We pulled off our first event! OK, so it was a luncheon and half of it had been planned before we started (venue, menu) but we had a good hand in it and it wasn't a disaster. Bob Griese was the speaker at the luncheon, which took place at Quail Hollow, and one of my jobs was to meet him at the entrance and walk him in to be introduced to the board at their pre-luncheon meeting. While we waited for the board to open their doors, we talked about my job, his career, and even his little slip on ESPN with the taco comment he made. I know. Sometimes I shouldn't be so bold, but I told him that I had read up on his impressive career and he said, "Oh gosh, what did you read". So I told him, but he was good natured about it. We had an impressive turnout, almost too impressive. A couple us in the staff had to sit outside to eat. Bob was a great speaker. I realized he was a hit when I was sitting outside and heard an eruption from the room. I listened to the last half of his talk, which was pretty great until the end when someone asked him who where his favorite ACC football stadium was and he did not say Clemson. He actually didn't pick a favorite, but seriously? Is there even a question about whether or not Death Valley is the the best place to play? Oh well. At least in Johnny Harris' opening remarks, he used Clemson the fifth goal written on our locker room wall: GO TO CHARLOTTE. I hope Clemson reaches the goal! When I was introduced to the room of over 100 people, Will somehow could not get the word Clemson out to save his life. Of course, he made the typical "does it have a 'P' in it?" joke, but I finally had several Clemson fans come to my rescue. Obviously we exchanged cards afterwards, and I think I've made my Clemson connections among the leatherheads and the board.
OK, Y'all. Can I just say? Charlotte. is. cool. It's like this small nothing city in the south turned into a southeastern mecca for industry. I'm shocked. I grew up coming to this City to visit cousins, or stop in for a meal with family on the way to and from somewhere else. My experience with Charlotte was pretty much limited to playing in the back yard, or walking to the Harris Teeter down the street to pick out candy. I had no idea how much this city had to offer. I am meeting half of the who's who in this town...the only problem is...I don't even realize what's going on until after it's happened. I am "important person illiterate". I'm interacting with several of the most important people in the Charlotte community and beyond and if you asked me if I was intimidated, I'd say no...mainly because I meet these people and have no idea who they are. Yesterday we had a breakfast at Carmel Country Club as part of the Hood Hargett Breakfast Club. If you are local to Charlotte, or if you know anything about anyone in the business community, you would probably appreciate the guest list. Packman, a local sport talk radio celeb, Jerry Richardson (owner of the Panthers), and Hugh McColl (former CEO of Bank of America) were all in attendance. By the way, when I told my dad that Jerry Richardson was there, he said "Oh yeah, he used to bring us hamburgers"...uhhhh.
Hugh McColl spoke at the breakfast. When I saw the 75 year old man approach the podium. I prepared myself for a long hour of staring at my plate of half eaten eggs and bacon. To my surprise, Mr. McColl was utterly entertaining. I mean, this guy had an entire room erupting in comfortable laughter. There were several things he said that made Charlotte as successful as it is-the first being the city's annexation laws. According to him, it is extremely important for Charlotte to be able to annex other land. He also said it's important to only have one school district, guaranteeing kids from all economic backgrounds will have an equal opportunity for education. He also mentioned that the weak mayor, strong management system was important to the success of the city (adding a "sorry, Mr. Mayor" directed to the mayor himself who sat at the head table). Apparently, when Hugh finished his duty with Marines, he came back to the farm to take on the family business, but his dad told him "we're getting along fine without you", so he went into to banking...huh. Mr. McColl took some questions at the end, one being from a younger guy who asked him to speak to the young professionals in the room about his definition of success. He paused for a while but answered that he thought success was when you were able to make your abilities meet your limitations (I think...I’ve had the quote in my head since Friday and all of the sudden drew a blank when I tried to write it out). I do distinctly remember him talking about happiness though, and he said that happiness hasn't come as much from his professional success, as it has come from being a father and a grandfather. God, I hope that I will not just be a professional success and a failure in my personal life.
When we got back to the office we decided to devote some attention to the social media sites...and it was a "football Friday giveaway" day on twitter for the meineke bowl game so we decided to give away our first pair of tickets! We had a lot of success with that, a good amount of retweets and even several more follows! On the ACC site, we tried to engage followers by getting them to ask us questions about the acc championship...not effective at all. We're trying to figure out how to make our pages effective on twitter so we're trying different things...some more successful than others. Note to self: Tickets, a hit. Q&A sessions, not so much.
We got a new pet in the office on Friday...a baby copperhead. Apparently baby copperheads are more venomous than the big ones, AND when you see the baby, the momma is not far away. I think everyone showed their true colors. The entire Raycom office came into the lobby to watch Ken Haines, President and CEO of Raycom, try to wrangle the snake into a box. No surprise to anyone, at one point the snake reared up to attack and I dramatically bolted in the other direction. BUT I was brave enough to take a few pictures.
*****I wanted to go ahead and post this, but the pictures aren't uploading. I will go back through and figure out how to upload the pictures from my phone.*****
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