Raffle Prizes
Note: You're not expected to bring stuffed animals.
A time-honored tradition at 3CMA conferences are the raffle prizes that attendees from various communities bring to send home with the lucky winners.
Winning one is easy. No contests or feats of strength. Just put a business card into the marked container at the annual conference. Names will be randomly drawn during breaks between sessions and at some other full-group events. The earlier you get there and add your business card, the more chances you’ll have to win.
We already have commitments from communities in Georgia, Arizona, California, Indiana, Virginia, Florida, Illinois, Colorado, North Carolina, Louisiana, and North Dakota, but we still have room for more!
If you are interested in bringing a raffle prize from your community, contact me (Jeff Montgomery – jeffmontgomery@co.clarke.ga.us / 706-613-3795) with the items you’re bringing to get added to the list.
Need some ideas? How about…
- a book from a local author
- a CD from a local musician
- a DVD filmed in your community
- a useful marketing item for your community
- a cool local thing your community is known for producing
- an interesting item from a local merchant
- a local gift certificate (if it can be redeemed online or over the phone)
If there isn’t anything that you can think of that would be appropriate, we will also accept gift cards from national retailers (iTunes, Amazon, Target, etc.).
Once you get to 3CMA, just bring the items to registration to my attention and we’ll take it from there. I promise not to hoard the good stuff.
Airport Transportation
There are a couple of ways you can get to the W Hotel in Midtown Atlanta from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport:
1.) Ground Transportation. The W Hotel doesn’t have an airport shuttle, but there are plenty of shuttle services that will take you into midtown.
2.) Take MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) – Atlanta’s subway. Follow the MARTA signs in the airport to the airport station and get on the north line (which is your only option). Get off at the Arts Center stop at 15th street. Walk one block south and one block east and The W will be on your left.
3.) And now thanks to Kevin Tunell, there’s a third option if you act fast enough. See the details in his email below:
Not sure what other’s are doing when they arrive in Atlanta, but there’s no shuttle to the hotel (I’m told). That said, I’ve rented a van while I’m at the convention and would be happy to drive people to the hotel if they happen to be arriving at the same time.I figure the van will hold at least 4 (excluding myself). Here’s my flightinfo:Atlanta – Hartsfield Intl (ATL)Atlanta, GAArrives: 09/07/2010 at 1:55 P.MKevinkevin.tunell@yumacountyaz.gov
Restaurant Romp
“Restaurant Romp – what a cool idea.” I’ll never forget thinking this at my first 3CMA conference in 1998 in Portland, Oregon. As a veteran of many conferences in my pre-government life, I had always felt suffocated by the rubber chicken dinners and the lack of opportunities to get out into the cities I visited. As if eating Catered Food in an anonymous banquet room in Des Moines gave me any sense of the place whatsoever. (No offense to caterers intended – my mom is one…) It was endlessly frustrating to me to go to a wonderful place for a conference, but never be able to see it because of attending classes that were booked back-to-back with the in-house group dining.
Leave it to 3CMAers to solve the problem – as cheerleaders for our communities, it came as no surprise to me that liberation from the canned air of conference hotels came through this group. The concept is simple: The local host committee selects restaurants throughout the city with a variety of types of cuisine, a range of prices, and groups of different sizes. Conference attendees select the place that is most appealing and away they go.
The greatest side benefit to the Restaurant Romp is the relationships that form. That year in Portland, I selected a restaurant based on two things:
1. A Pan-Asian menu (then and now my favorite) and
2. The collection of mid-century modern chairs mentioned in the review posted with the sign-up sheets (Design Geek alert).
Apparently, I was alone in gravitating to those things. After the Welcome Reception, when all the groups started forming to head out to sample Portland’s culinary side, my host and I realized I was literally the only person who signed up for this particular restaurant. We decided to go anyway. It was wonderful – I was new to being a PIO and had a super in-depth one-on-one conversation with an industry professional that opened my mind to all sorts of challenges and opportunities. Oh, and with a side order of dumplings so good I still think about them from time to time.
I’ll admit to being a tiny bit jealous of the group of 30 that went to McCormick & Schmicks and had… shall we say… a different kind of good time. But the next year, in San Diego, I purposefully signed up with a big group and met some people who, to this day, I consider friends and professional resources.
SO, after this long preamble, Julie Brechbill (Roswell) and I are pleased to present Restaurant Romp 2010 – An APPetizing Adventure. We’ve tweaked the Restaurant Romp concept just a bit and hope you will like what we’ve done. The changes can be summarized in two points:
- Sign-ups will start now, online. You can read the restaurant reviews (courtesy of CitySearch Atlanta editor Jonathan Baker), see who’s hosting where, how you’ll get there, and what the place is like in the comfort of your office. We hope this will whet your appetite (cliché intended) for both the event and Atlanta. Just go to http://www.3cma.org/index.aspx?nid=524 and find the place you’d like to sign up to go on Wednesday.
- All these places are locally-owned! Well, ish – one place is Athens-based, but I’ll cop to making a biased exception to the rule. Atlanta has so much to offer and we want you to experience our homegrown talent. In addition, we have a special guest, Jonathan Baker, the editor of CitySearch Atlanta, who will be at the Welcome Reception to give us a primer on the Atlanta Food Scene.
Bon APPetit Y’all!
PIOs vs. Reporters
One of the presenters at the “Newsrooms Clamber Aboard the Social Media Bandwagon” on Friday, September 10 (10:45 a.m. – Noon) is Doug Richards, currently of WXIA TV in Atlanta (the NBC affiliate, Channel 11).
Doug has been a TV reporter for 27+ years, 21+ in Atlanta. Prior to WXIA, he also worked with WAGA TV (the Fox affiliate, Channel 5) in Atlanta. He’s also a big indie rock music fan and, keeping with the media tie, his son is an editorial cartoonist who worked for years at the University of Georgia’s daily student paper The Red & Black up in our Athens neck of the woods.
As you might expect, Doug has some experience with social media. He runs a blog called “Live Apartment Fire” that ruminates on TV news and reporters (both good and bad), as well as other news-related items, and random tangents. You can read the origin of the name at the site, which is linked below. Doug started the site after he left WAGA and before he was hired by WXIA, but has continued to write on the blog since returning to the reporter ranks.
Appropriately enough as we gear up for 3CMA, Doug posted an entry on August 23 that discussed a recent encounter he had with a PIO, offered some advice to other PIOs, and noted that he felt ex-reporters make for good PIOs.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Here’s a tip for public information officers (PIOs) who have to speak on behalf of individuals with government agencies who screw up: Talk about it. Own up to it. Be honest. Make the release of information timely. Or, at least pay lip service to the concept of answering questions and exploring the issue that has suddenly thrust you into the spotlight.
And if you don’t, then don’t cry about the coverage you got.”
Agree with his commentary or not, it makes for an interesting read and discussion topic in preparation for the conference and that particular session.
3CMA Atlanta Conference Hits The Blogosphere
Welcome to our 3CMAPPlanta Conference blog. We are two and a half weeks away from the conference and it is time to share some exciting details, tidbits, and information about both the conference and Atlanta.
The conference committee is excited to be able to offer this first-time-ever conference blog and different members are busy preparing their posts right now. Visit often and be sure to ask us any questions you want addressed – either about the conference or about Atlanta.
Our blog is also connected to the 3CMA Conference Facebook Page. We look forward to interacting with you over these next two weeks.
