While sipping coffee at Starbucks the other morning I had conversation with a friend. He had just listened to Maya Angelou speak to over 3500 college students at ETSU. He was amazed at how at age 87 her stories captivated and connected with an audience of so much younger than her. I think that is the key to a classic - it has the ability to connect with multiple generations at any given time.

Unfortunately, it seems most of things being produced today are temporary. So we started thinking… who and what would be the classics in the future. Today it is pretty easy to identify classics, in music, art, literature and even in cars…Yes I know it may be a stretch but I’ll consider the ‘57 chevy a classic for this discussion. We struggled to come up with any of today’s musicians, artists, or authors who we thought would be considered classics in the future. So what do you think? Whose works do  you think will be discussed in the next 50+ years?

The Nascar race was in Bristol, TN this weekend and as part of the opening ceremonies they have F-15 fighter jets do a fly over. They were buzzing over our house as they were practicing. I took alot of pictures but it is hard trying to capture something moving that fast.

I recently had the opportunity to produce a video for Steven James, author of STORY: recapture the mystery. We spent a day at Watagua Lake to shoot the video for the promotion of his upcoming book: Sailing Between the Stars. The video will be shown to executives at Revell Books to encourage them to publish the book. Steven James is also an awesome storyteller by the way he is able to touch minds and hearts by translating his personal life and observations into moments of inspiration for the rest of us. The video was a great way to interweave a dose of artistic storytelling with a splash of digital media, and a helping of music created by Jim Fickley. A great recipe indeed! You can watch the video here.

Dove has put a lot of work into this effort to promote their new Dovenight soap. They have used the Brady Bunch, Leave it to Beaver, and the Munsters to help tell a story. All of the shows of course are classic t.v. shows that we are familiar with.

They have used Felicity as their spokesperson and included her in the stories by layering her into the video clips via special effects compositing. In each clip Felicity uses Dove which allows her to get a good nights sleep and causes her to start dreaming. In her dreams she interacts with all the famed t.v. families.

Dove has also setup an AIM interview with Felicity on March 23rd. This is a creative use of the web for storytelling. So sweet action by Dove!

The Geeks joined together at KP Duty in Bristol on Monday.

Tim Buxton discussed of the new tools being used with web 2.0. He focused alot on RSS feeds and how to manage them.

Alot of discussion revolved around how to introduce technology and creativity to local business leaders in a way that eliminates the fear that is usually associated with it. We hope to have local business leaders use this group of geeks as a resource.