It’s with great honor that I get to write this particular blog post, because the founder and owner of Slamdot, Sean Christman, who also happens to be one of my closest friends, has won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the Knoxville Chamber’s Pinnacle Business Awards for 2009. Beware because you will hear things about Sean that you wouldn’t otherwise hear if I weren’t writing this myself.
On Friday, May 1st, in front of a packed formal ballroom, with the lights dimmed, and most of the other award winners already announced, roughly 600 of Knoxville’s top business leaders and community members were gathered to watch my short tribute to Sean:
After surprising the heck out of him, his name was announced and he took to the stage for a short acceptance speech, which if you know Sean was spontaneous and straight from the heart. He thanked our customers, the community, his parents, his wife, and, of course, yours truly. Except, I was only fortunate enough to have randomly met Sean during a brief stint at the same high school back 10+ years ago. His dream, his passion, his knowledge, his charisma, his business savvy, and his vision are what brought us to today. Ok, I was only paid for a couple paragraphs, I believe that’s a wrap. Kidding!
Here are some pictures from the Friday evening ceremony.
No music can drown out this noise. It’s hard to hear each other, even though we’re shouting across the room! The construction has really begun here on the 100 Block of Gay Street. They brought in large machines to tear up the road, shake the buildings and confuse the office pets. We’ll get through it though!
Elaine Frank came on board a couple of weeks ago. She’ll be helping out with customer service/support and design work. Elaine was recommended to us by one of our customers who hired her to take pictures for their website. Her passion for photography should start shining through on our blog soon :)
So everyone please welcome Elaine Frank to the team!
If you’re wondering why our website looks a little strange today, it’s because we’re joining in on the fourth annual CSS Naked Day to help promote Web Standards, and simply because it has been a long week and we’re having a little fun. Daniel is nervously watching the telephone, waiting for the confused callers to come buzzing in. Rest assured, everything will be normal again tomorrow!
So, shed your styles and come on in, the water’s fine!
Sean and Daniel were on Knoxville’s Big Talker, FM 100 WNOX a couple of Saturdays ago. They talked about search engine optimization, social networking, and being small and agile. Here are some pictures from the studio.
We celebrated our open house and ribbon cutting on Friday, March the 6th. The Knoxville Chamber sponsored the event, while Little Havana and Rita’s Ice provided the food and refreshments. Overall, the event went better than we could have hoped, with over a hundred people coming out to show support! We gave away an iPod and a couple of iTunes cards as door prizes. WBIR even came out to join in the festivities! Here’s some coverage from the event.
We got the wall with the sign on it painted blue yesterday. We’re still trying decide whether we should paint the other wall white or lime green. Any suggestions?
Here is where you'll find all of our updates including new features and general announcements. We'll try to stay on topic, but can't promise that we won't resort to traditional blog nonsense like silly office photos.