We have some pretty cool conferences that happen in Louisville. There’s IdeaFestival, Derby City Comic Con, ConGlomeration just to name a few. Now there is a new conference in town, this one focusing on small business. Called Small Business Shamen, the conference seeks to educate and inspire small business folks across the board, not restricted to one industry.

Our audience is anyone who believes in the power of small business and the local economy as an agent of change in the world. From landscapers to tech startups, artists to attorneys. The Small Business Shamen series will be education and food for thought in a complete array of business necessities, inspiration to brass tacks.

The inaugural conference takes place April 4, 2012 at the Ice House on Main Street. Scheduled speakers for the event include Chris Brogan, Mayor Fischer, Mike Mays, Peggy Noe Stevens, JK McKnight and Jason Clark.

Early registration for the conference is open now and runs $125 for the one-day event (includes lunch).

I had lunch at Havana Rumba the other day and while there I noticed that the empty restaurant spot in the shopping center (it had an Iraqi restaurant for a while and an Indian restaurant before that) had new coming soon signs. The signs said the Charim Korean Restaurant will be opening soon.

I’m a bit ashamed to admit that my knowledge of Korean food pretty much begins with Korean barbecue and ends with kimchi so I’ll be excited to expand my Korean food horizons when this place opens. Yes, I know there are a couple other Korean restaurants in town already but this one is within my well traveled routes so I’m pretty sure I’ll try this one soon after it opens.

The Louisville Free Public Library is starting a new monthly series of events called “Your Social [Media] Life.” They describe the program as a “lively monthly gathering and discussion forum for social media enthusiasts and professionals who are interested in delving deeper into the field’s special topics and new developments.

Um, I guess I fall into that group since I’m one of the speakers for the first event in this series next Wednesday night, February 1, at 6PM. The general topic for this first event is “personal social media policies.” Like I said I’ll be on the panel of speakers with a few other people including one of my favorite people Ashlee Clark Thompson! So if you’re interested in social media topics (particularly how to balance that whole work/personal thing on Twitter/Facebook, etc) or just want to see how much of a dork I am in person I encourage you to come down to the main branch of the library next Wednesday evening at 6PM.

I confess that before I was asked to post about this I didn’t even know we had a professional arena soccer league team in Louisville. Now I know we do and I think it’s pretty cool that they’re encouraging folks to bring donations for Dare to Care to their matches and specifically peanut butter next Friday February 3, 2012.

The Louisville Lightning Professional Arena Soccer League (PASL) Team is partnering with the YUM! Brands to battle hunger benefiting Dare to Care Food Bank and host a white-out themed soccer game on Friday, February 3, at Mockingbird Valley Sports Complex against the Ohio Vortex.

The Louisville Lightning Players have picked a Protein Pick of the Week to encourage canned good donations for every home game. Lightning fans are encouraged to bring a jar of Peanut Butter to the white-out game to receive 20% off $10 tickets purchased at the door on game night.

Friday February 3, 2012
7:30PM

Mockingbird Valley Sports Complex
3000 Mellwood Ave
Louisville, KY 40207

The latest issue of my favorite magazine, Garden and Gun, alerted me that in March the Paul Paletti gallery will have an exhibit of photography by Kentucky native Shelby Lee Adams. The show will feature works from “Salt and Truth” the new book by Adams.

Salt & Truth is the fourth book from American photographer Shelby Lee Adams [1950-present]. This collection of 80 new photographs, taken over the past eight years, continues a project the artist has been working on now for over 30 years. Together these powerful images of the hollow dwellers of eastern Kentucky, represent a singular access to a world that is historically not very trusting of outsiders, by a photographer who is widely recognized as a master of the medium.

The show is going to open during the March first Friday Trolley Hop on March 3 and Adams will be at the gallery from 5PM-9PM that evening. The show will run until the end of May. The New York Times has a great slideshow of photos and text from “Salt and Truth” that you should check out.

Paul Paletti Gallery
713 E Market Street
Louisville, KY 40202

John King lives in the Highlands with his wife, cat, and hopefully a dog soon. He works for the University of Louisville and is a PhD student. He is an avid runner, homebrewer, craft beer nerd, and also has many other hobbies which his wife tolerates. His blog can be found at http://kentuckybrewreview.wordpress.com or on Twitter @kingofkentucky.

Wanting to get away from my Illinois roots, I came to Louisville in 2005 for graduate school, left for a year for a school counseling gig, and promptly returned because I missed the city too damn much. Often times, before I moved back, I’d daydream about sitting outside Heine Brothers drinking coffee, when in all honesty I didn’t even like coffee at the time. I missed the riverfront, the skyline, and the Highlands. I missed everything about the city, except perhaps the ever-constant squabbles regarding Louisville and Kentucky basketball.

It’s honestly hard to explain why I love the city so much and how the city keeps bringing me back. I am still amazed at how I convinced (see also: begged, pleaded, grovelled) my wife to move from Boston, MA to Louisville. She’ll admit it herself: the city contrasted with all predictions and stereotypes her East Coast attitude held. When the question comes up (at least weekly) of when we are moving back to the East Coast, with each answer, her voice has less certainty than the time before. Louisville is getting to her, too. It’s working.

There is a significant difference between what I enjoy and what I love about Louisville. I enjoy the fact that baristas at Highland Coffee know my name and that on Fridays I get whipped cream, while the rest of the week I don’t. I enjoy being able to drink a New Albanian or Against the Grain beer and can text back and forth with the brewer about my thoughts on it. I enjoy running at 5:30 a.m. on an empty Bardstown Road and being one of the rare few who get to enjoy the smell of freshly baked snicker doodle cookies from Kizoto. I enjoy my Highlands neighborhood and the diversity it brings to the community and my ever-changing view of the world.
But most of all, I enjoy the fact that all these things culminate into one simple word that makes me smile everyday: home.

But, to be fair, the absolute one thing I love about Louisville is the parks. Frederick Olmsted knew what the heck he was doing way back when. Most don’t know it, and I have difficulty saying this because I want it all to myself at times, but Louisville has the largest urban forest in the United States just sitting in its backyard. Yep, that’s right, Jefferson Memorial Forest. It is absolutely beautiful during the fall. There are times I believe everyone in Louisville is going to be at Cherokee Park when we get that first really warm day in the spring. Everybody seems to break out of his or her winter funk on that 2.4 hilly escape. I often lose myself on the trails of Cherokee and Seneca because for a second, I feel less in a city and more in a forest. If you never have, and I suggest you do, go to Iroquois Park sometime and check out the spectacular view of the city. You’ll thank me later.

The parks are what brought me back. They have a kind of magnetism unlike anything else. They are a gift we often look past, drive through, or forget about, but always remain a significant part of Louisville. If it weren’t for the Olmsted Parks Conservancy and its volunteers, I would not be able to say the one thing I love about Louisville is its parks.

In celebration of the opening of Alter Ego: A Decade of Work by Anthony Goicolea, 21c is hosting a special dinner with the artist this Saturday night, January 28, 2012. $85 gets you a 3 course meal from Proof and dinner with the artist.

$85 is a little pricey so it’s cool that Anthony Goicolea will be giving a talk before the dinner that is absolutely free and open to the public.

The exhibition is organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Telfair Museums in collaboration with 21c Museum. It has shown already at both of those museums, but we are expanding it considerably for the exhibition here at 21c to include 20 works not shown at NCMA and 5 that were not shown in Savannah including two early works from 2011/2012 and three of the artist’s most recent large-scale drawings from the 2011 Pathetic Fallacy series. The exhibition (running January 27 to July 15) will fill all of the gallery spaces at 21c and 37 of the 62 works in the exhibition belong to 21c; 21c Museum owns the largest collection of Goicolea works in the U.S.

Artist Talk: 6pm | Atrium Gallery | Free and open to the public
Artist Dinner: 7pm | $85 for three-course dinner, provided by Proof on Main

Space is limited so RSVP to Megan at
mbreier@21cHotels.com or 502.217.6374 today!
A credit card will be required to hold reservation

The food truck scene in Louisville has gone through a rollercoaster ride over the past year or so. We saw the scene go from zero to sixty when we had no food trucks and then we had Morel’s Vegan Food Truck, Lil’ Cheezer’s, MozzaPi, etc. Now Morel’s have changed their business model and no longer have a food truck on the streets and Lil’ Cheezer’s is parked until spring at least and the MozzaPi restaurant should be opening soon-ish. But we now have Holy Mole, the Louisville Dessert Truck and soon a gourmet burger truck.

Called Grind, the burger truck seeks to bring as much local burger goodness (both of the beef and veggie variety!) to you as humanly possible. The pair behind the endeavor is already a good way into the process (they have the truck, one of the griddles, a lot of the plumbing, etc) but they’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to help get them over the hump and get the truck out on the road.

Join the very smart women of Let Them Tweet Cake this Wednesday January 25, 2012 at 6:30PM. As usual we’ll be meeting at Sweet Surrender and we’ll be taking about all manner of technology and social media goodness.

I suspect we’ll be talking about new gadgets we got for the holidays, changes to Facebook and Google+, our favorite new iPhone and Android apps, latest LVL1 happenings and much much more. Hope to see you there.

Thanks to our sponsor Small Business Shamen there will be free cake and drinks for all attendees. Geek talk and free cake? So awesome.

Wednesday January 25, 2012
6:30PM

Sweet Surrender
1804 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, KY 40206

Oh you lucky, lucky UofL students. First you get Papalino’s, now you have a new awesome coffee shop to hang out and study in. Trust me, your studying will be infinitely more productive when done in a coffee shop with a great atmosphere and awesome coffee. Or maybe that’s your socializing that will become more productive? Whatever, it’s awesome either way.

University of Louisville students and residence of Old Louisville now have lots of food and beverage options right at their front door: Cardinal Towne.

Quills Coffee @ Cardinal Towne | 327 W. Cardinal Blvd. (right across from U of L campus)

Mon. – Fri. 7am – 10pm
Saturday 8am – 10pm
Sunday 8am – 6pm