March 11, 2009 – Cincinnati to Louisville, KY

When I was a college student, I made a trip around the United States by myself. I was on an independent study that required I visit and interview the public relations representatives from Major League Baseball teams.

I’m telling you this now because one of the two teams that was unable to get it’s head out of its behind and schedule a 30-minute interview with me (and I was doing phone interviews too, so it’s not like people had to be onsite) was the Cincinnati Reds. For that reason I’ve always held some disdain – perhaps misplaced – for the city and its occupants.

Day three changed my opinion.

Yes, up and on the road early. Actually, we could sleep in because we made it to Cincinnati the night before and our first interviews were at the Cincinnati paper.

At the Cincinnati Enquirer, we spoke with the editor of the paper about social media and how his publication is reaching more people and accepting more types of content in an effort to stay alive. The editor was very aware that layoffs were going to happen, but has been able to push some of them off so far by leveraging the power of the Internet.

His interview and the others from that morning – with a Gannett bigwig and with the founder of MomsLikeMe.com – can all be viewed at http://www.innovatorsroadtrip.com.

After we wrapped up our visit, we blazed a trail down to Lexington, KY for a Tweetup in my honor. OK, it was jokingly called the Jeff Cutler Tweetup because the great folks who organized it (Mari Adkins predominantly) pimped the event by trumpeting my info and my arrival but didn’t really mention the rest of the crew. I got a bit of chiding form the whole iRoadTrip team, but I survived.

The meeting there was at Corky’s BBQ in Lexington. Good food and great conversation ensued and I conducted about a dozen audio interviews that you can see below. I asked everyone about their idea of innovations and got some great answers.

Mari Adkins…

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Alison Kerr…

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Ali Kerr, part deux…

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Allan Courtney…

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Adam Martin…

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Kathy the manager…

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There are more to come in future posts, like the comments from the whole Innovators’ Road Trip crew.

Next stop was a Tweetup in Louisville, KY. Uh, huh, this was a long day with stops all over creation. But wait until Day Four if you want to hear about jam-packed.

The Louisville group was headed up by Todd Earwood and was a fantastic time. Not only were were staying nearby, but we met a guy from Zappos at the Tweetup and laid the groundwork for a meeting with him the following day.

I did some interviews there too and they’re below here…

Joe Wheeler…

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Todd Earwood and Kevin Fry…

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Tired and tired and tired and tired, the four of us went to bed. Oh, I think this was the night that we stayed at the hotel where they were having dog-show participants and their dogs stay. Fun stuff, especially when we went up and down the hall barking to get them to bark back.

Day four coming soon…

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