Hello. My name is Katie, and I am a CrackBerry addict.

It’s always fun when an event on which you’ve worked really hard comes together in a really good way. That’s what happened this week with the Knoxville Social Media Summit.

• Oversee major afternoon event downtown? Check.
• Dead battery on car? Check.
• Important meeting at office? Check.
• People sending me irritated emails because event is now full and they can’t get seating? Check.
• Emergency call from child at school informing that bracket on braces has popped off and is cutting her mouth open? Check.
• Last minute orthodontist appt across town? Check, check and double check.

….at UT. And I really appreciate having been asked to join this stellar line-up of smart folks. I know I’ll learn a lot myself.

Check out the terrific line-up of expert panelists and moderators at our upcoming Knoxville Social Media Summit. I am so excited that this has come together so well. We’re expecting a big crowd, so be sure to get preregistered!

Do I think working mothers will flock to the new Apple iPad? Find out by reading my review today over at AckermannDigital.

My latest post at AckermannDigital…

I am really pleased to announce the launch of a new blog from Ackermann PR, where I am employed as Director of Digital & Social Media. We’re calling it Ackermann Digital, and along with my friend, Ackermann colleague and co-blogger, Shane Rhyne, I’ll be over at Ackermann Digital on a regular basis, ruminating and offering my observations on all-things-interactive.

If you visit the new blog, you will see that I’ve begun moving quite a bit of my archived digital and social-media related blog content to live in its new home, and I’ve also begun posting fresh material on these topics. So please go check Ackermann Digital out if you feel so inclined, and I would be most appreciative if you want to add the link to your own blogroll or RSS reader.

Thanks! – Katie

My new blog post over at Babble:

Women with children were also asked whether they would “prefer” full time, part time or no paying work, and not surprisingly, most women said they would prefer part time work. Well, DUH. Wouldn’t pretty much EVERYONE prefer not to work full time, if all options were actually an option? Seriously, if you asked everyone in America – men, women, parents and non-parents – whether they would prefer to work 8 hours or more a day, 5 days per week, what percentage of people would tell you that they would voluntarily choose to work 40 hours instead of 20 hours? But when mothers say they would prefer to work part time in a study like this, it’s held up as indicative of some kind of societal trend illustrating working mothers’ dissatisfaction with their lots in life.

Read the whole thing…

This week I will be part of a panel discussion on branding, marketing & digital media held at the Bush Brothers & Company campus. Bush Brothers is an incredibly successful, 4th generation-family run business, with a history dating back to 1867.   Although they produce and sell a variety of foods, Bush Brothers  is primarily known for being a company that sells one heck of a lot of beans, all over the world.  In the southeast, where I live, Bush Brothers beans of all kinds have been a much loved culinary tradition for many families over many decades.

Today, the company is widely recognized for the thoughtful way in which it’s still run by the Ethier family, 100 years later.

From a Knoxville News Sentinel story on the company’s recent history:

A $25 million research and development center at its Knoxville headquarters was added. Some $170 million was spent in Chestnut Hill, projects that automated and streamlined production while increasing capacity to ensure the jobs of its 330 employees and then some. The Wisconsin plant also was upgraded.

Investments were made in employees, with an internal Bush University offering a range of seminars including “bean counting,” or how to read the company’s annual report, published for shareholders and employees. A generous tuition reimbursement was launched, as was a profit-sharing plan.

And family members took steps to ensure that A.J. Bush’s descendants would continue to serve as good caretakers.

Family retreats hosted experts to advise shareholders on governance, estate planning and other financial issues. Family members and their spouses also have attended courses on family business at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and continue to do so..

The Family Senate was reconstituted and is working on a policy that rewrites and adds to the family employment guidelines adopted some 25 years ago. The policy requires that family members who wish to take on a leadership role have a college education. Post-graduate work is encouraged, as is career experience before joining the family enterprise. The new proposal “in essence, says again, we love to have the family employed, but in terms of ascendancy in the company, they don’t get any special treatment. This is not an aristocracy but a meritocracy.”

The event in which I will be participating this week is part of the company’s ongoing plan for including all of its employees in regular educational and conversational opportunities related to various areas of Bush Brothers operations. The audience will include everyone from top Bush Brothers execs to maintenance employees, and each person has the same opportunity to ask questions and throw out ideas. I love this. I think it’s a fantastic way to get everyone in a company engaged in areas beyond their own job descriptions, and to identify and grow future company leadership from the inside out.

I am one of five invited panelists; the others are Steve Knox, CEO of P&G’s Tremor, Susan Ashley of Resource Interactive (Bush’s new Digital Agency of Record), Jim Price, VP of Media Innovation from Empower Media Marketing and Jeffrey Kissinger, VP of Interactive Marketing for Scripps Networks. and I am really looking forward to the opportunity to listen and learn from each of these smart and accomplished folks. It should be a fun day, and I appreciate having been asked to join the conversation.