See Carolina Connect 2010 for more info.

Thursday! Thursday! Thursday! Bryan Freeborn brings the blitz. One day only! Get the blitz “bestowed” upon ye. Special appearance by Go-Go the Gorilla.

He, Bryan, not Go-Go, is a firehouse of ideas, all good, and this is your chance for some free goodness. He offered to buy an Ideation Blitz shirt for me and I turned him down, to my everlasting regret. And I don’t even wear t-shirts. That thing turned out sweet!

May 13 at The Renaissance in downtown Asheville. Come an’ get it!

Oh yes, you want to be at this event. Carolina Connect 2010 is sure to be a great opportunity to network with all sorts of businesspeople in Western North Carolina, and way beyond. Many of the speakers and panelists are coming from all over the country.

I’m moderating a panel in the Entrepreneurial track with some great panelists from local startups, a major media company, and an international corporation that the founder recently sold. The overall theme is still being worked out but we will certainly discuss the “growing pains” with any successful startup, big mistakes to avoid, managing remote teams and outsourcers, leveraging technology, and anything else we can jam into the hour.

At the end of the day there will be a bunch “Critical Conversations” and Bryan and I are hosting one of those. It will certainly be related to modern marketing but we are up for discussing anything. Please let us know your thoughts.

And remember, tickets are only $95 if you register by May 7. After that tickets are $125.

See Carolina Connect 2010 for more info.

Shaky cam strikes again! Too much coffee this morning, or not enough? I’m not sure. But I think you can still clearly see how fantastic this handmade furniture is, by Brian Boggs and company. The barstools Brian shows us in this video are exquisite. They are an interesting juxtaposition of hard edged precision geometry and deliberately visible hand work. And freakishly comfortable.

We really enjoyed our time in the shop today and for a furniture nerd like me it’s hard to not start dreaming up things to make after being around all that creativity and craftsmanship, and tools (covet covet).

Visit BrianBoggsChairs.com for more info.

“I— Am— Sil-ho-uette Man, In-ter-view-ing peo-ple as fast as I can…”

First time I’ve used the Flip camera in the conference room at the new office. Now I know. Don’t sit in front of the windows, too much backlight. I had a great meeting with Eric and Trevor at Lab Escape. They are from a software company, based in Asheville, that makes “heat map” products.

“Lab Escape provides information visualization solutions for businesses seeking to better understand their data. Our products include our Tree Map, which shows trends and highlights anomalies, and our Data Map SDK, which provides support for building your own data maps.”

It’s an interesting business with several big name clients. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say beyond that but when I say big I mean el grande. So if you’re wrestling with great gobs of data, trying to make sense of it all, check out their heat map software.

Heat maps can help you visualize:

“Sales Performance
Risk Management
Market Share Analysis
Asset Management
Market Basket Analysis
Network Monitoring
Investment Performance
Budget Analysis
Portfolio Management
Performance Tracking
Trend Detection
Opportunity Analysis”

That’s all for now.

Yesterday I met with Renee Owen, Executive Director at Rainbow Mountain Children’s School. This is a great, small private school in west Asheville. They serve kids from preschool through eighth grade. I have firsthand experience with school because both of my kids have been students there, and it’s been a good experience. The school has developed a fantastic community of students, parents and faculty.

If you’re looking for a private school in Asheville find more about Rainbow at RMCS.org.

The Hoffman brothers, Damien and Derek, remind me of my last real job. I used to work for the media company The Motley Fool (Fool.com) before moving to Asheville. The Fool also covers the stock market and other financial matters, and was founded by brothers Tom and David Gardner.

The Hoffmans are the new, new media guys in this category and I admire their DIY-get-it-done work ethic. You too can grow your site traffic massively in a few short months using their simple approach: work your ass off, create great original content, and develop relationships everywhere you can.

Stay on top of the stock market, trading and investing with WallStCheatSheet.com.

Oh man. It’s hard to keep a straight face when the interviewee is wearing a giant dog head. Say hello to Jack Carrier, founder of DogTagArt.com. I am a huge fan of “crowdsourcing” and that’s exactly the house that Jack’s built. If you’re familiar with Threadless.com, the very popular t-shirt site, then you have an idea what’s going on here. Artists submit designs for custom dog tags that anyone can order. There’s more to it than that so I suggest you check out the site yourself.

One of my favorites says “I love squirrels.”

Visit DogTagArt.com to see tons of custom dog tags.

Curses! I got caught up taking of other business yesterday and broke my streak of daily posts M-F. Better late than never, heeeeeerrrre’s Marcie McGrath from Balloon Fairy Magic.

If you want to spice up an event with a balloon artist or magic show contact Marcie.

BalloonFairyMagic.com

Who’s up next for one of the ambush interviews? Tell me about your business.

Yesterday I met with Carl Donovan of Conservation Pros. They are a building performance contractor specializing in retrofitting solutions to existing buildings and homes. From their site:

Your home is wasting tons of your money. The US Department of Energy has proven that the average American household wastes as much as 50% of its energy dollars through duct leaks, building envelope leaks, outdated systems and deferred maintenance.

That’s more than just wasted money, it’s also wasted energy. As we’re all aware, that energy is getting more and more scarce and is creating an enviromental dilemma that currently has no known solution.

We can help.

Contact them for everything from duct sealing to a complete green renovation.

Oh my butt was killing me by the end of this ride! I had a mountain biking mishap a month ago, broken ribs, and this was the first long ride on the road bike since then. Oof!

Anyhow, this ride started at the office of Steve Miller D.D.S. Steve is a dentist in Asheville with an office on Chestnut Street. North side crew in da house! Steve is also a member of the Asheville Bicycle Racing Club.

Check out his site: www.smileasheville.com