Matt Towery Talks About Atlanta As Model For Political Race Relations

At a book signing for his latest book, Paranoid Nation:  The Real Story of the 2008 Fight for the Presidency, Matt Towery talks about why Atlanta is the model of political race relations. January, 28, 2009. Manuel’s Tavern, Atlanta, GA.

Specs: this video was shot with the Kodak EasyShare Z1275, a really crappy still camera, but not a bad video cam at all for a measly $120. refurbished (with shipping) to stick in one’s purse for the multimedia-ite on the go. Shoots HD video too. This snippet shot in 640X480 “normal” size though. Audio turned out much better’n I expected.

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ATAC Rally #1 – Little Five Points, Atlanta

On Monday, January 26, 2009, AtlantansTogether.org held its first rally to raise awareness about crime in intown Atlanta neighborhoods — and what to do about it.

Citizens from a variety of intown Atlanta, GA neighborhoods spoke to WaySouth Media, Inc. about why they participated in the rally, and how crime has effected their neighborhoods.

The rally was held in the Little Five Points’ Findley Plaza. The crowd was estimated by a local media news outlet (AJC) to be about 175 people. Atlanta City Council members present at this rally: Mary Norwood (’10 Mayor of Atlanta candidate) and Kwanza Hall.

Please share and embed!

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Georgia Political Podcast – Episode 20. From The Georgia Podcast Network

Show notes:

Panel

* Joseph Geierman of Dora-Blog
* Catherine Smith of Blog for Democracy
* Grayson Daughters of Mostly Media
* Griftdrift of Drifting through the Grift
* Jen Brock of Blog for Democracy

Topics

* Outlook for the 2009 GA Legislative Session
* 2010 Races for Governor, Lt Gov, Sec of State, etc.
* Atlanta Crime and the Social Media Response

Recorded January 17, 2009 at Manuel’s Tavern. Production courtesy of Georgia Podcast Network.

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I Have A WaySouth Media, Inc. Online Dream

I’ve had my own incorporated co for at least two years now. And the bank accounts, tax issues, headaches, small business owner dreams, etc. to go along with it. Yet I have sadly neglected my I-Priestess duties by failing to have the company’s web site built-out. So much for any SEO strategy.

While being a chronic blogger for years (it’s just that techno-simple), ever since the pre-blog,  dial-up days of f-ing, for days on end, with my first site, WaySouth.com (I and WaySouth-anything are forever indebted to you, @francesk, but that’s a whole other story), I just hate messing with websites, Dreamweaver, website navigation, and web site copy. Even if you hire someone to do it all for you, you still have to give ‘em what they need to build the damn things.

But recently, with a mindful eye to a fully tricked-out site as a goal, I did get BlueDaisy Graphics of Metro Atlanta to do logo designs. Lemme know what you think:

Tom Goes To The Inauguration

My friend Tom Roche went to Obama’s inauguration. Here are some snaps he took of his historic adventure.

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New Staff Finds White House Lacking In Latest Technology

Moving into the White House, Obama’s folk found things not to their I-liking. More like seriously out-of-date and way behind the times. Reminds me of media in Atlanta. Such as the (now former) newspaper editor who once told me the Internet was “like CB radio.”

On the other hand, if they’d have moved a bunch of Georgia media and politicians into the White House this week, those clowns would have been in way over their I-heads. They relentlessly remind me of tales of senior management in corporate America who still have their secretaries print-out their emails. I kid you not, kiddies. Yes, the people in charge are that techno-challenged. Believe.

From The Washington Post, Jan. 22, 2009:

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

Full story here.

CNN Live With Facebook For Inauguration

What’s better than being on The Mall in Washington today for the Inauguration? Watching live streams from CNN.com with all your Facebook friends… warm and cozy at home with a hard-wired DSL line. This just freakin’ I-rocks!!!!

How To Use Social Media To Get More Customers

Last night, @tessa tweeted, at some point in the evening, that the Atlanta area monthly TweetUp had over 100 people show for the January TweetUp at El Taco in Midtown.

Are there other small Atlanta businesses that also would like to have 100 extra customers a day? Try hosting a TweetUp or some other social media-minded meetup, often found via Facebook or Meetup.com.

Chris Brogan, the least insufferable member of the ya-ya-media brotherhood, posted yesterday about a little bistro in his neck of the woods (Boston area) that could use some more customers AND could use some suggestions on how to use social media to get more customers into the sandwich emporium.

If you’re a restaurateur in these here tough times, take some time to read through the droves of suggestions volunteered on Brogan’s blog. Found in the comments section, of course.

The owner of Simply Gourmet, John, responded to all the helpful suggestions from Brogan’s huge social network with this post:

I am speechless guys, really thank you all for the advice I am not opposed to trying anything and a few of these things I have already implemented including a twitter page @simplygourmet . And publicly for chris to take his time out for me is just one of the nicest gestures imaginable. It has been a rough road but this is a momentum builder that couldn’t have come at a better time. Thank you all once again and happy eating!!!! John

Social Media and The Mayor

Careful what you Twitter. Now that all of Atlanta seem to be using social media tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, you will easily get what you are after. This was the case during Mayor Shirley Franklin’s annual luncheon talk with the Atlanta Press Club on Tuesday, January 13, 2009.

Between bites of the sliced chicken salad, I sent out a Tweet via my iPhone’s Twitter application that asked, “Any questions for Mayor Franklin?” Immediately, I had droves of questions to choose from, thanks to my carefully cultivated, personal Twitter/Facebook network, plenty of them peppered with salty expressions not suitable for for re-printing on this blog. (FYI, you can sync Twitter to Facebook.)

Alas, Mayor Franklin was taking questions from those in attendance during the Q&A portion only if they were written down on a slip of paper and passed to the front, then read out loud to the Mayor by APC Board Chairman, John Boswell. So old-school!

No matter, as I would never have had a chance to eat my Commerce Club banana pudding if I’d hand-written every Twitter/Facebook response/question on a piece of paper, nor would the Mayor have had time to answer them all. And when presented with Commerce Club banana pudding priorities fall right into place.

I did manage to scratch out one question on a paper slip that was soon read to the Mayor. That question was, “Were you (Mayor Franklin) aware of the role Facebook played in organizing citizens during the recent (perceived or otherwise) intown Atlanta crime wave?”

Breezing over the crime-related portion of the question, Mayor Franklin answered that she (or her office I must assume) was not on Facebook, but that she knew Cobb County, for instance, was using social media tools to communicate with its citizenry.

Maybe Mayor Franklin should be on Facebook. And soon. Within days of its creation, the Facebook Group called Atlantans Together Against Crime and Cutbacks, had signed-up almost four-thousand members. Four thousand. In less than a week. That’s a whole lot of ATL citizenry one could immediately, and easily, start communicating with.

Come to think about it, when the traditional press bunched their hulking dino Beta cams around Mayor Franklin after the luncheon to roll on a few choice mayoral media morsels for their five-o’clocks (see photo above), had my own $120. digital camera’s battery not died  on me (the one that also shoots HD video) at that particular moment, I could have held a one-woman press conference, taking questions via Facebook and Twitter in real time and directing them to the Mayor.

But that’s this new media for you. With so many people on board social media in Atlanta now, provided your power supply holds, anyone can hold a virtual press conference – wherever, whenever.

How Bad Is It At City of Atlanta Water Dept?

The dysfunction at City of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management is so chaotically bad that po-po are arresting news crews who try to cover the stinking mess.

If A Media Blogger Is Thrown Out of Media Meeting And It’s Not On YouTube, Did It Really Happen?

The only thing more pathetic than a media trade association “ejecting” an invited speaker from their meeting about changes in media is that no one taped the rather rude ejection process and put it on YouTube. What a bunch of slow-witted, pointless dinos. From media guru/blogger Jeff Jarvis’ (the ejectee) blog:

But after I finished talking and sat down to hear the next panel, I was ejected from the meeting. It wasn’t anything I said, I don’t think. It was that they now wanted a closed meeting. As I was rather unceremoniously rushed out, still noshing on my cookie, grabbing my coat and hat and trying not to let the door hit me in the ass on the way out, I turned to the room and said, “One last thing: Think open-source, people.” It got a laugh and even a hand.

I was angry – insulted and embarrassed. But the problem is worse for this trade group and its industry. Talk about an echo chamber. What these people need is hear more new voices – newer than old me. What they really need to do is share their challenges and ideas openly and hear new perspectives and new answers from unexpected sources. Hearing the same old stuff from the same old group will get them nowhere. Witness the last 15 years.

Full post here.

Longtime Atlanta Media Dude To Work Inauguration

If you’ve never worked a media project in Atlanta with Jeff Jeffares you’re either a hack or thirteen-years old. Jeff’s been creating ATL-related media since before Zeus had a lightening bolt. And he just keeps on going… this time with a directing gig at an Obama inaugural ball. From the AJC:

Next week, Jeffares will fly to Washington, D.C., to help an old friend from Atlanta’s WAGA-TV, Carroll Platt, who is in charge of directing cameras at five of 10 official inaugural balls, including the Neighborhood Ball, at the Washington Convention Center. Jeffares, who has already submitted his name for Secret Service clearance, does not know which ball he will film yet.

Wonder if I could pull cable in Narcisco Rodriguez? Of course I could!

Atlantans Together Against Crime and Cutbacks

A WaySouth Media video report from an early morning vigil on January 8, 2009 for Atlanta restaurant, The Standard’s, popular bartender, John Henderson, who was murdered while closing the restaurant on Wednesday, January 7, 2009.

City of Atlanta intown neighborhood residents express their outrage at recent, drastic cutbacks to city protective services, such as police and fire, and vow to organize to do something to end the perceived crime wave many residents feel has plagued Atlanta in 2008 and now 2009.

City of Atlanta residents Tessa Horehled and Kyle Keyser (himself a victim of recent violent crime) have organized Atlantans Together Against Crime and Cutback (ATACC). The website is: AtlantansTogether.org.

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76-Year Old CEO Blogs

Bill Marriott, the 76-yr. old CEO of Marriott International, blogs. Especially about his constant international travel.

So what’s YOUR excuse for not blogging?

Frost/Nixon – A Study of Bitter Resentment

A Presidency doomed… by a character drawn from lifelong bitterness and resentment over self-perceived “elitism?” Matt Towery, of Southern Political Report/InsiderAdvantage, has a few terribly interesting and highly unique comments about the riveting movie, Frost/Nixon.

Why so unique? Towery just so happened to have once met Nixon… and attended Cambridge. From Southern Political Report today:

Fast-forward to real-life. It was 1983. I had worked as an aide to a Republican U.S. senator, but was completing my degrees at David Frost’s same Cambridge University. Back in the United States on holiday, I was at a well-known private establishment when a group of prominent Republican fundraisers spotted me and insisted that they had “Dick Nixon” with them in the next room. I thought they were joking, but instead, as they opened the door, there he stood, larger than life.

They told Nixon that I had worked in the Senate, but was now at Cambridge, studying toward an advanced degree in International Relations.

Nixon didn’t miss a beat. First the charm: “Most Americans think Oxford is the best … but all the smart guys go to Cambridge.” As with Frost, Nixon had charmed me in a flash. But in the course of our chat — Nixon clearly enjoyed talking international relations — he asked me an odd question in a newly sincere tone: “Are they treating you OK there?”

I guess with my Southern accent and lack of sophistication, he assumed that I, too, was a victim of highbred elitism.

Ironically, just like David Frost in the movie, my response shocked him. I felt totally at ease with the university and my many friends. Nixon shrugged off the subject and proceeded to allow me to question him for my dissertation. I had lucked out.

And therein lies the essence of this stellar film. Richard Nixon could be both a charmer and his own worst enemy. In displaying his insecurities about a real or imagined world of “elites,” he was an early embodiment of the “Paranoid Nation” I describe in my book.

Full article here.