The Places I Am Shopping on Black Friday

Happy Turkey Leftovers Day!

Hope all you TechKnows had a great Thanksgiving full of turkey, pies, family, and little kids saying funny things that they are thankful for. My little niece blurted out "CUPCAKES!!" as we were all going around naming what we were thankful for.

You and me both, sister.

Anyway, just when you thought you could have time to digest your turkey....Black Friday is upon us. Everything is also now online, since Cyber Monday apparently is not a thing anymore. Really, is it still a thing? Anyone? Bueller?

So, in order to save you some time with your family and football, I have scoured the internet and came up with a list of the best deals that I could find. I know, you're so welcome. You can thank me later... with cupcakes.

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My Visit to the Atlanta Tech Village

What cities make you think tech startups? San Francisco?

New York? Los Angeles?

....Atlanta?

Enter the Atlanta Tech Village, a business complex that was built to foster starting tech companies and create a tech community in Atlanta. Boasting of over 100 tech startups, the Atlanta Tech Village holds events, promotes outings and provides food and drinks to employees all in the name of "creating engineered serendipity". The premise behind this goal is to create opportunities for intelligent people to collaborate and come up with even better ideas, no matter what company they may be working for at the time.

In other words, by creating a roof under which a density of tech companies can live, more ventures could come from accidental idea collaboration. 

At the heart of it all is tech entrepreneur and Kevy CEO, David Cummings. After selling his successful marketing automation company, Pardot, Cummings came up with the idea for a cloud-integration software company and this tech community - seemingly simultaneously. His new company, named Kevy, is housed in the Tech Village, and its president, Ed Trimble, was my tour guide for the day. 

Me, Ed Trimble and Brooke Beach, Kevy Marketer, in front of the Kevy mascot

Startup Space

With all the buzz around this new space, many companies are asking how they can get involved.  But, as Ed pointed out, the Tech Village started filling spaces through the word of Twitter and its website.

"Atlanta Tech Village is only 10 months old," Trimble stated, "and is already the largest co-working space in the Southeast. We didn't really advertise, people found out about it through word of mouth marketing, which shows that there was a big pent up demand for a space like this."

Don't mind me, just getting a little work done

Between the fun, quirky decor, the relaxed atmosphere, the great Buckhead location and the multitude of employee benefits, it's not hard to see why people are scrambling to work here.

Want to work while exercising? Try the treadmill with desk space for your laptop.





Need to take a private call? Try one of their small meeting rooms with an Atlanta theme in each.

Need to get around Buckhead? Take one of the Razor scooters that are provided for employees to borrow.

One of the mottoes of Atlanta Tech Village is "work hard, play hard", and the Tech Village makes sure to do just that. From cardio yoga classes, rock climbing outings to fencing classes, the Tech Village makes sure that there are plenty of opportunities for companies and employees to interact and get to know each other.

Event Space

Atlanta Tech Village hosts several events each week, all focused on helping startups break ground in Atlanta. Every Friday, there is a Startup Chowdown, where ATV provides lunch and allows guests and employees to mingle. Also on the calendar is a Pitch Practice, where startups can bounce their ideas off of each other and perfect their pitching points for sales.

There is also an iOS Developer Study Group, countless award ceremonies, and a Google Developers meetup. You can visit their website for more information on what's coming up soon!

Under Construction

Currently, the Tech Village is under a lot of construction. Cumming's vision includes more space for events, meeting spaces and places businesses to settle into, and even a life-size chess board on the front lawn. This blogger is very excited to see the changes happening in the Atlanta tech community, and will look forward to seeing the building after construction. Who knows? Maybe I will be invited back to document the grand opening after all the construction is done - we'll see! *Crosses fingers hopefully*














Want to see more pictures of my behind-the-scenes tour? View the slideshow below!


What do you think about the Atlanta Tech Village? 

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Broadcast to Bring You....

With art, you always have someone in every medium that pushes the envelope and creates something entirely new and unheard of; artists who try to take some ordinary substance and turn it in to extraordinary pieces of art.

It is no different with social media. As technology progresses, people are finding different ways to use the social media forums given to them to create something the world has never seen before.

These pioneers have done just that. Some have used apps, others have used Tumblr, all producing content that is unique and never-before seen. Enjoy!

Didn't get enough Halloween? Check out the new app Haunting Melissa (iOS). The Producer of The Ring and Mulholland Drive created this ghost story video series that will give you chills. Episode by episode, you will learn the whole story, and experience twists and turns along the way. The interactive story will even let you snap in-app pictures and upload them to Instagram, to make sure you creep out all your friends.

The first app of its kind, Haunting Melissa may change the way producers share their content in the future. Instead of creating a mini-series for TV, more and more video series may show up as interactive apps, which allow for audience participation as well as social interaction. I mean, come on. You know you want to post the creepy ghost pics on your Instagram, tell them that its real and scare the beejezus out of your followers.

You know I will. 

Want more eeriness? Listen to the podcast Welcome to Night Vale. Set in a small desert town, the podcast is played as a radio show that points out the mysterious goings-on, from unexplained lights overhead to disappearing aircraft to bizarre neighbors. Read like a radio show broadcasting the news to this small town, this podcast has become wildly popular due to its original content and dead-pan humor. 

The podcast started a wave of entertainment personalities using podcasts as a story-telling device, rather than simply for interviews, education, marketing or news casting. Like the radio programs of old, podcasts have been rebranded to story-telling devices, and this story...may make you weary of small desert towns from now on.

Humans of New York is a Tumblr profile that takes photo blogging to a whole other level. What started as one man's project to create a photographic census of New York turned into a series of photographs and short stories about the unique people of New York. 

Unique New York. Say that five times fast. 

Instead of the normal memes and Harry Potter/Mean Girls mashups you regularly see on Tumblr, Humans of New York uses the photo sharing platform to tell mini stories about people he encountered. Potentially, more and more people could use Tumblr  to facilitate photo-journalism and news bullets.

Not that I'm hating on Harry Potter/Mean Girls mashups.

Speaking of great Tumblr users, Electric Literature is an indie publishing company that has revolutionized the book publishing process. Instead of traditional book printing, Electric Lit makes releases eBooks as well as a magazine called Recommended Reading that can be seen on either their app or on Tumblr.

They were also the driving force behind author Ricky Moody creating an entire short story simply using Twitter.  Charged with the task of creating a story using a series of Tweets, Moody wrote "Some Contemporary Characters", a tale of two online daters whose date does not succeed. Unlike other stories that have been produced using Twitter, Moody wrote this with Twitter in mind, using the social media platform to create these two characters and develop their personalities to the readers. Even thought this project was met with a lot of media backlash, Electric Literature became well known and succeeded in gaining many interested readers.

Question: where can amateur film makers go to market their movies and connect with their fanbase? Look no further than Chill, a website that will advertise and distribute your movie, and allow fans to follow their favorite producers. If someone produces a mini-series, Chill will email their viewers to alert them of any upcoming episodes or to sell any merchandise made for the movie. They have revolutionized the way that movie makers are able to distribute their content: no longer having to show their groundbreaking footage for free on a shaky YouTube platform.

These are just a few examples of some social media pioneers. Do you know of any not shown on this list?