So...What's Next?!?

I heard there was a tornado in downtown ATL

Fortunately my husband decided he had worked enough and came home a couple hours earlier than usual for a Friday night. He is on some crazy deadline and has been putting in a lot of time at the office.

This is where he works... (photo taken by mattlandia)

I was hanging out on the couch working on a project. The cable in the living room is not getting a signal, so the TV was off. My husband went into my son's room and briefly heard something about a tornado hitting the GA Dome and CNN, he asked me to look it up on the Internet.

For some silly reason I assumed if a tornado hit the CNN center it would be on the front page of CNN.com .... I was mistaken there was no news there. So then I logically assumed a weather story as huge as a Tornado in downtown ATL would be on  the front of weather.com - nope!

So I checked Twitter. That's right - Twitter. There I saw both Amber Rhea and Dave Coustan had posted  messages about some damage.

So I googled Atlanta, Tornado, GA Dome - and the first results were blogs and forum postings about the tornado.

I live in Alpharetta and we did not have any weather comparable to what was happening elsewhere, and I had not even begun to imagine what was happening elsewhere.

On Saturday, my husband and I woke up and began to work on all of the projects around the house that we had planned for this weekend - aka Spring Cleaning. Again, for the most part I was not following the news. My husband was, simply because he was a little freaked out that he could have been at work when the tornado hit. He kept telling me about the damage, but again I still did not catch on. My family who lives in FL called to check in and see if we were alright, I explained we barely had any bad weather, a thunderstorm, but nothing more.

Tonight I jumped on Twitter again to check in and JBrotherlove alerted everyone of the pictures that were up on Flickr. I jumped on and noticed that over 1900 pictures had been uploaded. Within the hour that it took my husband and I to go through the pictures, another 100 had been uploaded.

The pictures are amazing and some of the best coverage of any news worthy event. More than that, I get to see pictures by the real people who were affected, look at them at my pace on my time table and explore the events through the stories of the many various story tellers who were there.

Here are a few photos that really caught my attention:

Funnel Cloud by Perry W
Blown Away by Mr Wombat
Cotton Mill Lofts by Mary Lesh
Atlanta After the Tornado by Mary Lesh
Apartment in Vine City by Thomas Wheatley
ATL 2 by Krivec8
Untitled by Dave Fountain

There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that I have complete control.

- Leo F. Buscaglia

We should be the cool kids!

Is your city social media friendly? Do businesses in your area have a reputation for embracing blogs, podcasts, and social networks?

This is the question that Dan Greenfield asked of several participants of SoCon08.

The overall answer (re: Atlanta)  was no - not really.

The question I had to ask myself today was;  Is that hurting me more than helping me as a social media consultant?

I have not traveled to the west coast...this past weekend I brought the west coast to Atlanta - that should count for something. But this weekend Chris Heuer and Josh Hallett and Dave Coustan pointed out that I need to get out to more conferences...something Timothy Moenk has been telling me for two years.

But today was the clincher. I was presenting to a new company here in Atlanta, my adopted hometown, where I have been evangelizing social media relentlessly for 2 + years - and the person I was presenting to said she had never heard of me. OK - that just sounds egotistical - but stay with me.

This person was also a social media enthusiast. However she had been going to conferences in NY and in CA and not even looking for good opportunities in Atlanta, because, she said, Atlanta had no market.

Because I have stayed in this city, it was almost as though my credibility was in question. Overall we worked it out and had a great meeting - but Atlanta... I am embarrassed!

I am not technical - so I can not go into details of all the activities that Jeff Haynie and Mike Schinkel and many others have been putting together such as start-up weekend or barcamp, but I do know that we have tried a variety of end user social media efforts that I have been involved with such as Atlanta Media Bloggers Group, Social Media Club, Social Media for PR Professionals, CRMA Summit, SoCon07, SoCon08, the new Enterprise 2.0 Society of TAG - plus PRSA events and there have been many other events.

So what is the disconnect?

Well - today I was sent another idea to start another group.

    Social Networking Experience Council

Initially I explained that I just do not have the bandwidth to start another effort. However, then I started thinking more about it. How can I get others to start "experience councils" regarding their industry? Someone who really is in PR (which I am not) should have a Social Networking PR Council. Many Interactive Marketing Agencies are claiming to be involved in social media. They should get together and start trading notes, because the one thing I have noticed is they are all over the place when it comes to how to create a social media site and what being a "consultant" means. We need more round tables and discussions.

But as much as I have tried to get those together, they do not happen in the business communities here like they should. The way they do things on "the West Coast." Everyone who claims to be an expert here seems to  treat social media as their secret sauce. It seems it is only a secret to people in Atlanta. Everyone else knows the doors are "open."

Come on Atlanta peeps - let's stand up and shine and not remain the outcast, introverted, stuff shirt city in the connected world. Let's start being one of the cool kids again!

Every generation needs a new revolution.

- Thomas Jefferson

Oh Atlanta!

Today I attended the Atlanta Conventions and Visitors Bureau Industry Briefing and sat in the audience with immense pride. One I love the city of Atlanta. Two I love the direction I have seen it going in and
Three they are a client and during the presentation about the social media site they gave me and my team a very complimentary shout out!

So here are some notes from the briefing;

We have about 38 million visitors a year which generates about $12 billion in revenue,

ACVB is passionate about customer service and our southern hospitality. As Mark Vaughn, EVP Sales & Marketing put it, we will never have a beach (of course we never know what global warming may bring us...) but what we do have is our southern hospitality and that is the strength we each need to play to - to be the best and most hospitable city in the world.

I learned from Andrew Wilson, COO of Brand Atlanta that hits to the Atlanta.net site increased by 12% from 2006 to 2007 and is currently the second highest ranking COB site in traffic with Vegas being the first.

They talked about the wonderful blogging team that has volunteered to be the Ambassadors of this city. They also unveiled the desktop widget that was created, which I must say is quite useful You will be able to set you preferences based on what you like to do - eat, go to concerts, sports...and the ACVB events calendar will then push information to your desktop. Pretty Cool.

I have to say this project has been the most enjoyable one to date...and so for tonight's quote - I leave you all with a song by Alison Krauss

Roaming around, oh Lord
I've got all this and Heaven above

Oh, Atlanta
I hear you calling
I'm coming back to you one fine day
No need to worry
There ain't no hurry cause I'm
On my way back to Georgia
On my way back to Georgia

I get a feeling in me
When I remember all those
Crazy days and crazier nights
Can't you hear the music playing?
You must have heard them saying
We're gonna rip 'em up
And light up the night

Oh, Atlanta
I hear you calling
I'm coming back to you one fine day
No need to worry
There ain't no hurry cause I'm
On my way back to Georgia
On my way back to Georgia

Same old place
It's the same old city
What can I do?
I'm falling in love

I'm just an old hound dog
Roaming around, Lord, Lord
I've got all this and Heaven above

Oh, Atlanta
I hear you calling
I'm coming back to you one fine day
No need to worry
There ain't no hurry cause I'm
On my way back to Georgia
On my way back to Georgia

Oh, Atlanta
Hear me calling
I'm coming back to you one fine day, hey
No need to worry
There ain't no hurry cause I'm
On my way back to Georgia
On my way back to Georgia