National FFA CEO Explains Why Indianapolis is the ‘Right Choice’ for Convention
Indianapolis will remain the home for the National FFA Convention and Expo for the next 13 years. The National FFA Organization, which also calls Indianapolis home, made the announcement last week that it had committed to Indy from 2025-2031 over Atlanta. National FFA chief executive officer Mark Poeschl said in a Facebook Live video that there were a number of considerations that went into this decision.
“We look at all sorts of things. Safety and security, availability of hotels, types of hotel rooms, cost for our guests to come to the hotel, the traffic, where they were going to have to stay in proximity (to the convention center), the amount of new hotels that were being built, where we could hold career leadership development events, if we could have a rodeo, do they have a state fairgrounds. Of course, we use all those. So, when we presented the proposal to our board of directors, they were quick to agree that Indianapolis was the right choice.”
Poeschl said they needed to round up just 56 more people to reach 70,000 attendees of the 2018 convention. He expects the event to only get bigger.
“We got to the point where, with the size of our event, we kind of have to look at Super Bowl type cities with those kinds of facilities. Also, thinking toward the centennial in not too many years, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility we could have 100,000 guests come to our convention in 2028.”
Poeschl was joined by Lt. Governor Suzanne Crouch and Indiana FFA state officers for the Facebook Live video explaining the decision to stay. We’ve shared the video and you can find it at the Hoosier Ag Today Facebook page.