SnowJam 2014

EAT ME!! Taste of Dunwoody 2014 Recap

The Crowne Plaza Ravinia should be the official home of Taste of Dunwoody from this moment onward.  The larger venue and more parking allowed for more mingling, more eating, more dancing, and less feeling cramped.  It was a almost-miss-people-you-know-because-you-rarely-see-them-dressed-and-made-up (sorry Amy....) and  party-until-you-fall-asleep-in-your-makeup kind of night.

As the night got started the sponsors gathered in front of the stage with Yacht Rock Revue for a group photo.

(Jill....  Thanks for following up on that photo.  This is where it's going!)

Food highlights, because I arrived hungry.  (If I make a mistake with the restaurant names or can't remember one, someone post a correction in the comments)

The theme of the night was ahi tuna - many restaurants presented a variation including tuna tartare on fried plantains, seared ahi, and Legal Sea Foods had a tuna sashimi with pickled greens and ginger.

Most unusual sampling of the night that was still successful and unlikely to incite someone like Gordon Ramsay into a profanity-riddled rage goes to the salmon sashimi with chocolate (!) basalmic dressing and micro greens.  (Yes, I tasted it, it worked, it was creative, amazing and I went back for seconds and thirds.)

Best italian:  Brio for the gnocchi with bolognese featuring braised short rib.

Marlow's won Battle Shrimp-n-Grits.  Again.

Best fusion:  Tin Lizzy's with their Korean-inspired spicy beef and veggie taco

Best Chowder - do you have to ask?  (Legal Sea Foods)

Most Deliciously Evil:  the deep-fried lobster and gouda nuggets, which was next door to Cafe Intermezzo's Oreo Cookie Cheesecake.

My three kids are the pickiest eaters on the planet so any night with creative food is a night in paradise.

Now for the visuals:

Feeling the love!

The night begins!  Prime time for the best sampling when the doors are now open to the public and dinner is served.  Get used to this ballroom:  the State of the City will be delivered here in March.

Sound check must have been earlier in the day.  Yacht Rock showed up in their performance duds and we all got to mingle before they took the stage at 8 PM.

Smile for the blog!  A rep from Marlow's shows off Shrimp and Grits.  I took this picture with sauce dripping from my chin.  (Psst - Marlow's has a coupon deal for Chamber members.  Don't miss it!)

Lobster and Gouda Man!  Needless to say, they had run out of food by the end of the night!

Another friend with a duck pate and microgreens canape.  Dude had me at "duck".

The girls from Tin Lizzy.

Yacht Rock Revue takes the stage.

Very kind of them to leave the Captain & Tenille divorce story alone for the night and just crank out the tunes.

Silent auction and bar area.

More silent auction and restaurant sponsors from the POV of the bar line as my other half and I burned through drink tickets.  

The obligatory self portrait next to the sponsors listing.

The alcohol has worked its magic and the dance floor fills as Yacht Rock returns from their break.

But seriously, folks....

The most frequent words of the night were "thank you".  Terry made it a point to visit each of the restaurant reps and thank them for being a part of Dunwoody.  CHOA's development team made it a point of thanking all of the sponsors for their support in making the event happen at all.  It's too easy for Dunwoodians to go for the jugular at the slightest (lack of) provocation.  Don't forget to acknowledge the positive; it's good for you.

This flyer was distributed at the sponsor seating areas highlighting the work that CHOA does in the areas receiving funding from last night.  In case it's hard to see, even on the full-size image, the key details are:

CHOA had almost 850,000 patient visits last year alone.  Some of them might have been kids of the folks reading this post right now.  

CHOA counted almost 150,000 inpatient stays last year alone.

The Marcus Autism Center, one of the projects benefiting from the gala, treated 5,400 children from 140 countries around the world in 2013.  

The downstream impact of the Marcus Center is far beyond kids with autism.  Everything the center learns from teaching autistic children can be applied eventually to youth with a host of other conditions that are unrelated, but involve compromised sensory processing - including:

• ADHD
• Brain injuries
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• Other childhood developmental delays without a definable cause
• Genetic anomalies, including mitochondrial disease
• Stroke
• Treatment to restore hearing (cochlear implants, etc)

Because of the funding raised by Dunwoody Friends and Taste of Dunwoody, there's an entire population in Atlanta and beyond who have a chance to be as happy and enjoy life as everyone did last night.

Dunwoody Businesses - Are You Looking For a Few Good Interns?

The Dunwoody Chamber of Commerce is looking to pair up area businesses with second-semester seniors from Dunwoody High School.  As part of the new Education initiative by the Chamber, the Internship program will help Dunwoody High School seniors get the introductory work experience they need to become successful in careers over their lifetime.

Area businesses who have internship openings are welcome to contact Sarah at the Chamber office (678-244-9700) for more information.  The internship program is a unique opportunity for the business community at all levels to contribute to and reinforce the relationship with the youth and families of Dunwoody.

The Education Initiative information will be posted to the website in the near future.  (I'm standing by waiting for the call to assist when the committee is ready.)

Here's the original email from the Chamber:

LOOKING FOR A 2014 SPRING INTERN? Attention Chamber Members: Dunwoody High School is looking for local businesses to help integrate classroom learning with structured work experiences related to a student's career goals for second semester seniors this SPRING. This program is still in the beginning stages of development. We are looking for companies in the areas of Journalism, Broadcast, Engineering, Finance, and any other company that desires to provide students with a well-rounded internship experience. Internships will need to begin in the first 2-3 weeks of February. Internship Guidelines: -Will be for Second Semester Seniors - May be PAID or UNPAID - Students must work at least 10 hours per week - Internship must begin after 1:45 in the afternoon - Business must provide Dunwoody High School staff an Evaluation of Performance for the student at 4.5 week intervals and post internship report -Must provide proof that student is working (pay stubs, time-sheets. etc) If you are interested, please contact: sarah@dunwoodycommerce.org 678-244-9700 *Please Provide Contact Person, willingness to Commit, and list of job responsibilities to the contact listed above.  Help serve our community by providing unique educational experiences for our youth.  The Dunwoody Chamber of Commerce is working to complete an internships.com page for businesses and community members to post or search for jobs/ internships. Keep an eye out for further information about this in the next 2 months!

Water Main Break on Tilly Mill Road - again.

UDPATE @ 11:15 am

Dunwoody Elementary was evacuated to Dunwoody High.  Kids will be bussed back to DES for dismisssal.

Power died in Dunwoody Village at 11 AM, including traffic lights.  Head chef at First Watch was not happy.  Due to ice on power lines from Ole' Faithful?  Leave a comment.  :-)


Pack your patience this morning for school, preschool, GPC, and work.

Report from Channel 11 w/ video and slideshow

This is the second major water main break on this street in just over a year.  The last one was October 2012 and occurred between Briers North and The Madisons.

DeKalb crews had trouble shutting that one off too.  And after the initial patchwork repairs were done, the metal plates were in the street so long that Harry Pothole shot a feature about them.

Look on the bright side - Dunwoody's going to get its skating rink after all.

Now DeKalb is going to keep wondering why Dunwoody is unhappy with them.

Happy Hump Day!

INTRODUCING: Dunwoody Chamber of Commerce v 5.0

www.dunwoodycommerce.org

Re-evaluating and updating the Dunwoody Chamber site is as much a New Year's tradition in our house as much as a bottle of champagne, baked brie, and watching Ryan Seacrest until 1 AM.

But seriously folks, a change in leadership at the Chamber is an opportune time to review the site's functions, and compile feedback from the board, from members, and from the public about how to make it more usable.

There were some new problems to be solved.  The large banner in the previous edition was supposed to be clickable - as in click the picture and get a page of new information.  Didn't work.  Hence the translucent grey bar with text in it that couldn't be styled.

There was talk of hosting podcasts/video/audio archives.  The drivers I had available weren't up to the job and didn't work consistently in all browsers or devices.

Then there's the "real estate" question.  Everyone has their favorite piece of information or their favorite widget that they want to see on the front page, above the fold.  That was tried before and the page was crowded and busy in no time.

Most of all, whatever solution was implemented, it had to be easy to learn and update by office staff and volunteer committee chairs.  

The solution to this "wish list" was a full-scale software upgrade. Since 2009 the site was published in Drupal 6.  Drupal 6 was created before the boom in JavaScript animation, slideshows, and all of the interactive interfaces typical in tablets and newer smartphones.  The overhaul upgraded the Chamber to Drupal 7 with accompanying modules to streamline the features expected on the web.  

The interface you see above is intended to get the most popular and urgent information into the visitor's screen ASAP, and make it easy to discover something new during the trip.

First, the banner.  Go ahead, give it a click!  With a small amount of planning an editor can upload an image, write up a page of information and in a moment it becomes part of the slideshow.  The upgrade also allows editors to schedule their content to appear - or disappear - at appointed times, making the effort to manage the pages even easier.  The banner was resized to add a new column:  a list of upcoming events with links to descriptions and online reservations resides in a sleek column that is easy to find, yet not jumbled with everything else.  

Second - the icon bar below the banner is the latest solution to the "real estate" question.  Run your mouse over each icon (or tap on it if you're using a tablet.) More goodies appear in a hidden "mega-menu" that only becomes visible when you want it.  By employing a mega-menu, more content can be added to the front page without cluttering it.  From the front page, you can search the member directory, find job postings, find the "hot deals" listings, and review news and lists of our newest and returning members.  Just for fun I threw a video into one of the panels.  Chamber members can log into their brand new, streamlined Member Information Center from the front page as well.  Best of all, it's easy to update by office staff when it becomes necessary.  There's a couple of new additions in the pipeline at the moment.

Third - mobility.  This site like its predecessors is comfortable to use on any size screen from a tablet up to a TV set.  But what if you're on a smartphone?  The best solution in the past was to use a stripped-down site provided by ChamberMaster, the third-party providing support for all of the membership functions.  Again, that wasn't cutting it.  This design is "responsive":  that means the website detects the size of the screen a visitor is using to view it, and then rearranges the content so it's most comfortable to view.  So now the entire site -every little page, blurb, widget, webform, and goodie - is available for absolutely any screen.  (I'm still keeping the ChamberMaster site active, just in case this site needs repairs or upgrades for an extended time.  The essentials will always be available.)

Have a stroll around and find even more goodies:  all committees using social media have their feeds and links available:  see who has Twitter feeds and or FaceBook "Like" boxes with the latest posts.  Did you find a page particularly useful?  Hit a share button at the bottom of the page.  Event information can be sent around via the most popular social networks as well as email and text message.

The most current and fast moving information (like the latest Business Radio X shows and "Business Connection" articles) are organized into blogs.  Blogs are the fastest and easiest way to take an article and get it onto the site without the hassle of having to organize it, put it in a menu, etc.  Very useful for our PR staff who don't have the time to futz with learning a website.  Log in, plug it in, and done.  Right now there are two blogs.  Depending on how some committees and their communications evolve, there may be more.

But wait.  There's more.

Some functions are "sleeper agents".  They're loaded in because there's an indication that they may be needed in the forseeable future.  But not yet.

Translations - if it becomes necessary, pages may be translated into other languages.  The visitor can either select the language they want to read, or the website can detect the browser's default language (if it's other than English) and present the correct translation if it's available.  You may have noticed there are significant Spanish- and Chinese-speaking communities around us.  This add-on may end up bridging several gaps.

Document management - don't you just hate it when you stash your Word or PDF files in the "cloud" and you can never find them again?  Ditto.  If it becomes necessary, documents will be stashed in a library with permanent links and even a custom sort-and-search function so you can find what you're looking for via title, date of publication, committee, department, or any other criteria.

Audio/Video - YouTube has a lot of uses but if you need to host an exclusive podcast you need your own drivers.  Mobile-friendly audio and video drivers are at the ready when we get the call.

Per-Page theming.  An oldie, but a goodie.  Should any committee desire it, individual pages or sections of the website can get a completely different look and feel and layout than the rest of the site.  This function was used a couple of years ago (the Dunwoody Music Festival the original YPODs page, and the first Greater Perimeter Business Expo were themed by their pages, even though they were all parts of the main Chamber website) but you never know when you'll need it again.  

And that brings us up to 2014.  Always growing, always improving.  Although it doesn't look like it, the programming of this website was a one-woman job.  When you're organized and you're determined to get your system to work for both your visitors and editors responsible for updating it, you can make magic!

So with this launch - my schedule just opened up.  If one of your corporate New Year's resolutions is to bring your website into the 21st century, drop me a line via my blogger profile or Facebook page.  Your company can benefit from a brand new solution made just for you.

Happy New Year!

A happy New Year's Eve is a bottle of specialty bubbly with the love of my life with three happy and healthy kids in their beds. 

Oh, and a major website upgrade completed and delivered ahead of schedule. 

Many thanks to all of SDOC's clients.  It has been an honor to be a key element of your online presence.   I look forward to being of service to you and more enterprises in 2014. 

Merry Christmas!

We caught Santa in our living room last night.

Warning for WordPress Website Owners - use caution with NextGEN Image Galleries

WordPress has become one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) available.  The basic core is relatively easy to use for the newbie and they innovated the process of connecting the website to the plugin database to add updates without having to manually download and upload them.

NextGEN gallery is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress.  It has been used worldwide for creating multiple image galleries with captions and slideshow features.  I use it for one of my client's sites as an "image museum" of sorts.  See RikEmmett.com.

Now with this said:

IF YOU USE NEXTGEN GALLERY ON YOUR WORDPRESS WEBSITE, USE EXTREME CAUTION IF UPGRADING TO THE 2.X VERSION

WordPress has been upgrading its core to rely more heavily on jQuery - specifically a responsive admin bar that can be utilized on any device including phones and small tablets, and smoother slide and fade animation.

Photocrati has tried to keep pace with a massive upgrade that not only makes greater use of these animated features, but added more features to the management of the galleries themselves.

The response has been mixed to say the very least.  The support forum on WordPress.org reports everything from extremely slow load times and random error messages to complete site crashes that required admin support from the hosting provider to restore the website from an archived snapshot.  I tested the latest 2.x version on a WordPress 3.8 install (the latest release) and while it didn't crash the sandbox, I saw the slow page loads and error messages.

The leader of the development team issued an open letter to the WordPress community acknowledging the problems with an apology and an explanation of how to proceed next.

In SDOC's opinion, it's best not to make this upgrade.  Consider the last stable release of this plugin to be version 1.9, which can be manually downloaded here.

So what did we learn from this WP plugin problem?

1)  The "simplicity" of WordPress is not always so simple when you start adding on additional functions.  Simplicity and ease of use on the front end for the user is always matched by increasing complexity and hands-on management for the administrators.

2)  WordPress is not the ideal solution for every website, in spite of its popularity.  I use it myself in some very complex installations (espcially RikEmmett.com and Atlantapanhellenic.org).  But it also has big limits, especially in the frequency of major updates to its core and spotty quality control in plugin releases.

3)  ALWAYS back up your files and database before adding or upgrading plugin functionality.  Better yet, test them in a non-production sandbox site (if you have one available) before adding it to your "live" site.  Most of all, ask your web host if they can automatically back up your site on their side on a regular basis (read:  nightly, if you have a high-traffic site with frequent new content.)  This advice has saved my bacon more times than I care to remember.  If the worst thing you have to do is restore your database and reupload your files after a crash, consider yourself blessed.

Best of luck to your website owners and be careful out there.

Last Five Days Before Christmas

To Yelp or Not to Yelp

Online ratings can make a big difference in a small business' bottom line.  But are they still trustworthy?

When ratings sites first opened, they were a boon to small businesses looking to improve their street cred.  Even a negative review was an opportunity to demonstrate great customer service in less than ideal circumstances and still come out a winner.

Business review sites like Yelp, Angie's List, Kudzu, etc are the original "crowdsourcing" sites.  Recently Yelp has come under fire for allegedly hiding positive reviews under a "not recommended" label if the business in question did not purchase advertising with Yelp.

From Channel 46 today:

Woo said their impressive Yelp review became less impressive after they decided not to pay $299 a month to advertise with Yelp.
"They're kind of extorting us to pay the $299 a month or otherwise our ratings go down and we can't do anything about it," Woo said.
Woo also pointed out that at the bottom of Yoon Sushi's profile there's a link to 15 other reviews that are not currently recommended, the majority of which are perfect 5 star reviews.
"One of our customers came in and told us that he put a 5 star review and then noticed the review went straight to the filter and was under the un-recommended section," Woo said.

From Huffington Post

Complicating the issue further is the growing role of "reputation managers":  firms that regularly review the Internet for content about their client.  Then, if they find anything, they issue press releases and reviews and blog articles and a flood of links to "bury" the incriminating material so far down in search engine results that they are unlikely to be read.

Some of these "managers" have no trouble taking the next step and writing glowing positive reviews on Yelp, etc for their clients and negative ones for their clients' competitors.

A publication from my alma mater ran their own analysis of Yelp and other crowsourced review sites.

How can consumers view these sites more critically?
I think there are many signals on Yelp that consumers can combine to make up their minds. The way I use Yelp is, I read individual reviews, trying to be aware not just of whether they’re fake, but beyond that, whether they come from consumers who are like myself. There are plenty of biases in reviews besides their being fake or real. The other thing I look at is the number of reviews a business has. I have a lot more faith in a business with 3½ stars and 100 reviews than I do in one with 4 stars and just 3 or 4 reviews. That’s common sense. Also, when available, you can use sites, like Expedia, that allow consumers to review a business only once it’s confirmed that they are paying customers.

Comments are open:  do you use Yelp or similar sites for your business?  Have you experienced having certain reviews hidden?  Has crowdsourced reviews helped or hurt your enterprise?

Not small questions at the end of our Christmas shopping season when shoppers either shop online or check out store information on the internet.

Dunwoody Crier celebrates a local home-based business

Wife and mom launches jewelry business with a twist 

(link was to online Crier article that was removed some time on Thursday)

Scan of print article from this week's Crier.
Why did the online article disappear?

I learned about Origami Owl from some sorority sisters who are customers and from other members of home business networking groups.

At its start, Origami Owl began like many Dunwoody home-based businesses:  people looking for some way to make a living from home without getting trapped by a scam and having the flexibility of time to be a full-time parent as well.  Origami Owl is a bit more unique in that it was started by a teenager (at home) rather than an adult.

This enterprise is typical of the hundreds of home businesses in Dunwoody where a parent works from home, sees customers and makes sales in residential neighborhoods, and maintains stock in trade, without a single complaint.  Because of four of our seven city council members, and their blind commitment to excessive permitting processes, these home business owners have decided it is more beneficial to ignore the SLUP process than to obey it.  So we all just go about our business of earning a living and being the good neighbors we always were - without begging the city government for their approval.  

---

Home business owners have no protection from harassment.  They can be vilified in any public meeting due to the bad behaviour of other residents who are not so conscientious.  Complaints can be filed anonymously, even without cause.  By contrast, the extensively rewritten animal ordinance, (Number 3, under the consent agenda) going to a vote on Monday, requires that complaints against an animal owner require three signatures of residents in three different homes.  Or, some kind of evidence that obtaining three signatures is not possible.

Would someone please demonstrate, using legal precedent, why different code enforcement complaints about different alleged nuisances require such vastly different standards of proof?  This new variation of the animal ordinance offers animal owners additional protections against complaints that any other resident or entity is not entitled to.  Specifically, this is the only "nuisance" that does not allow for anonymous complaints.   You can complain all you want, anonymously, on SeeClickFix about someone's yard not being cut, or the fact that they store their personal belongings in their carport, or they have a large family with many cars legally parked on the property, or accuse them of having a home business, whether they do or not.  Proof is a bonus, but not necessarily required.  But if you want to complain about a nuisance animal, you have to give your name and get other signatures from the neighbors.  In what universe is this fair?

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But back to the beginning of the story:  Dunwoody moms and dads are currently working from home by the hundreds.  The overwhelming majority of them are good neighbors providing good services to their community.   No extraneous paperwork required.  The Crier recognized that this week, even if city hall is still foggy on the subject.