International Perspective – Paul Rose
Perhaps a little belated now but I would like to take the opportunity to wish everyone all the best for 2012. During the first month of 2012, Ag Leader held their 3rd International Distributors training in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. As before, we had over 30 attendees from 18 countries, though it has to be said that some could not make it due to prior commitments. I would like to thank those that did make the effort and were able to come. Prizes for farthest travelled go to Derren Helprin (Ag Leader Asia-Pacific Territory Manager) from Australia and Rodrigo Ortega from Chile. But an honourable mention should also go to Kamil for his 14 hour drive from Poland! It took the whole week to cover Ag Leaders extensive product range, which included technical training on all items such as OptRx, DirecCommand, Guidance and Steering and SMS Software.
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Nick and Hans introduce Ag Leader
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Matt Pifkin going through guidance training
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Petr, Tony and Matus from P&L
Of course, intensive training like this also means we need to have some time to relax and enjoy ourselves. Nijmegen is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands and was a pivotal point during WW2 so there is a lot of history in the area. It also boasts well over 100 bars and restaurants so there was plenty to choose from. However, in terms of social events I think the Go Karting event held on the Wednesday evening was the highlight! After 3 rounds of intensive driving, several crashes and a lot of good fun there was only one winner – congratulations to Zlatko Findri of Croatia for winning this event with the fastest lap time out of all 40+ of us. But I also have to remind him that it was the narrowest of margins, beating our own Luke James by 1/1000th of a second!
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Karting was a lot of fun!
Finally, an event like this does not happen overnight or without a lot of hard work and planning beforehand. Thank you to Louis Nagel BV for hosting the event and to all the Ag Leader people that put in a lot of effort to make this event a success: Hans Stiekema (Regional Manager EMEA); Nick Orthman (International Sales Manager); Matt Pifkin (Machine Guidance Support Supervisor); Rick DeVore (DirectCommand Support Specialist); Luke James (Software Sales Specialist) and Dave King (International Business Manager). We are already looking forward to next year’s event, which I hope will be bigger and better again!