Posts Tagged nashville

called it

Yesterday, in my post about the media and the Nashville floods, I suggested that maybe the lack of national media attention was due to the lag between the tuned-in minority  and the traditional media.

Turns out I was right. Today (Tuesday) after the pinnacle of the event (late Sat through Mon a.m.), Nashville has popped up on the national radar, taking equal staging with the arrest of the would-be Times Square bomber.

nashville cnn flood

It’s been suggested that the Nashville flood is not a national story because it doesn’t effect anyone outside of Middle TN.

Think about this:

How would the national media react if Hollywood was hit with a disaster (earthquake, flood, or locusts!) and disrupted the movie industry? A major portion of the U.S. music industry (and not just country) resides in Nashville.

Or what if Yankee Stadium or Madison Square Gardens were flooded? Today in Nashville, an NFL stadium and an NHL rink are underwater.

What if the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas was going to be shutdown for the next few months affecting national conferences, tradeshows, and meetings? The largest non-casino hotel in the world and the largest hotel in the United States outside Las Vegas is now shutdown indefinitely .

And these are just the three biggest examples. Nashville is an integral part of the U.S.

Nashville now provides a new twist on an old joke:
What do you get when you play a country song backwards? The water recedes. (original joke)
And speaking of jokes. Them poor Tennessee cows. They taste better.

UPDATE: Newsweek thinks I’m right as does CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

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you missed it


If your only source of news is national media, you may not realize that a U.S. city was heavily damaged this weekend.

Yes, the Gulf oil disaster should be the top story and the Times Square car bomb attempt was news as it happened. However, the 38th largest MSA in the U.S. (and the capital of one of its states) was (is) being destroyed by flooding and the only place I was getting information about it was through Twitter.

I am a fan of Nashville for many personal and professional reasons. I have several clients and friends there. I consider it “my big city”. It’s where I fly from and where I go when I need resources that aren’t available locally.

WordPress guru @studionashvegas has a great post about how Nashville has been forgotten and makes some good points about how social media, the community, and traditional local media are the future of information…

National media is dead. Local media, and social media, are the blend of information services we need to survive.

If consumers can’t find the information they need, they will seek it out or create it themselves. We’ve already seen this happen with citizen journalism about in-depth topics. It’s now happening with the real time web for breaking news.

Sure. There can be a mob mentality in these situations where mis-information is disseminated exponentially. But that’s exactly the reason why credible news orgs should be participating in social media offering facts such as @tndotcom, @nashvillest, and @wkrn did during the Nashville event.

The lesson for (any) media is this: Consumers’ first concern is always with what’s happening NOW. They’ll mull the consequences later. Your worries need to lie with why you’re not offering immediate information in an immediate media environment instead of worrying about how to create the souvenir of the news the day after it happens.

Part of the lack of national response for Nashville may come from the lag between the real time web and when traditional media figures out there’s a story. I wrote a post about this phenomenon of the tuned-in minority back in 2008. More recently, I tweeted this on April 20th. I saw the story pop up in newspapers and on TV three or four days later. We’ll see if Nashville gets on the radar in the next few days.

UPDATE: I called it. It was an issue with the tuned-in minority. http://shotgunconcepts.com/2010/05/nashville2

[ btw -- if you want to help people in Nashville, you can find info here:
http://nashvillest.com/2010/05/03/so-nashville-is-flooded-how-can-i-help ]

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Reflections on Barcamp Nashville

After taking some time to absorb the experience and decompress, here are a few scattered thoughts on Barcamp Nashville.

There’s been a healthy discussion going on (like here and here) about how it wasn’t a “real barcamp”. While I tend to agree that it wasn’t necessarily an “unconference”, it was a pretty good conference. I benefited from most speakers and most of the conversations. There were times I wished the speaker had been given more than 20 minutes. (There were also times I wished they had been given only 10)

The entire day had the trappings of a Nashville entertainment event right down to the venue. Each city’s barcamp needs to have its own flavor. And there was an unmistakable Nash-Vegas flavor at this one.

As several have said, it was a good first step for Nashville. Sure, it wasn’t the freeform open source event that some had expected. But are most people ready for that? While you can argue the point of the wisdom of crowds philosophy that all of us are smarter than one of us — you have to remember the mob mentality of all of us are dumber than one of us. People are comfortable with the “powerpont-a-rama” delivery from a high stage and a spotlight. Since I make a decent buck by doing just that, I (and many others) liked the day.

I was a bit leery about being the first speaker since I was used to the normal one-to-many delivery and I wasn’t sure if the crowd was expecting the freeform style or not. But I’m glad the organizers had me kick it off. There was a good crowd and everyone was receptive. There’s been some good talk in the b-sphere about my presentation. I appreciate all the comments.

I do wish that I had been able to roam a bit more while speaking. Normally when I speak, I like to walk around and get down with the audience. The stage setup with the screen, corded mic, and R2 made it impossible to do so. I felt a bit tied to the podium. It’s one of the few times I’ve delivered an entire talk standing behind a lectern.

Another suggestion for the future — since everyone was twittering, that would have been the best way for people to ask questions/discuss at the end of each presentation instead of the awkward floating mic setup. The presenters could just glance at the questions at the end and answer them.

And two quick final observations –
–Even though there were lots of people there who are on the cutting edge much more than I am, I think I introduced many people to a new web app (Slideshare)!

–Reading through other’s posts on barcamp, I notice this alot — “I really enjoyed meeting Blogger X andBlogger Y for real and in-person instead of just having an online relationship.” It just goes to show that for all the progress and connectivity of “web 2.0″ — people still want a personal connection.

Tedchnorati: BarcampNashville

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Barcamp Nashville

Barcamp Nashville has been interesting…..with neat speakers, great people, and a warm room (in more ways than one).

I had planned to liveblog while I was here, but I’ve had some wi-fi trouble. 60 has been posting and the twitter page offers a good snapshot.

Update: Gavin fucntioned as somwhat of the nashville barcamp scribe and said some nice things about me and Mitch Joel.

My photos (and everyone else’s) can now be found using the flickr barcampnashville tag.

I’ve had several people come up and tell me they enjoyed my presentation. For anyone who wants to see them, my slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/shotgunconcepts

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2 days until Barcamp


Only 2 more days until Barcamp Nashville.

You should come. Especially at 12:20pm.

You can still register here.

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Speaking at BarCamp Nashville

chris houchens speaker at barcamp nashville

I’m very excited to be speaking at BarCamp Nashville. I will be giving my “Social Media and Blogs in Corporate Marketing” presentation at 12:20pm on August 18th in Nashville.

As you can see from the barcamp schedule, the organizers have broken the day up into specific focus areas and I will be a part of the Business and New Media timeslots.

If you’re a blogger in Middle Tennessee, Southern Kentucky, or Northern Alabama, you need to attend all or part of the day. Find more info here.

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Healthcare Marketing Plans

A week from today I’ll be presenting at the annual conference of the Medical Group Management Association in Nashville, TN. I’ll do a breakout session entitled “How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your Healthcare Organization”.

“Officially” we’ll be doing this….

Despite the fact that a well-conceived marketing plan can save budget while broadening reach, many healthcare practices do not have one in place. During this hands-on session both beginning practitioners and established organizations will take away a step-by-step process for creating an effective, long-term strategic marketing plan. You will be able to use the sample marketing plan and information provided to explain the importance of marketing in the medical field, identify the business applications involved, and begin the process of developing your own plan.

If you’re in the Nashville area and want to know more about Healthcare Marketing, please sign up for the conference.

And as always, if you or your group need a marketing keynote or other presentation, I travel the country presenting keynotes, breakouts, and seminars about the need for great marketing across several topics. For a list of those topics and how to book me, click here.

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