Nashville Tech: Jackson's Take

Jackson Miller, local contract software engineer and purveyor fine second-hand hipster gear, does a really nice job offering up his thoughts on Nashville as a Technology Hub

Nashville's Tech Mushroom...

Nice article here from VentureNashville.com (mushroom? really? does that evoke the right image?) about the various tech-oriented groups around town that have been meeting. And another post here at the VentureNashville blog that re-emphasizes the point of the article.. that these informal and institutional groups (i.e. Nashville Geeks vs. the Nashville Tech Council) don't seem to naturally co-mingle.

As someone who's attended events hosted across the spectrum, and also as a technology manager from the institution to beat all institutions, the great State of Tennessee, I have a few thoughts about this:

1) nothing against the NTC, but the few of their events I've attended have largely been about Tradeshow floors. Vendors trying to sell me something. Sponsors trying to get their 'impressions' quota. And lots of business card trading.

2) NTC events seem to largely center on DATABASE SECURITY. Just my impression. Nothing empirical to back it up. Not a lot about application development, user experience, UI design, or new technologies. Again, just an impression. I could very well be wrong.

3) like most professional associations, the conversations at NTC events are mostly alot of "this is what I do; now what do you do..." it's like a series of mini-interviews. Not very comfortable. Not very natural.

4) The Nashville Geeks events are largely about socializing. Informal, yes. Not a lot of collared shirts-- mine is sometimes the only one. And not exclusively a technology audience. There are artists and musicians and writers in the group. And lots of marketing folks. Tech-oriented, certainly. Folks who like to get their geek on with the latest WordPress release or tinkering with the latest social-networking-fad-tool of the day. And lots and lots of digital photography. And cutesy business.. er, calling cards. Lots of those as well.

To be honest, in some ways, I've felt a little out of place at the Geeks events only because I'm the only person (or one of the few) there who works for a large technology shop in a fairly formalized, not-too-cool, not-yet-too-open-source environment. My group's not blazing any trails with PHP or Rails. We're building enterprise software for a large, highly proceduralized government agency. Not a lot of the other folks at the table at Noshville are in that game. And yet, all that being the case, I feel very at home there.

What's ironic is that the social/digital media crowd at the Nashville Geeks events-- the breakfasts, the Barcamp Crew meetups, the bourbon nights-- the talk at those events is a lot about products and marketing and getting messages out to consumers-- this is what social media's largely about after all, isn't it-- but the atmosphere is more collegial than commercial. I'm not being sold something at Barcamp. I'm part of something.

Interesting that Digital Nashville's first mixer the other night appears to have been the first event that crossed this apparent boundary in any kind of significant way.. and everyone, even Dave Delaney, was wearing collared shirts!... and I missed the dang thing. Ah well, I'll be sure to catch the next one.

Exciting times to be in this industry in Nashville.. Looking forward to what's to come.
God, I love this town.

"Friends you know.. or pretend to know.."

...only you me and Michael Arrington will understand this..
Yes, we have beer cozies.

PodCamp Nashville 2008

Good times!
So how'd you spend your Saturday?
I think my wife thought I was crazy for getting up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning.
But it all came together quite nicely, I think. As with BarCampNashville back in the summer, Dave Delaney and Kelly Stewart (along with Ted Chapin, Marcus Whitney, Alison Groves, and a host of others) put on a great event-- we counted 181 attendees-- with a pretty good mix of presenters.
Ranging from people who are figuring out how to make a real living on podcasting, to a few different talks about some of the gear and software involved in making the whole process go. And then, of course, Dave had to talk about Twitter! So key.
Keynotes were by CC Chapman-- whose sisters confided that they call him Charlie-- and Joseph Jaffe. I didn't get to hear every word, but if memory serves-- Chapman reflected on the Barcamp/Podcamp Social media phenomenon and urged everyone to get involved, get up and talk, reach out to people and get something started. Jaffe's talk focused on the revolutionary things that are happening as user-generated content-- podcasts, primarily-- are changing the equation for radio and other old media. Television will still own the living room-- to paraphrase Jaffe-- but Podcasts will own the gym, the walk to work, the commute.. virtually everything outside the living room.
Talk of the day didn't really have a lot to do with podcasting, per se. Scott Schwertly, of Ethos3-- a self-described "epic storyteller"-- gave a presentation about giving world-class presentations.. and it's safe to say, the guy knows how to put a slide deck together. Not sure if the literary world would agree with his own assessment of his storytelling-- but it certainly is nice to see someone remind us that giving a talk-- whether it's to give a pitch, teach a class, convey a concept or otherwise connect with an audience-- telling a good, intellectually or, more often, emotionally engaging story is perhaps the most effective mechanism for getting one's point across. Nicely done.
Then, when it was all said and done-- we took down the screen, put up the chairs (apologies to anyone who's chair I may have stolen prematurely-- we got pretty tight on time there at the end)... and a bunch of us made our way over to the Big Bang on Broadway. Geoff Smith, a member of the BarCamp/Podcamp crew-- it turns out he plays a little piano there. Who knew?
Actually, he's flat-out amazing. If you're in Nashville, go to the Big Bang. Do not delay. My advice, get there before 7:30.

Click here for pictures from PodCampNashville

And here's a short video Dave shot at the Big Bang..

Twitter Village

Twitter has really been grabbing my attention lately.
And now, so have these articles, one on the 'Twitter Village' and one related by Shel Israel... powerful stuff this.

Follow me on Twitter here.