Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

This is Billy Kounoupis, owner of the most excellent, most “not your ordinary diner” – Billy’s Downtown Diner in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley.

After a recent speaking engagement for the regional tourism organization, I asked my hosts for a breakfast recommendation the next morning….and boy, did they ever hook me up!

Billy himself (born and raised in nearby Easton PA) was greeting hungry patrons when we walked in, the place was jammed with all kinds of locals and the menu was one of the most fresh and imaginative I’d ever seen for a diner.

It was really hard to choose, but I went with the Tonga Toast - ”Sourdough bread dipped in our own French toast mix and topped with fresh strawberries, bananas and walnuts. Draped with low fat vanilla yogurt and dusted with cinnamon” for about US$8.00. I ate every bite of it.

My Discover Lehigh Valley host Mike Keller went with the Lil’ Havana Omelette – “Slow roasted pulled pork in authentic Cuban seasonings with grilled ham, Swiss and Pepper jack cheese wrapped by three fluffy eggs and topped with diced tomatoes” for about US$9.00.

I can’t remember what my other host Ryan had that morning, but Mike’s omelette is shown here on the right, before it completely disappeared.

Tomorrow (November 26) Billy has a book signing at the Moravian Book Shop (founded by the Moravians who settled in this part of Pennsylvania) for his new book on hospitality and entrepreneurship, Billy Cooks Like a Mother: A Guide to Starting Your Own Business by Someone Who’s Been There and Done That.

It would make a terrific gift for anyone in the hospitality business.

I love everything about places like Billy’s, and entrepreneurs who make things happen despite long odds and a tough economy.

Thanks for breakfast, Billy.

Disclosure: Discover Lehigh Valley paid for my breakfast, but awesome food that you don’t pay for is still awesome food.

(Direct link to the video below if you can’t see the embed box.)

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How, exactly, does a town or city or region get “buzz” – people talking about how interesting it is, and maybe about paying a visit to check things out?

London may have a few answers that you can replicate in your destination.

When I attended the SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive) tech conference in March, I picked up a trade show brochure from the office of the Mayor of London; the British have a big presence at “South by.”  The brochure is called Innovation Future: The East London Connection and it talks about the growth of London’s Shoreditch area as a UK tech hub.

According to the writeup, here are the elements that keep this part of the city hopping….

“The attractions of East London for start-up technology companies, eager to become the next Google or Facebook, are numerous. It is relatively affordable; accessible; and incredibly vibrant and culturally diverse, with plenty of quirky bars and restaurants and an exciting and dynamic arts and culture scene. A strong feeling of community pervades, attracting creative entrepreneurs who thrive on networking, exchanging ideas and forging collaborative relationships.”

There’s nothing in there about needing people with lots of money.

There’s nothing in there about fancy buildings or much of anything swanky.

I see a lot about an environment where the joy of creating is encouraged, and that doesn’t cost money; it “costs” determination and imagination among a variety of citizens in a community, like those at the Shoreditch/Old St. TechHub.

Even small towns can encourage the entrepreneurial and tech spirit, and even one guy in Kansas can support the arts.

What can you do this week to bring some East London to YOUR town?

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At a recent  gathering for some Chamber of Commerce staff, I heard one of them say that his boss is rather dismissive of any time spent on the Chamber’s Facebook Page, yet if the Chamber is not successful on Facebook, that is seen as a failure.

Rock, meet Hard Place.

I’d love to tell that boss that if Facebook is part of an organization’s communications strategy, then interacting with customers or prospects on Facebook is work. It is not “goofing off.”

Welcome to the modern world – Facebook for business is work. It is part of that Chamber communicator’s job to connect with not only Chamber members, but also people in the community who might become members, including hardworking entrepreneurs who may have never considered the Chamber as an asset for growing their business.

The Chamber should be the hub of business development and economic growth in a community, and one way to interact with the community is through social media channels like Facebook.

The boss needs to get a clue, and if he or she isn’t careful, they’re going to see brain drain by staff members who understand the social Web.

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After our great experience holding the 140 Characters Conference Small Town in the restored Fox Theatre in Hutchinson, Kansas, I began thinking about how small towns with the right timing, venue, networks and entrepreneurial spirit can host more tech- and social media-related events.

The result of my musings was an article I wrote for the January 2011 issue of PCMA Convene (the magazine for the Professional Convention Management Association) and a guest post on the PCMA blog: “Small-Town, Not Small-Time.”

An excerpt from the post:

“Some tips on using a small town venue for digital gatherings:

1) Don’t make assumptions about which places can and can’t host. The 140 Characters conferences, for example, “are usually and most effectively held in theaters; in fact, the very first one in New York was based on the idea of [a Twitter-like] one hundred and forty characters gathering together in an off-Broadway theater,” said SmallTown’s lead organizer Becky McCray, who has also spoken at 140 Conferences in London and Detroit. “All we had to do was bring WiFi (wireless Internet) into Hutchinson’s Fox Theatre, and it was perfect.”

For the rest of the tips, see the full article about how an Art Deco theater hosted a bunch of modern geeks, in “Small-Town, Not Small-Time.”

So many small towns and rural areas fight the image of being backward, and they find it tough to draw and hold onto talent.  The web and social media changes that, and consequently can have a big impact on economic development.

For more on that, keep an eye on the next 140 Conference Small Town, again in Hutchinson, on September 20, 2011.

There is an exciting new development for anyone who has ever wondered how to attract buzz and interest to their small town or rural area….and I’ll explain what a pump jack photo (to the left) has to do with it.

The popular 140 Characters Conference series – about Twitter and other communications in the “State of Now” –  has added a location to their event lineup that previously included gatherings in Los Angeles, Boston, Tel Aviv, New York London, San Francisco and Detroit.

It’s the 140 Conference SmallTown in Hutchinson, Kansas, at the historic downtown Fox Theatre on November 1, 2010.  There was an article about it in the Wichita Business Journal:  Big-city Twitter event coming to small-town Kansas.

If you’ve ever wanted to see how small towns and their economic development can benefit from technology, join me in “Hutch,” because I will not miss this one.

How did this thing end up in small town Kansas? Because of social media connections over a photo, and a blogger familiarization tour/press trip.

My Tourism Currents business partner Becky McCray posted a pump jack photo of her own onto Twitter  Update: Becky says it was the other way around - Hutchinson business guy Cody Heitschmidt put up a pump jack TwitPic photo and Becky saw and commented on it.

Becky and Cody then kept up a friendly chatter on Twitter for months. When Cody said that he’d like to work with his local CVB and the Cosmosphere space museum to bring some bloggers to see his hometown, Becky agreed to be one of them….and convinced me to go, too, despite my general skepticism about blogger fam (familiarization) tours.

It turned out to be a smashing success and an example of great tourism outreach (plus how else would I have gotten to see artifacts from Liberty Bell 7 at the Cosmosphere?)

So, guess which town was top of mind when Becky started organizing 140 Conference SmallTown?

It was solid social networking by some of the Hutch townsfolk, pure and simple.  They’re going to bring WiFi into the gorgeous Art Deco Fox Theatre, fill it with a bunch of blogging/Facebooking/video-ing/Tweeting geeks, and connect that town to the whole planet.

“Flyover country,” my hind end.

This is truly groundbreaking; it speaks to how the Web is starting to allow us to live where we want and connect with people worldwide from wherever we want to, as long as we have an Internet connection.

Want to attend? There’s still time – use code 140disc when you register here, and save $40 off of the ticket price.

See you in Hutch!

As part of US National Travel and Tourism Week (May 8 – 16, 2010) towns and cities across the United States are planning a variety of festivities to recognize and celebrate the importance of visitors and travel.

In Texas alone in 2008, travel spending directly supported over 500,000 jobs and people traveling in the state spent an estimated $60.6 billion.

I’m checking out the scene in Huntsville, Texas, where the newly-designated downtown Huntsville Cultural District is helping the town’s tourism and downtown development efforts.

Helping to kick off the festivities is a new folk art exhibit….Art Matters: Works by Self-Taught Artists….at the Wynne Home Arts Center.

The town decided to use Travel and Tourism Week to draw attention to all of the interesting cultural and arts activities in the area, and the Wynne House folk art event was the jump-start.

I saw lots of wonderfully colorful and imaginative pieces and spoke with several artists at the opening (will post more here later and some pics are going up on Flickr, TwitPic and Facebook as well) but here are three tourism-related thoughts from a few conversations I’ve had today:

• Sometimes it is hard for local people to appreciate their own town.  I’m not seeing this in Huntsville, but at the exhibit opening we discussed this problem. The best wake-up call is visitors who ooh and aah over the things you take for granted.
• Revitalizing a tired downtown is a team effort between “the arty types,” the city government, the Chamber of Commerce, the CVB and all of the people who own businesses in the district.  Everyone has to be on board, and for the long haul, because it can take years to get any traction.
• It is often one or two “crazies” who see the possibilities better than anyone else, and bravely move into the run-down sections of town and open little galleries, restaurants, etc.  For gosh sakes, support them! Support The Crazies!

(Disclosure: my Huntsville trip has been paid for in part by the Texas Commission on the Arts)