Things I learned at today’s Nashville Geek Breakfast
Today’s Nashville Geek Breakfast was a lot of fun, as usual. Here are a few things I learned.
- Special guest Aaron from Iowa is in town for work and decided to check out how we roll in Music City. Aaron participates in a local Twitter group in Des Moines. We all agreed that Tennessee is a better (and drier) place to be than Iowa at the moment, but Aaron reported that conditions there are improving. I hope things continue to get better.
- With the addition of Digital Nashville to our hodgepodge of local tech communities, I have set a personal goal to see the ratio of tech groups to local geeks reach 1:1. I think this is achievable.
- Kelly Stewart volunteers to help create the Cumberland Trail, which will be 300 miles long from Chattanooga to northeast Tennessee when finished. First proposed in the 1960s, the idea is inspired by the Appalachian Trail. About 160 miles of trail (not all of them are consecutive) have been established so far.
- Mitch Canter has a really sweet RSS T-shirt featuring the familiar orange logo that says “Feed Me” on it. Nice!
- Professional Nerd Herder Cal Evans recently launched a local PHP developers Twitter listing (Note: link corrected from the original post) that is growing by leaps and bounds. Way to go, Cal!
- Geek ringleader Dave Delaney has created a video to commemorate his 8,000 Twitter tweet. It should be noted that only 50 percent of Dave’s tweets are reconstituted blog posts. (Just kidding, Dave.) Congrats on this milestone!
- Jackson Miller and Digital Nashville co-founder Elin Elfler are real, live people, not just digital avatars. I say that because Jackson and I cross paths primarily via the Web, and I saw Elin in person today for the first time. Howdy, y’all!
If you haven’t made it to a Nashville Geek Breakfast yet, you’re definitely missing out. Hope to see you next time.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Thinks I learned:
Rob Robinson has much darker hair than his avatar suggests.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Very true.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Thanks for the recap Rob. I had hoped to attend but the last few days of travel took their toll on me this morning. Glad to know Jackson and Elin are real people too. I had wondered about that…seen their avatars all over so it’s glad to know there have been live sightings! I expect I’ll find out for myself at the Digital Nashville mixer in a few weeks.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:47 am
You bet, Bill. Sorry you couldn’t make it. I’ll be out of town myself for the DN mixer, and I’m disappointed about that. Hope to see you soon.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Hi Rob,
Actually, what I meant to say what that I launched a page on DevZone that is a list of the PHP community on twitter. (http://devzone.zend.com/article/3467-PHP-Community-on-Twitter) Since launching it my follower count has jumped to over 500. (Not sure why, it’s certainly not based on the quality of my tweets) I would love to see the same type of list for Nashville, TN tweeters. One lesson I learned though was that I make the list available but it’s opt-in only. I don’t automatically add people to the list. I’ve actually had people tell me they would rather not be listed. Therefore I’m very careful to make sure I have permission before I add someone.
Great seeing you again at Geek Breakfast! Great re-cap
=C=
June 26th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Thanks, Cal. That makes sense. You, too!
June 26th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Thanks for the post recap, love it!
For more on the flooding you should seriously check out The Creepy Sleepy Show (also, a pretty incredible podcast): http://creepysleepy.com/2008/06/21/creepy-sleepy-145-the-great-iowa-flood/
Great seeing everyone out today. I can’t believe we had 30 people at breakfast! Wow.
Cheers,
Dave
June 26th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
You’re welcome. Thanks, Dave. I appreciate the link, too. I’ll check the Creepy show out.
I was impressed, too. That was a great turnout. See you next time.