I awoke the morning of December 7th to snow on the ground and snow falling from the sky. Snow in Memphis, TN is a bit of a novelty and even the mere mention of the chance of snow from a weatherman sends people rushing to the nearest grocery store to stock up like they are hibernating for the winter.
Being a Chicagoan, I usually appreciate the short-lived blanket of white and chuckle a bit at the freaked out Southerners. But on this particular day, I had to get on the road with those inexperienced-at-driving-in-the-snow Southerners because I was due to speak on the social influence measurement tool, Klout, during a breakfast meeting.
I left my house at a time that should have been more than early enough, even with the snow, but still arrived at my destination extremely late.
As a general rule, I do not recommend arriving last when you are the sole speaker for the breakfast.
Plus it makes for an anxious car ride.
Dave Barger, the organizer of Social Expedition, was kind about my extreme tardiness, introduced me to the group and my Klout talk was underway. The presentation went well and we had a lively discussion following my slides. The breakfast wrapped up and we all went on with our day.
It was the next morning, when I awoke to tweets & links mentioning me by name, that caught me by surprise. As I came to find out, one of the Social Expedition attendees writes for StartUpMemphis.com, which is part of the Commercial Appeal newspaper group. James Dowd’s article that day discussed my presentation on Klout.
Then I learned that Dave recorded my talk, too, and I got to listen to myself on the Social Expedition website.
I had previously uploaded my Klout presentation to SlideShare, and as it was mentioned on Twitter along with the article links, I received notification from SlideShare that, first, my presentation was listed in its “What’s Hot on Twitter” section and then later, that my presentation had been viewed more than 1,000 times.
Little did I know when I rushed to my breakfast meeting that snowy Memphis morning that so many positive things could come out of being more than fashionably late.
