Last Thursday night was “I Heard a Tweet: a ChattUp at the Hunter,” our third in a series of Chattanooga Twitter meetups. While Chattarati helped organize the event, it was graciously sponsored by Juncture and the Chattanooga Technology Council and hosted by the Hunter Museum. It was great to once again put faces with the names I see online, especially in a venue like the Hunter.
One of the great people I met for the first time was Olympic gold medalist Joe Jacobi. Joe and I have been chatting online for some time about hyperlocal new media, and we had a great conversation at ChattUp. Towards the end of the night, we found a relatively quiet spot and he conducted a video interview with me about Chattarati and how new and social media could impact local politics:
Joe is a great advocate for new media, and I appreciate his support of Chattarati.
I try not to post too much here about Chattarati, but this is simply too cool not to highlight. Our little band of new media believers cooked up something pretty special to help fuel conversations about local politics here in Chattanooga.
Introducing the Chattanooga Campaign Cash Maps, tracking financial contributions to all mayoral and city council candidates for the 2009 elections. To learn more about how we built the maps and why, read Making Transparency Local on Chattarati.
Chattarati began as a small idea I had several months ago for a daily photoblog to chronicle Chattanooga’s evolving downtown. After much discussion and planning with other local bloggers, the idea grew and evolved into a full-blown hyperlocal news and opinion blog in the vein of Gothamist or, closer to home, Nashvillest.
Chattarati is being published by a great team who have all put in a tremendous amount of work to pursue our goal of not only creating a great Chattanooga-centric blog, but becoming a vital part of the flourishing blog community in our city. I’m honored to have such great minds collaborating on this project, and we have loads of compelling content planned to inform–and entertain–our fellow Chattanoogans.
Naturally, we’ve gone through the social networking checklist and integrated everything from multiple Twitter feeds to an Alltop-inspired RSS aggregator to a Flickr pool and Facebook group.
If you live in or love Chattanooga, I hope you’ll check out Chattarati.
Oh, and yes… I did design the bold, classy logo and stylish web site. Thanks for asking!
The Big Biscuit Barn has become part of the Saturday bike ride tradition for Team Green Nasty. The biscuits are truly praise-worthy, and the people are as friendly as you’d expect. We’re not sure what to think about Super Hair People.
I rode 33 miles today, and thankfully the stretch home after biscuit time was only about 4 miles. With every ride, I’m feeling stronger about my chances of surviving and even enjoying the 470 miles of RAGBRAI later this summer.
For those of you outside of the Chattanooga region, Riverbend is our annual music fest dedicated primarily to country bands and has-been classic rockers. So, in honor of the mulleted masses who make downtown uninhabitable for ten days each summer, I am proudly wearing this badge of indie rock snobbery.
The Association of Visual Artists (AVA) Gallery on Frazier Avenue is now featuring an exhibit called “Design @ Work”, sponsored by AIGA. The exhibit features commercial graphic design case studies, including one co-developed by yours truly. The case study, developed with my friend (and future business partner… shhh!) Wes Barker, examines our packaging revamp/re-branding for the flagship Clarity Professional telephone. The exhibit is open through the end of June and also features design work by the illustrious local firms Coptix, Widgets and Stone and Tricycle. If you’re on the North Shore, stop in and take a look.
Note: I haven’t had a chance to snap any photos of the exhibit, but I’ll post some as soon as I can.
I finally figured out the real reason the old EPB building came down: Branding. Unum wanted downtowners to remember they also have a big fancy HQ on a hill.
Apparently this is old news, but the demise of the former EPB building is imminent. It’s always a bit sad to see an old building go down, and I’m hoping the future of this site holds more than just parked cars. Viva downtown!
