General

My wife and I had a few days to getaway and decided to checkout Nashville. I put together a few notes of what was great for us in case you are considering a visit Nashville is fun even if you aren’t a hard core country music fan (we aren’t), however if you detest country music that may lessen some of the fun I’ll recommend.
Where to Stay…
If you don’t mind dumping $200 a night the Opryland Hotel is very nice, has beautiful indoor gardens (but overpriced food).  If you plan (and you should) on visiting the Opryland theater it’s practically in walking distance (they have buses or you can drive). The hotel even with conferences going on and the CMA music festival starting didn’t feel overwhelming – probably due to the size. It is the largest non-casino hotel in the Continental United States outside of Las Vegas.  Rooms were immaculate and nice, service great. It was nice to get away from the city and have a place to hang out – if you prefer to spend most your hangout time in a honkeytonk bar stay downtown Nashville for sure. If we went back we’d probably stay downtown or at a B&B near the city (but we liked Opryland).

Coffee…
If you like coffee you must visit Barista’s Parlor. It’s in an area outside downtown in an old commercial garage. Don’t let the location or lack of signage from the road deter you – it’s one of the few coffee shops I’ve ever visited where all the employees were passionate about coffee and I’ve never witnessed such meticulous preparation (even in my own kitchen). The espressos are sweet and flowery and the coffees are not dark and full bodied but I think anyone would enjoy them. The strawberry waffles were quite good (both times!). I tried to visit Crema but they were closed … looks like a must-try.

What to See…
I’d start my trip to Nashville with a tour, and I’d HIGHLY recommend the …. Walkin’ Nashville Tour I’d facebook message Bill after you sign up and ask him for any great local shows going on – he knows the best (and sometimes free) unique shows. There is a segway tour also but a lot more pricey and probably not as colorful as Bill’s tour. If you have time get a tour of the famous Rayman auditorium – it’s a corner piece of the town and country music (Bill takes you there but not IN on his tour). The replica of the Parthenon in Millennium Park is worth checking out. It’s $6 to go inside but well worth it IMHO. A wide angle lens would be nice for the inside. We saw the famous “Grand Ole Opry” show and it was quite a fun experience. Go ahead and bring your flash camera and check StubHub for tickets if sold out.

Food….
I’d try Puckett’s and go about 7ish so you can catch live music that starts at 7:30. We hoped to try Loveless Cafe (outside city) but was too far and heard of long waits – maybe next time. We had a lunch at Jack’s BBQ which was a local “dive” which was just “ok”. It can be hard to get into places that are popular so I’d recommend not flying it by the seat of the pants (which we did). Try for reservations and ask when live music starts.

It seems a lot of things have activity Tuesday, Fri, Sat night. Many places in Nashville seemed closed Monday. I probably wouldn’t do a Wed/Thursday visit personally. We did a Mon-Wed visit and it was good we had Tuesday!

Mostly I was hungry, and they have yummy chicken. I might have another reason though…

Let’s review some fast food politics.

• Chick-fil-A gives money to non-profits that patronize their business which also support the Defense of Marriage Act. This act signed into law by Bill Clinton all but disallows same-sex marriage by making it not recognized by the federal government and allowing states to not honor other states same-sex marriage. A company leader recently stated that not having same-sex marriage was his personal religious belief.
• Starbucks supports organizations that support changing marriage to include same-sex marriages. In addition the company officially supports this political agenda (not just an opinion of a business leader). Starbucks would be on the opposite political spectrum of Chick-Fil-A.

So we have two fast food companies on different sides of a single political issue. One is defending current law and the status-quo, one wants to change it.

When Starbucks made their public move to actively support changing policies on gay-marriage people announced they’d boycott Starbucks. Fair enough – people do that all the time. It’s a valid way to try and get companies with products you like to “see things your way”. Sometimes it actually works.

When a Chick-Fil-A leader made a public statement about his personal opinions on running his private business some people decided to boycott them, fair enough. Other than the company not having an official stance on the issue there are a lot of similarities to Starbucks – but there is a new twist to the Chick-Fil-A story.

Multiple government officials have stated they would discourage or disallow a private company to operate due to its political views. San Francisco stated, “The closest Chick-Fil-A to San Francisco is 40 miles away & I strongly recommend that they not try to come any closer”. The Boston mayor stated Chick-Fil-A wouldn’t get business licenses until they change their politics. Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno stated: “I will now be denying Chick-fil-A’s permit to open a restaurant in the 1^st Ward.” Apparently these towns have plenty of jobs already and political issues are a litmus test for doing business.

My personal opinion is that no matter how ugly an elected official finds a company’s political views they shouldn’t penalize companies because of them. All businesses following the law should have equal rights to practice commerce. What’s ironic about this case is that the three Democrat mayors making comments about Chick-Fil-A not doing business in their town likely voted for Clinton (who signed the Defense of Marriage act) and Obama (who supported it as a candidate, but no longer does). One of the mayors, Rahm Emmanuel (Chicago), even served with a president that supported the policy. Apparently for some people who you get your fast-food lunch from is more important than who runs your nation.

Are you surprised how this energized the “right” to eat more chicken? If so, I’d suggest we get a few bone-headed conservative mayors to not allow Starbucks in their towns. The reaction would be amazing and I’d bet would even attract presidential comment. Whether you are right, left, or middle I hope you agree letting elected officials prevent or discourage companies from doing commerce solely based on their political party or political views is a bad idea. I think Supreme Court cases involving what’s known as the doctrine of “unconstitutional conditions” would likely disallow such ideological actions.

So, In support of not letting Fascist-like mayors dictate what politics companies and their leaders must have in order to do business maybe I’ll top off my Chick-Fil-A salad later with a Starbucks latte!

Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos (one of Europe’s largest information technology services companies), is going to ban his staff from sending each other emails. He said it’s a waste of time and outdated form of communication. Apparently he wants this new  “zero email” policy to be in place within as early as 18 months! He argues that only 10% of the 200 average emails his employees get each day turn out to be useful. Instead of email he’s pushing for instant messaging and Facebook style communications (status updates, notifications, etc).

Read full story online

Could your company survive without email? When I look at my email I see a lot of the following items:

• Corporate news notifications
• Nags to do things I haven’t done yet (from various systems)
• FYI emails

What if we took all of our “notifications” and “nags” and plugged them into an employee Facebook-style “homepage” (along with some embedded experiences to handle the notification without leaving the homepage)? What if your travel approvals displayed on the homepage and when you hovered you saw the full request – and better yet you had the accept/reject links right there (handle without leaving the page). Might that be more efficient and make email more meaningful?

I think having a company sponsored no-email day to raise awareness of what email is useful for – and to experience how much more we might be able to get done would be very interesting! Wouldn’t you love starting the week with a no-email Monday? 🙂

I’ve been on a journey to migrate my “stuff” to digital – and most recently to the cloud. My last holdout was the trusted journal/notebook. I think I’ve turned the corner here and will share story from my new iPad notebook (forgive the handwriting, it’s never been my strength).

If you’ve been considering the same all I can say is, “TRY IT!”.

Yet another nifty thing for small websites from Google. Web Elements let you magically weave in content to your site with carefully crafted iframed widgets.

I’ve used the search/news widget on several sites and it works great! Anywhere you can embed some HTML you can use these widget.

Read More and Try it out

Not really.

I get an average of five election phone calls a day and over half a dozen letters in the mail (nice big color ones). Most all of them are negative, but I’ve learned a new trick to figure out what people are for based on the bashing. One fiscal conservative I plan to vote for is accused of wanting “guns in schools”. I’m guessing that means he supports our current state law, not that he wants tweens packing heat at the local middle school. The same guy is labeled as a puppy hater. A puppy hater? Well there is a big fight over a new law to stop puppy mills (I guess all the ones we have aren’t enough yet). Because of the two party system my options get pretty narrow after the primaries. I’m sure people in politics would tell me this is all part of the process of our democracy. Just like the founding fathers imagined it right? … well we aren’t supposed to talk about them anymore.

The way I see it the majority of people representing us are part of a political system we don’t really understand  and it’s broken. I’m biased, but I think we have the best form of government on the planet.  Maybe you look around the world with romantic notions about Venezuela, Iran, or Sweden but I don’t.  In some sense though I feel like our government is held hostage. I see a two-party system controlled by big companies, unions, and special interest groups. The people they control build huge election war chests and continue to “serve us” election after election. As our government has become more centralized and powerful so have the forces that seek to influence it. When I look at a number of our “representatives” I see a lot of millionaires, many that got that way while in office [hmmmm]. I see men and woman that started out trying to make a difference and became a part of a dysfunctional machine.  President Obama is an example of this. I don’t agree with his “progressive” philosophies but I do think he was interested in a more open, transparent government. He figured out quickly that the political machines didn’t see it his way. Before long his idealism was lost and he was operating just like the ones before him.

Tomorrow you probably have two imperfect choices.  One of them is likely to be a progressive. This person wants us to continue the path of growing the government and it’s role in our lives. Maybe it makes sense to have the Social Security Administration take and manage your 401k? Maybe all student loans should go through the government. Maybe the government should decide what light bulbs people should buy, what night they trick-or-treat, and what 3 types of healthcare insurance should be allowed for sale (but you must buy it).  Generally they support higher taxes to pay for their programs (nothing is free) and more deficit spending if required. Progressives want everything to be “fair” and generally equal for everyone. The other option you have is some sort of conservative. They might have a label like libertarian, tea-party, or neo-con. They are pretty pessimistic about the role of government and think we need to take a step back and have a smaller, leaner government. Some of them want very little government at all. Regardless of the size of our federal government, all of them want  it operate generally within its means (without new taxes). That sounds good, but most of them aren’t ready to make the needed cuts to achieve their goals. Their view is that everyone should have a fair and equal opportunities for success but everything isn’t going to be fair or equal in the end.

The options tomorrow might not all be great, but they are clear. We can keep moving toward the government as the centerpiece of our American existence or vote to take a step back.  If you think your government is doing a great job, vote for more of the same. If you think our government is growing out of control, vote for a change.

Comments closed, this is a soapbox entry.