When I think back over the course of my career…the one thing that I can say is that I have never gotten a job because of a resume. Every job I have gotten has been based on a relationship….the resume was a formality in the job hiring process – HR required it for my file.

As I work with students and other professionals, it has been my philosophy it is not what you know..it is who you know. When teaching on a collegiate level especially in a business writing class; i do not teach how to write a resume…I teach how to build relationships to get the resume in the right hands.

It is my belief that that the hand shake is today’s resume in the business world. During a recessionary time period, employers are being flooded with resume’s after resumes. Even a janitor job in Ohio received over 700 job applications…WOW. In a slumping economy, it is important to find ways to separate yourself away from the pack.

Think…does two pieces of paper listing your job history, education, experience, and qualifications accurately represent your abilities, personality, and willingness to be a vital part of an organization? Why do you think so many employers want to interview the person before they are hired. Imagine if you spent just as much energy when applying for a job figuring out the name of the hiring manager or decision maker, then put yourself in a position to meet them and shake their hand.

Some say that the origin of the hand shake came from Medieval Europe where kings and knights would extend their hands to each other and grasp the others’ hand as demonstration that each did not possess a concealed weapon and intended no harm.

The hand shake communicates lots of different non-verbal cues but ultimately it is a product of relationship building.

Why do we spend so much time building a resume. Well, it is an educational/professional process to organize our background, qualities, education, honors, etc. into one place. It is a snap shot of who we are and what we represent professionally. It is tremendous exercise to go through the process of compiling a resume. This forces the job seeker, to organize thoughts so that when we meet with other professionals…this writing process has organized our thoughts. It is a starting point for conversation and can be a reference when filling out a job application. It is my opinion that the resume is not the “end all be all.”

There is more to a job or joining an organization than the ability to organize our resume. We should spend just as much time, actually more time building career relationships as we do putting together a resume. We should be teaching students and professionals how to network, make “elevator pitches”, shake hands…ultimately building relationships.

How many freaking hats to do we wear? As entrepreneurs, business people, business owners, marketing professionals, whatever it may be…we wear so many freaking hats. With all of these social media technologies sprouting up faster than the hair on my face…we are constantly trying to figure out how we use them, for which audiences, and which brand.

Yep…these hats we wear…they are our brands. Really, think of all the brands we represent under our own umbrella? At any point in time, we are involved in at-least three to five different things where we have to take off one hat and put on another. Currently, I juggle four different hats…the company I am own (Bobby Rettew, LLC), the class I teach (Business Writing at Clemson), my personal life (home life, family, marriage, etc.), and the collegiate networking event I have developed (NetworkBash at Clemson). Each of these hats support the overall brand of Bobby Rettew. But each one of these hats, these brands are like subsidiaries of a bigger company umbrella.

Why is this important…as more and more communication tools emerge and social media technologies help us communicate…we have define & develop each brand so that we know how to communicate while we are wearing each particular hat (brand). You have to define the brand before you can figure out how to communicate the brand. So step back and think, what is the mission statement of each brand. Define it…when you put on that particular hat for that brand, what is your mission statement. Now the mission statement for that brand is more than just the mission statement of the company itself, but how you represent that company.

Example, let’s take Bobby Rettew, LLC for a second…it is one of the hats that I wear. Let’s write the mission statement for this brand:

1) Bobby Rettew, LLC is a messaging company that uses new media and social media to produce and distribute the message online.
2) Bobby Rettew is the principle owner of Bobby Rettew, LLC as a storyteller, message creator, new media producer, videographer, and non-linear editor while also handling all marketing and public relations.

So when I put on the Bobby Rettew, LLC hat…I am constantly trying to find new ways to market and spread the word about our services while servicing the clients that we represent.

Now….how the hell do we deal with all the ways we communicate for each brand…each hat we wear. I have to keep things separate to try to manage. For starters, I have separate email addresses for each brand, each hat that I wear. But hold on…there are so many freaking different ways to communicate..and so many hats…and so many audiences.

Well…each hat that you wear, each brand you represent has specific audiences and specific ways to communicate to those audiences. Using LinkedIn might make sense to communicate as I wear my personal brand but might not work while wearing my Business Writing at Clemson brand. We have to define each method of communication for each brand and how we use each method.

While I am wearing the personal Bobby Rettew brand, I use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blog, email, video, and Face-To-Face. But each one has different communities, different ways we interact, and different ways we use that technology. BUT EACH IS DIFFERENT…and they are only ways we communicate.

OK…step back for one second because not all of these work for all communities! Not all of these work for all of your brands! Really…if Twitter is not appropriate…THEN DO NOT USE IT!

So, how do you figure this out? Get out a piece of paper and draw a triangle. Label each point with Purpose, Audience, and Delivery. Then above the triangle, write the word Context. The context is the brand you are trying to communicate. Identify the audience and the purpose of the brand…then list all the delivery methods (Twitter, Facebook, Face-To-Face, Video, Email, etc.) that would work to meet the audiences needs. Choose one, two, three, or all of the above.

Why am I writing this….because there is a lot of hype about social media technologies and they are growing not only in numbers but also market engagement. As these social media technologies grow, more groups are engaging from both an audience perspective and from and marketer perspective. Throw this in the bag of tricks with all the other tools that we as practitioners use to execute our strategies. It is becoming more and more important to identify why and how we use each tool to meet the audiences needs.

So many marketing professionals are starting to blend the strategies of one communication strategy to the next. Each communication strategy is not a one size fits all. This is evident in the increase spam we receive in email, less engaging Twitter followers, a Fan Page invite for every cause that has some sense of life, and blog after blog after blog entry that has no purpose other than just increasing the digital footprint.

Hello friends…did you know that print still works, television advertising is still affective, Face-To-Face is alive an breathing, and word-of-mouth is the most powerful of all. Each of these is a technology…each with an inherent purpose. So here is the real reason why I am writing this…we (including me) need to sit back and identify why and how we are using each of these technologies to meet the needs of the audience and the purpose of the brand. There is a fine line in capitalizing in a new technology when it is only a technology.

I am writing this to myself, to remind myself that I am a practitioner that represents the best interest of my clients and their brands. How are we helping our clients wear their hats, their brands, and communicate their message. If the hat fits and the megaphone is working….then lets communicate the brand. What hats are you wearing and how are you communicate those brands? I am not a brand strategist…I am just a professional communicator.

Lately I have been thinking a bit about “The Grid”…you know that thing that keeps us all connected! Imagine waking up one day and you are in Little House on the Prairie…no grid, no iPhone, no iPad, no Internet, no Twitter, no Facebook, no telephones, no television…NO ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGY! What would we do as a society? Think for a second…the headlines in North Korea have been exposing us to that possibility…and E-Bomb. Something that could potentially knock out even the most un-assuming pieces of technology that we depend on…even fuel injection cars.

No this post is not a conspiracy theorist type of post..just one to think, what if all of this electronic technology was GONE? I think of the Allstate Commercial addressing the economy with the message about getting back to basics. But what if that message had a bigger meaning…basics beyond electronic technology.

What has Social Media taught us that could translate into the Little House on the Prairie scenerio? Think for a second…hmm, it has taught me how to use innovation to build relationships. It has taught us that communities are important for so many reasons..but most importantly how to communicate using new innovation.

So, if right this second someone took an eraser and starting erasing the laptop sitting infront of me, the iPhone in my hand, the telephone at my desk, the server in the closet, the electrcity in the walls…and on and on. I would want to know how my friends I have built connections with on Facebook, Twitter, email, blogs, etc. are doing. I would want to reconnect in a more basic manner. I would want to figure out how to communicate with my grandparents, my friends I established on Twitter who are all over the world, etc.

We would innovate and create new forms of communication or step back and rely on traditional forms of communication to find ways to gather, communicate, share ideas, have a drink, and so on. We might even start writing letters again, you know those good ole fashion hand written letters that might be delivered via a horse or a person driving a car that only uses a carburetor.

We would probably value face-to-face interaction because we cannot quickly get our fix on Twitter where we communicate like someone watching a tennis match. Do we depend too much on electronic communication and forget how to establish and maintain relationships outside of the grid? Have we evolved too much with the grid where we can only create a thought through a keyboard which restricts our critical communication skills necessary in a face to face interaction?

HMM…I wonder. I wonder where we are going? I wonder who will be able to evolve without the grid? Will I be able to or am I conditioned to depend on the iPhone?

When I left broadcast television news back in 2000 to return to graduate school, one thing I did was step back from the grid. I got rid of a cell phone and tried to re-evaluate how I communicate. It was nice not to depend on that device that followed me around… tying me to the grid.

Now…I am dependent upon the grid! This powerful pieces of connectivity that i get thoroughly pissed off when i drive through a “DEAD ZONE” or when my cable modem drops connectivity for ONLY A FEW MINUTES. Oh no, I can’t write a blog, I can’t tweet, I can’t upload a photo….I JUST CAN”T EXPRESS MYSELF…what has the world come to?

But hold on…I am breathing…I can talk…I can shake a hand…I can communicate with my mouth…with my handwriting. I can still express myself.

Have you ever caught yourself saying…what did we do before the Internet? What did we do? Really…what did you do? Maybe we did actually Tweet, maybe using a different method?

I have always explained my conversations in Twitter using this scenario. Imagine showing up for a big conference and you walk into a room filled with close to a thousand people. As you walk through the crowd, you ware walking in and out of conversations…listening to comments as you make you way through. You might stop for a second to chat…then keep on walking, in and out of conversations….until you reach a group you are ultimately there to see. You might still mingle after finding that group, walking in and out of conversations…but ultimately you are there to talk to certain groups…as you are listening to different conversations.

Did I just describe Twitter in a different context…a different paradigm…different physicality? Is Social Media just a technology or a communication method regardless of technology? What is the grid?

As a small business owner and an entrepreneur, one of the hardest challenges faced is how to balance time between working in the business and working on the business. That in lies a critical distinction. For a business like mine here in the Upstate of South Carolina, I have to consistently looks for ways to refine and strengthen my business model. I am a Storyteller and I make money off of telling others’s stories using video, digital media, and social media.

If you are self-employeed or own a small business, you have probably started at day one doing both. It goes in cycles, you spend lots of time growing your business and when you take on clients, you then focus on serving those commitments. This is a good business cycle to have, so we should maximize our time and remember that when are not racking up billable hours, we need to grow our business.

Defining our terms:

Working On Your Business
This is when you are spending time and energy away from those billable hours to do the following:

1. Business Development – seeking out new business opportunities, partnerships, or forging relationships and creating a plan.
2. Working the Numbers – spending time not only servicing the books (finances) but also thinking strategically how to grow your business financially. Creating budgets for growth areas and contrast them with what is necessary to operate your business.
3. Marketing – spending time working on your business message and delivering that message to the right audiences, using the right mediums. Creating and evolving your marketing plan and budget.
4. Seminars/Conferences – spending time to grow as a business owner. Seeking out venues for you to meet like minded people and those who can help you grow.
5. Rest – spending time away from your business to enjoy family and friends…the things that make you smile. ROR is crucial for reflection and critical for ROI.

Working In Your Business

1. Generating billable hours – working with your clients to serve or satisfy your contractual obligations
2. Business Development – executing time to pitch those clients, meeting prospects, generating proposals for your next set of billable hours.
3. Servicing the Numbers – making sure that you are keeping up with your invoicing, liabilities, expenses, and operating costs. This is crucial to do weekly, monthly, then quarterly to get ready for Uncle Sam and his state friends.
4. Servicing your relationships – writing thank you notes, taking a client to lunch, making follow-up phone calls, things necessary to be considered your clients “go-to” person.
5. Marketing – executing daily, weekly, and monthly your marketing strategy.

It is my belief that a small business owner should spend the same amount of time on Working On Your Business as the billable hours your generate when you are working in your business. For every hour you bill a client, you should spend that same amount of time growing your business.

At the beginning of this year, one of my major initiatives when starting my new company is to offer high-quality video content for my customers and not be restricted specifically with Flash Video codecs. Why…well, it is heavy, takes for ever to encode, and does not maximize the high definition image my clients pay me so dearly to deliver.

First stop, go mobile. I did tons of research on companies providing solutions for mobile video delivery. From Brightcove, Kaltura, Sorenson and host of others were on my choping block to sift through and see what fits me best. Right now, 360 by Sorenson has worked well providing rich media delivery to not only web interfaces but also to iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. They have more to come and waiting on the HTML5 release.

But one of the major places I have been watching is the HTML5 discussion. I am currently using an HTML5 player on my homepage for video delivery. This allows different browsers select with video codec to use whether it may be Flash, Quicktime, or even OGG.

So…today was a big day in the video delivery arena. Google announced it’s acquisition of On2 Media and the release of the VP8 codec as an open source codec. As a part of this they announced the WebM Project as a part of the release of the VP8 codec as an open source codec.
***FYI, below are some links that explain all this stuff like HTML5, VP8, etc.

Now…what the hell does this mean for the end consumer. Web video delivery is changing faster than I can find a new gadget to buy. Also, Flash video is not the main gig anymore and I am thankful. With VP8 and other codecs that can be wrapped by an HTML5 player, high quality video will be delivered faster and to more browsers including mobile platforms. The big boys are openly acknowledging that offering video to the standard desktop is the wave of yesterday and the consumer demand to watch video over any mobile device is crucial.

So…when you are thinking about working with a video production group or a video technology group to distribute your video content, the game is changing fast. It is more than just burning a DVD and compressing to play on your website. It is now outputting the right flavors of your project and getting them to your audience. Seriously, audience and wear they watch the video content is the crucial equation to this game. If you are trying to reach people on an Android or and iPad, you better be able to distribute that message to that technology! Audience and Distribution is the crucial question!

A year ago, it was all Flash Video or some Quicktime for web. Becuase of that, you could not access this content on most mobile devices and some browsers. Now, with all the new mobile devices whether be in your pocket or on the door of your refrigerator…the next generation codecs and players like VP8, H264, HTML5 will allow you to get a message to a targeted audience regardless of the technology! Are you working with just cool video producers or are you working with peeps that can create the message and understand how and where it needs to be delivered?

OK…cool links:

Today’s Google Annoucement from the Google I/O 2010 Conference
Mashable’s 5 Tools for Integrating HTML5 Video into your Website
What is HTML5 Video from Wikipedia
What is VP8 from Wikipedia
The WebM Project
The Digital Media Update from Sorenson’s CEO Peter Csathy on VP8

I have been really enjoying the conversations lately on #blogchat, hosted by Mack Collier (@mackcollier) on Twitter. The weekly Sunday night chat is wrapped around blogging, and this past week was specifically geared towards monetizing your blog. Why do we blog? Seriously.

Businesses and organizations use blogs for many reasons, but I think it is specifically to position themselves as thought leaders in a specific discipline or arena. It is a great way to have an immediate position on a topic or ideal and generate traffic when audiences are looking to consume information. The ulitmate goal, drive traffic to your “mothership” in the hopes to gain some monetary goal or position a viewpoint to raise some awareness.

My wife has been blogging for over two years. She has no reason what-so-ever to gain any type of moentary position from her posts. She used it as an outlet when dealing with the loss of her mother and our two children. It has become her outlet to articulate thoughts, connect with others, and theraputically sooth the soul.

So why do we blog? I honestly think…we as humans just want to be heard and we want to connect with like minded individuals. Whether it be gaining business from our thoughts or connecting with loved ones, we use it as an outlet to organize thoughts.

So why do we as business owners blog? This is why I am writing this post. It is more than just the SEO perspective. It is more than gaining business from blog posts…even though we will not admit it. Blogs are a place to articulate our thoughts and help us keep focused in our business. This iterative process requires time and thought to critically think, “why are we dedicating time to an outlet in the hopes to generate cash?”

Blogging takes focus! It requires us as business leaders to write a mission statement for the blog. The blog is our sounding board for business, our credibility platform to justify to the world we know what the hell we are talking about. It requires us to define a goal for each post and justify whether it warrants a post, then focus it to specific key words that closely align with our business objectives.

Blogging is our creative outlet to work through creative ideas. Through this online discourse, we find ourselves creating an argument for a great project, a great proposal, a great business plan, or even just get some responses on an idea.

Some of the smartest marketing gurus and most successful business people have successfully found a focused voice in their blog. They have a community of followers, a one stop focus group (or usability testing facility) for ideas and thoughts. They have used their blog as a platform to successfully write their business plan. We should learn from them…because it has probably taken them lots of time and diligence to refine their blog, their online business plan.

Big-box business have a hard time wrapping their heads around how to “monetize” a blog because the voice is way to big. They are having to go micro and use individuals within the organization to focus the objectives. But…they use other marketing platforms to generate their own equitable “SEO”.

Our thoughts are our voice, if focused they will engage those with like minds. When you hear the heavy blogging gurus talk about focus…it is more that just focusing the blog, it is focusing the business of writing the blog.

Times are changing faster and faster everyday. As technology evolves faster  than we can breathe…and as it evolves, we need people to help us with it, understand it, and sell us a strategy to implement.

Web strategy of 2010 has evolved into business communication strategy. Creating and monitoring revenue streams as we create and monitor conversations…well actually the technology that distributes these conversations and messages.

I think back to when I was in undergrad at Clemson. My freshman year (1992), no email and the only knowledge of the World Wide Web was this thing called Gopher. I remember I could use it to find my girlfriend’s class buildings at Appalachian State University. By my sophomore year, I had email and the WWW became a new idea on Clemson’s campus. By my junior year, Clemson was teaching web design and development classes. While I was in college, major AD & PR agencies were building strategic communication strategies and the computer geeks were creating webpages.

Now…here we sit in 2010, the new age AD Firm is the web/new media agency: building business models around web strategy as a communication plan that drives revenue. It started out as going paperless to save money, but now communication strategies are sold to drive revenue not only for the organizations that buy the plan but for the firms that are selling the strategy.

Why the discussion…I have been studying and trying to understand the evolution of the new media business models. Watching and researching the retainer models for web and new media firms that are not only creating an updated web presence but also building relationships with C-Level executives for long term ROI.

I have been talking and visiting with companies everyday who are caught in similar positions. They are staffed with creative professionals that handle all the graphic design and communication planning for their communication strategies. These companies are staffed with “traditional” media execution but scrambling to create and implement web and new media strategies. Many companies staffed with seasoned professionals trying desperately to get up-to-date with these web, social, and new media concepts. These same companies are staffed with interns that are training professionals how to evolve and adapt practitioner concepts into new technology.

Web strategy companies come in with big retainers and big ideas…visions of solving problems capitalizing on the current deficits in knowledge in many mid to large size organizations…”how can we make our web presence better and drive traffic to our message.” The new age AD Firm is today’s Web Firm….staffed with Presidents/CEOs, project managers, business development professionals, designers, developers and a board of directors. These board of directors made up of investors and visionaries capitalizing on the new wave of messaging.

It is a new world order…we are buying iPad’s and Androids as fast as we consume information. We sit and watch HDTV on our couches while we sit and surf the Internet with our Mac Book Pros and posh laptops. We are texting as we drive down the road while answering phone calls and listening to Pandora. Information velocity has a new derivative…information velocity. It is a new world order. And what is the next evolution? Hmm…Mobile Media Firms will take over and create the new strategies as business communication strategies with brick and mortar offices in every city.

How will we as practitioners stay relevant though this accelerated evolution of business and technology strategies. Hmm…maybe just keep on telling stories. BTW…I realize I might be one of these groups I am talking about…taking part in the new world order.

What stories are you going to tell this week? What stories are you going to encounter? Are you listening to your clients, your constituency bases? Are listening as the stories that need to be told are unfolding right in front of you? How can we be aware enough to look deep into the organizations and find rich stories that attract those listening ears?

1. Look within the “funding” sources and marketing goals for real people.
2. Define the mission of the organization and let the mission provide a frame work  for the stories.
3. Understand the target audiences and allow them to guide you to the palatable stories.
4. Look past subject matter as a story position, find people with stories that can be told through their eyes and not with a “narrator.”
5. Use the 180 degree rule…when you find a good story that is in the midst of happening, turn 180 degrees and look at who is watching the story unfold, tell it through their lens.
6. Find stories that are in the midst of the action, let the action and reaction paint the picture…stay away from stories that have to be re-told after the fact.
7. Go into the story idea with a loose outline but be willing to let the storytelling process create the final outline and story-line!
8. Do not let technology restrict your ability to tell a good story! Use it as a means to capture and distribute the story to the appropriate audiences. I have captured and told Emmy Award winning stories using a $300.00 video camera. No matter if you have an $80K video camera, a $200 laptop, or even a $50.00 recording device…let it enable you not detract you.

Be passionate! Find those stories…find rich content that your audiences are craving to connect with on a daily basis.

Here is a funny little story I found one day in Arizona when all I was asked to do is get a few shots of the Renaissance Festival….this guy cracks me up. Proof, if we open our ears, the stories can pop out of nowhere and it can replace the pointless copy that could be written about the festival.

OK…so I got the nod from the CFO, yes…my CFO is the wife and she gave the nod that it is cool to drop the dough on a glorified gadget that can be justified as a business expense! After a month of deliberating, hemming and hawing about the idea of purchasing it…I pushed the “Pre-Order” button on the Apple website.

I did spend sometime thinking, researching, and wondering if this was a good decision. Here were some of my initial thoughts:

1. If I was going to purchase the iPad, it had to be the 3G version. Simply because there are so many times I am in a non-wifi zone and will need to send emails, download something, or just be online. I have contemplated getting a AT&T card for my MacBook Pro, but this makes sense. I know I have my iPhone, but need something a little more to finger scale.
2. Tired of carrying around my 17″ MacBook Pro to meetings in a big ole bag. I have a “Producer” bag that I can throw the strap around my shoulder yet I spend so much time avoiding knocking something over with the bag and the contents.
3. Want something small and mobile that is not another laptop.
4. Price compared the iPad to purchasing a MacBook and the pricing was similar. But then I thought, why do I want another laptop for just searching the web, answering email, and other related web related items.
5. Liked the idea of a “bigger” iPhone concept…seriously! So many times I have my iPhone as I lay in beg catching up on email or searching the web for stuff…and would like something bigger yet not the size of a laptop. Opening a laptop is a process.
6. Excited about the opportunity to download books via the iPad…this will be new and cool experience!

So after weighing these thoughts…I pulled the trigger. So this is what I purchased:

• iPad with 64GB of memory with Wifi & 3G Capabilities
• iPad Keyboard Dock (so I can type on a real keyboard, if I so choose)
• iPad Case (I am clumsy so figured I needed to protect my investment)
• iPad Camera Kit (so I can upload pictures straight from a SD card)
• iPad VGA Adapter (so I can connect to a screen or projector to show presentations, pictures, and videos)
• Apple Care for iPad (once again, I am clumsy and this protects me from me)

All in all…I am pumped, the only thing now is that I have to sit back and wait. The expected shipping date for my iPad 3G/Wifi is late April! I am hoping it gets here before my vacation trip where Wifi is non-existent.

Now, once again my gadget life is complete with one more gizmo. Yes…now I can go over to my grandfathers house and wow him with a cool new gadget!

Well…it has officially happened and now nine days after the big event ( tons of local, regional, and national press) and finally with a big wrap-up party at the Warehouse Theater, it is time to say…what is next? First off…it needs to be noted that Aaron von Frank and all those who made this event a success should be proud. But now, what is next and what happens after the hype. Well, for starters…sit back and wait to here what Google is planning on doing.

The whole purpose of this event was to publicly solicit the opportunity to be one of the chosen cities for Google to invest billions of dollars into a fiber infrastructure. Now, while they are still doing their due diligence, Greenville, SC is sitting back and wanting more. This little idea that turned into a big idea has now built a community of innovators into a community of believers…”We can get the attention of a big group like Google.” Now is not quitting time….it is actually time to keep on pushing forward and taking the nicely branded idea “We Are Feeling Lucky” (nice job btw by Spike Jones) to the next level…continue building on this momentum and grow the community at large around an idea of innovation.

Thinking back as I was flying in the helicopter over the event, I was not only looking down and capturing an image of 2200 hundred people forming the words “Google,” but actually capturing the image of 2200 stories, 2200 ideas, 2200 reasons why Google should consider Greenville, SC. There is not just one story for Google to hear, it is more than “We Are Feeling Lucky,” it is 2200 different stories why each person thinks Google should come to Greenville, SC.  Define through each of the 2200 individual stories as 2200 supporting arguments why Greenville, SC could use such an innovative pipeline of technology.

Imagine of the next several months (through the rest of the year), each of those 2200 people that formed the human wave of Google could articulate their story, their reason why they personally could benefit from this technology.  Each one would be a different perspective ranging from small business owner, family member, large organization, government leader, entrepreneur, etc…all with a vested interest to make Greenville, SC a hot bed for innovation and thought leadership. Imagine if we could capture each story, and funnel them through the WeAreFeelingLucky.com website using video, text, audio, images, etc…capturing the hearts and minds of a community, building a larger case supporting a technology initiative.

I would image that many of the cities have stopped campaigning for Google’s attention, feeling that they have met their burden and thinking “now it lies in the hands of the organization to hand down a decision.” But the energy felt tonight in the Warehouse Theater auditorium showcased the desire to keep on campaigning, not just for Google technology but for a bigger cause…bringing a community together with a common goal, to build a bigger and brighter Greenville, SC. What a tremendous case that could be made if we could continue this mission, capture those stories, display them everyday on WeAreFeelingLucky.com and show the world that Greenville, SC has more in store…not just a one time event that happened on March 20, 2010.

***Photo courtesy of Michael Bergen of AidJoy.org