Nashville Technology Blog (6/15/2010)
Wow, what a week in Nashville. CMA and Bonnaroo brought out amazing artist representing all genres of music and all walks of life from the fan bases. Even before CMA began, we were busy scurrying on rooftops to make sure the Nashville Wifi network was optimized. We were routinely experiencing 200+ simultaneous requests on the network. Fortunately, we never fully saturated the network, although we pushed 75% utilization on Saturday evening. With the sponsorship of CMA for the Month of June, we were able to add an additional repeater to cover the Courthouse Lawn. We also moved a repeater down to the Riverfront due to increase usage in this block.
On Friday, were fortunate to have Jeff Hayzlett speak to a crowd of composed of C-Suite Executives from technology, marketing, legal, and finance at Bass Berry in the Pinnacle Tower. It is a spectacular view. Special thanks to Keith Gregg from JRG Ventures and Janice Reece from Network PDF who introduced Jeff to Nashville.
Jeff Hayzlett presented his philosophy and concepts from his new book “The Mirror Test”. He had several memorable quotes that I latched onto. “Leadership is about 1. Satisfaction and 2. Causing Tension.” His COS – Conditions of Satisfaction was not a new concept, but I haven’t heard it put that way before.
Get rid of your lowest common denominator. I learned this early on in my career at HCA through Modelnetics. 10% of your workforce represents the leadership. They will push the edge and work very hard. The bottom 10% need to go each year (Jeff says “I love you and I am going to miss you”). The middle 80% will follow the 10%, but will lag and that is ok as long as you lop off the bottom 10%. This probably sounds pretty harsh, but if you look in the mirror and really hold yourself to this, it does have an amazing effect.
His Four E’s really resonated with me. Engage, Educate, Excite, Evangelize. I feel like this is the culture of the Nashville Technology Council and is almost verbatim with our strategy for 2010. The real question is how are we doing? Let me know.
The 118 Test. What is the 118 Test? This is the elevator pitch. Most entrepreneurs and corporations fail at this concept. We are so excited and passionate about company, that we forget to give them the reason why they should care in the first place. We just dive into the spiel and give them more than they want. Basically Hayzlett believes you have 8 seconds (the average attention span for Adult Americans – sad) to initially sell your idea to someone so that you have 110 seconds (average time for an elevator ride in NYC) to expound on your value proposition.
I took this to heart and tried it out myself.
8 Second Pitch for the Nashville Technology Council – Our mission is to make the technology community in Middle Tennessee Successful.
How do we do this?
110 Pitch – We do this by providing education through conferences and meetings, professional development to educate the workforce, economic development (recruiting both talent and companies to the region in partnership with the Chamber), provide scholarships to students pursuing technology degrees, provide grants to the community for technology projects, work through advisory boards with local colleges and universities to increase the number of technology graduates, save members money through joint purchasing power and help people find money through networking and entrepreneurial support.
It was a great way to kick off an amazing weekend for Nashville.
Have you ever wanted to network and play golf with Nashville’s technology leadership? The Nashville Technology Board is comprised of the region’s leading CIOs, Entrepreneurs, Educational Institutions, Technology Products and Services companies. This is a great opportunity for the community to golf and network with our Board of Directors. Board members act as “team captains” for each golf team. The remainder of the team is constructed based on the company you are with, the industry you are in and with an emphasis on creating an atmosphere to meet new people.
