It doesn’t look like the ag world is ready to embrace the cloud to store precious data. Our latest ZimmPoll asked the question, “Will you use the cloud to store your data?” According to the results 62% said No, too many risks. Only 20% said Yes, already do and 18% said Yes but looking for better options. So how do you handle the storage of all your data today? Stick it onto an external hard drive? Keep it on your computer’s hard drive? Are you backing up? Do you keep a copy of that data off site? Something to think about if you haven’t already. We don’t use the cloud to store data for the reason that we have lots of data and in order to upload and access it you need more massive internet access capabilities than currently available. Then there’s the whole cost of that storage on an on-going basis. We triple back up our data too. This system is working for us right now.

Our new ZimmPoll is now live and asks the question, Do ag journalists (broadcast/print/web) adhere to good ethical practices in reporting? This topic of ethics always comes up at meetings like the Ag Media Summit. It usually generates a lively debate. How do ag journalists handle the interaction with advertisers and maintain some kind of neutrality in their reporting? That’s a good question. Our belief is that transparency is the key. We do our best to make sure our sponsors are known and the interviews we do with them are right there for you to listen to directly. Feel free to respond or posts your thoughts here in comments.

ZimmPoll is sponsored by Rhea+Kaiser, a full-service advertising/public relations agency.