." Walt Disney. Peace out FFA! BELIEVE.

SLCDO & BLAST Off Training

Two weeks after being elected to state office, I had my first 'training'. This was State Leadership Conference for District Officers. Being the state vice president automatically makes me the NW district president (if you didn't understand how that works). This conference was run by the 'Has-Been' state officers, in other words- last years officers. This was extremely fun and filled with many learning opportunities! One of my favorite things was getting to meet so many new people. We all worked together on the ropes course to achieve one common goal. This showed us the importance of teamwork, leadership, and compensation. For the two days we were going at it, we all hung up paper-bag mailboxes for anyone to put a personal message in. After the conference, I enjoyed reading every one of these and I filled my cubicle with them!

After SLCDO, I was introduced to the state officer suite! This is a place in the FFA Enrichment Center where there is a cubicle office space for every state officer. There are also housing quarters with nice little 'army-cot' beds that are about 3 inches thick (yet surprisingly comfy). I decorated my cubicle with sticky notes (I love sticky notes), motivational quotes and other various items to make it 'home'.

The very next day, all of us state officers started our BLAST Off Training with Ryan, Becky and Shane! We started on the first afternoon with various workshops that went late into the night. This first day was a bit overwhelming, but I enjoyed learning so many new things! As the week went on, it was hard to get a grasp on how much we had actually learned, but looking back in review, all of it is extremely important and essential to serve our state. We created our own life mission statements to build our life off of. We also developed personal leadership statements, which defined what we believe leadership to be. Another major thing we did was set personal SMART goals. These will be very beneficial to help us grow throughout the year (One of my SMART goals was to actually start a blog!). Throughout this entire week of high-impact intensive training, we learned how to build influence by how we carry ourselves and represent our state through the FFA. This entire week, I believe we, as a state officer team, grew to know each other better than anyone who had only known each other for a short amount of time. Because of the work of Ryan, Becky, and Shane, we have started to unlock our potential to make a difference in the lives of others. Other human beings. Other FFA members. As advocates for agriculture, we need to use our passion, heart, care, integrity, hard work, and desire to SERVE the members and advance agriculture and the FFA. Peace out FFA! BELIEVE.

State Office Elections

When I was elected to state office, I was really excited! I think it’s a great honor to be in a position to serve others throughout the state! Growing up on a family dairy farm, I have been around agriculture and I see how it can impact others.

Going back a few months ago when I told my father I was running for a state office, he was surprised. He served as a state officer back in 1992-1993. He knew I have always been busy, but never thought I would run for state office. He said that it was a real busy time, but you meet new people and build relationships that you wouldn’t be able to build anywhere else in the world. Going into the interview process all he said was to be personable and be yourself.

The 'extensive' election process at the state leadership conference included a test about FFA knowledge, a one-on-one talk with each member of the nominating committee, a group presentation to show how well each of us candidates worked together in a team situation, and five questions additional questions in front of the judges. After completing this process, two candidates for each office were placed on the ballot. Since no one else from the NW district ran, I was balloted unopposed. After all of this, I presented a two-minute speech to delegates of the NW district about integrity. Then I was asked two questions and had one minute to answer each one. This was a little nerve wracking, but I went at it confidently and just went with it.

The only advice I have for anyone applying or interviewing for anything is to just to be yourself and be honest.

My background is that I live on a fifth-generation dairy farm located just two miles south of the Iowa/Minnesota state line. I have three brothers and no sisters. We milk a 400-cow herd of Holsteins in a modified stanchion-parlor barn.

This next year I will be attending Iowa State University to study graphic design.

I look forward to serving the Iowa FFA Association, and ALL the members! You can always get a hold of me for anything you need at sbrockshus@iowaffa.com. Peace out FFA! BELIEVE. 6.2.11