A quintessential Nashville Is Talking experience

New blogs sprout every week; supposedly there are now 100 million world wide, but there can only be one shindig, gathering, extravaganza, hoedown, hullabaloo, whatever you want to call last night's event at Wolfy's Den. Advertised as "the first all-encompassing blog meet-up sponsored by News 2 in over a year," it had all the atmosphere of a movie premiere.

Of course, being a blogger fest, there wasn't any room in the budget for high-intensity searchlights criss-crossing the Nashville night sky. Neither did I see bloggers dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns arrive in stretch limousines in front of the Gaylord Entertainment Center, to the applause of an adoring crowd. And where was Emcee Harry Chapman or Jimmy Carter, with microphone in hand, interviewing the blog celebrities going inside to watch the film "THE BLOG" ...



Nonetheless, seeing and chatting with bloggers in living HTML was quite a sight. And a quintessential Nashville Is Talking experience.



The producer of all this madness, WKRN GM Mike Sechrist gave a nice talk about how Nashville Is Talking originated and stations from other large markets visiting WKRN to understand the new model of community engagement (and seeking an audience) with bloggers and video journalists. The big announcement of the night from Mike Sechrist was that WKRN is looking for video blogs now, and will pay to use them. They will revive the video training classes to ensure quality content. As a sidenote, I had a great chat with the GM about the old video kiosks that WSMV used to set up in malls where people could push a record button and speak whatever was on their mind. We both agreed that was some great content back in the day!



And how about the lead star of Nashville Is Talking? A very gracious hostess, Brittney Gilbert has matured the aggregator of NIT to probably 500 plus blogs, seen sporting new glasses most likely from going bug-eyed from all the content that flows through the bandwidth into the newsroom. Ask any weekend guest blogger - it's a tough job culling content even sitting in your undies all weekend in front of a PC.

What a great evening! Lots of laughter, upside down name tags, techie talk, engaging personalities, Henry Mancini fans, memorable conversations, extra salty BBQ, great view of the city...

I did hear from a blogger in Beaumont, Texas when I made the claim that "This could be the catalytic blogger event that will propel Nashville past Beaumont, Texas on the map as a bonafide blogging community and lift WKRN out of third place in the ratings book."

- As a Beaumont, Texas, blogger I'd like to see Nashville take a stab at surpassing us as a "bonafide blogging community" ... but I'm not really sure it's gonna be that difficult! We're still trying to find the guy with DSL. -

OK, it's time to guess who's who in the pictures!


My Mothership BBQ dining buddies - CeeElCee and SistaSmiff



Blogger mom royalty rules - "Stay out of Bellevue Mall - everybody else does!"

more photos...