At SOWTH 2025, attendees will take part in building the first ever Pollinator’s Atlas and seeing, in almost real time, the connections made at the conference!By sharing information about attending organizations, everyone will help to build a living resource for Southern producers using crowdsourced data: a publicly available, interactive tool to help farmers and producers find services in their states.
By logging your conference connections, everyone will help visualize how our community, a hive if you will, grew and became denser during SOWTH 2025.
How does Project Pollinate work?
Conference-attending organizations will be asked to share what services they provide to farmers/producers/ranchers. Ignited Word will use that information to build the Pollinator’s Atlas in time for SOWTH and display it in the Exhibitor’s Hall throughout the conference.
All SOWTH attendees will then be asked to complete a short digital form at the end of each day of the conference called the Pollinator’s Log. The busy bees at Ignited Word will take all that information and data and use it to visualize our regional network before and after the conference in almost real time!
- Throughout each day, use the pages designated for Project Pollinate in your printed program to jot down who you’ve interacted with. Make sure to note the state they live in, their role in our community, and their contact information so you can stay in touch.
- Use these notes to fill out the digital Pollinator’s Log on Wednesday afternoon after the last session. This should take no longer than 10 minutes and can be completed on a mobile device, tablet or computer.
- Attend the Lunch Plenary: “How to Pollinate a Network with Ignited Word” on Thursday, February 6th at 11:45am to explore the first version of the tool and to watch your network grow in real time.
- Fill out the connection log one last time at the end of the day on Thursday to capture any interactions made during the last day of the conference.
- Stay tuned for an updated version of the map that will incorporate responses collected on Thursday as well as a quick guide to navigating the resource. If you love data and want to see more details about how agricultural professionals connected at SOWTH, keep an eye out for the final network report!
Project Pollinate supports SOWTH’s mission – No matter the size of your farm or where you’re coming from, we’re building a “big community” that is SOWTH. ProjectPollinate will allow us to share our knowledge and resources, and unlock our collective power to make a bold impact for our region.