Rocky Top MBA

CMM January 19th, 2009

One of the things that continues to keep me in Knoxville is its unique ability to combine small town values and hospitality with big city culture and services. This is never more obvious than when you take a trip downtown for an event at the Tennessee Theater. On the evening of Thursday, January 15th the girl and I were special guests of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra for their performance of Mozart & Mendelssohn. It was a fantastic evening— a nearly flawless performance by the symphony orchestra set in the beautiful Tennessee Theater.

The performance was lead by Maestro Lucas Richman, who is ever the scholar, diplomat, and gentleman for the performing arts. The featured piano soloist was Navah Perlman, the talented daughter of the famous violinist Itzhak Perlman. Her performance was full of emotion and flawless to my ear. In addition, a number of the KSO members visited with us during a private reception following the performance. They were so personable and friendly. If you’re looking for a night out, give the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra a try. You won’t regret it.

Our seats were provided as a part of a Knoxville blogger event, so thank you and kudos to  Stepahnie at the KSO! The local KSO blogger and principal violinst, Katy Gawne, has more details.

The performance schedule was as follows:

Bach; Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major for Strings and Continuo, BWM 1048

• I. [Allegro]
• II. Adagio
• III. Allegro

Note: This was an excellent start and gave the audience an opportunity to use these pieces by Back as a comparison for Mozart and, ultimately, Medellsohn. The concert master, Mark Zelmonovich, too the lead and demonstrated his talent and passion all through the evening. This opening set is signifigant since Mendelssohn and Bach are considered cut from the same cloth.

Mozart; Concert No. 24 in C Minor for Piano and Orchestra, K. 491

• I. Allegro
• II. Larghetto
• III. Allegretto

Note: This set featured Navah Perlman on an amazing piano that seemeed to stretch for a third of the stage. Her performance was flawless to my ears, and the orchestra did a wonderful job of supporting her. Beyond hearing her music, the passion demonstrated in her face and movement was awesome and helped to pull the listener into the piece.

Mendellsohn; Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90 (“Italian”)

• I. Allegro vivace
• II. Andante con moto
• III. Con moto moderato
• IV. Saltarello: Presto

Note: An excellent close to the evening. Very powerful pieces.

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CMM January 18th, 2009

Something crazy happened with my blog on the morning of Friday, January 16th at around 3am EST. I’m not sure what it was, but I know that it corrupted my database and crashed my blog. Not being a tech or coding person, I’m pretty impressed that I was able to reconstruct and retore a back-up. If you come across any problems, please let me know.

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CMM June 16th, 2008

There are three reasons why I felt compelled to write about Weezer’s new music video. First, Weezer was one of my favorite bands growing up. To this day, a handful of songs from “The Blue Album” and “Pinkerton” reside on my iPod. Some days, Weezer just makes good soundtrack music for my life.

Second, the lead rythym guitar and backing vocals is Brian Bell, a Knoxville native. I think this is very cool.

Third, the music video for “Pork and Beans” takes advantage of a very fun and promising marketing technique called viral marketing. The point of viral marketing is using word-of-mouth to grow awareness of a product or service. In this case, the goal is to raise awareness of Weezer and the new song. Much like I heard about the video from Silicon Valley Insider, hopefully someone will wander across my blog and keep sharing.

Check out the new video. It stays true to the bands fun-loving sound and spoofs some of the most popular video clips on the web. Its kind of fun to watch and see which ones you can identify, but for those of us that don’t have the time or attention span, here is a video providing a rundown of the 24 original shorts (hat tip Valleywag).

• Blog , viral marketing
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CMM April 20th, 2008

I’ve completed a relatively painless Wordpress update. If you have any problems, please let me know.
I’ve also got a really frustrating error with a plugin called Google Sitemap Generator. I’m not using the plugin, but I can’t delete it because it appears tied into some critical operation. If anyone has a thought or idea, please let me know. It is driving my OCD into overdrive.

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CMM April 16th, 2008

I will preface this email by stating two incredibly valuable experiences I had as a result of my online presence.

First, the Knoxville area tweet-up last week was really awesome. It was very cool to put faces with so many names, and I felt enriched by finding so many smart folks in my immediate area. I’m a big fan of “innovate or go home” as a life strategy, and I feel like a central component of innovation is the environment (sometimes through hostility or pain, othertimes through creative friction).  After having a great and thought-provoking lunch with the Knoxville twitter audience (on the patio in beautiful weather with a river and mountains for a backdrop), I feel great about the future of this community. On a side, Jack Lail from the Knox News Sentinel was a missed addition… but we can’t have everything. Maybe one day soon I’ll get a chance to meet him face-to-face.

Second, I was invited to participate in a political debate through American Republic Online around a year ago with a local Democratic party official in East TN. The topic was gas prices and profits in the oil industry. I made the argument that we shouldn’t beat up on oil companies for their profit margins (after all, they average between 8-12% margins after covering the extraoridnary overhead and R&D costs).  As a staunch free market advocate, I argued that the short-term solution was soncumer side tax-breaks gor gasoline and policy support behind alternative energy. Since then, the Republican presenital nominee John McCain has come out strong in support of both initatives. I’m not so vain as to think that I influenced that decision, but it is nice to have proof that I had similar thoughts over a year ago.

Lastly, my online presence has turned into a swamp and I’m stuck in quicksand. About the only elements getting attention these dates are my email and twitter account. My Google Reader is getting cleaned out around once a week, and my blog has been postless for quite some time. Some of this is due to my life getting a little hectic with some life changes taking place, some of it is getting oriented into my new job (where 90% of the information I hear is proprietary, confidential or requires fact verification). Regardless, I’ve been drowning and want to make things simple (again). I don’t know how to do that… but maybe I’ll figure it out.

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