The Society of American Travel Writers announced its Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism awards over the weekend at its annual convention down in Guadalajara, Mexico. Southern Living magazine’s “Tales From the Road” blog garnered the Bronze in the travel blog category.

When I was a lowly “Web-tern” at SouthernLiving.com, I helped the editorial team get the blog off the ground, and even contributed some posts here and there.

Kudos to SL!

I have agreed to write a monthly article called “Nashville Pulse” for Digital Nashville, the free-to-join networking group dedicated to all things digital in the Music City. The idea is to survey what’s going on in Nashville every month in the digital world, and this month’s installment takes a look at how digital companies are pulling through the recession.

The recession may be winding down, but Nashville firms remain cautious…

Halfway through September, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke claimed “the recession is very likely over at this point,” but cautioned that economic recovery would seem weak for a while.

A quick survey of area digital firms seems to confirm Bernanke’s caveat, as local companies don’t expect a boom in activity any time soon.

“People are looking for ways to save money. They’re really running at a high break-neck rate,” says Bruce McCully, owner and founder of Dynamic Edge, Inc., the IT and computer support firm with offices in both Nashville and Ann Arbor, Michigan. The firm’s products are selling well, but sales of its services and consultation have slowed down, McCully says.

Read more at DigitalNashville.net.

Whatever you do in your free time is a reflection on you, right? You are you. Your actions on the weekend reflect on your 9-to-5 life and vis versa.

Video Link

I’ll reiterate what I said earlier. Two things must happen (and, indeed, are happening).

1) Employees will be more mindful of their personal behavior and how it reflects on them professionally (or at least they will when they know there’s a digital camera in the room).

2) Employers will become a little laxer when reviewing social networking profiles of employees and potential hires.

Your take? Agree? Disagree?

Coworking in Nashville

For the uninitiated, Coworking involves freelance, start up and entrepreneurial-minded folks who rent office space on the cheap from a partnering organization. Where Coworking differs from, say, just simply renting office space from any old random company, however, is that coworkers value collaboration and the benefits of sharing space with like-minded individuals.

So what do you think? Interesting? Uninteresting? What questions come to mind?

Social Media Marketing

Marketing via social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) gets a lot of press these days, so I’m looking for innovative examples from the area that are helping company’s bottom line. (Think “boring” companies doing interesting things or small companies doing big things.)

Got any examples? Send them my way.

Entrepreneurship/StartUps/Product Launches in Nashville

I’ll be following area blogs (both niche and company) for news, but if you have any tips, send them along.

Web Development

This is for all you Web Dev shops out there. Up to anything interesting? Pitch me.

Gaming

Nashville isn’t viewed by many as a gaming town, but more and more developers are getting into it based on the existence of great distributive platforms (think gpsAssassins for the iPhone, or Klouds on addictinggames.com).

Any other Nashville examples?

And for the rest of you Digital Nashville folks - anything else you’d like to see covered? Trending topics? Interesting stories?

Send them my way…

Studying Spanish in Guatemala: Quetzaltenango Vs. Antigua

Most foreign travelers looking to learn Spanish in Guatemala make Antigua their first and longest stop, charmed by its cobblestone streets and its lively bar and club scene. More serious travelers, however, take the 4-hour bus ride to Quetzaltenango (or Xela) for a different kind of experience.

While Antigua offers a lot, there are compelling reasons for giving Guatemala’s second city another look. Read more…

Stop on over, read it over and leave a comment if you’re so inclined. Thanks!

Toddlers on the backs of motorcycles. Hunching over a river of lava for a photo op. A waterfall hike over a rickety bridge (not to mention the police escort lest robbers attacked us on the way).

After four weeks in Guatemala, I’ve concluded that “safe” is a relative term at best.

It’s the little things…

Roasting marshmallows over the lava of Pacaya - a typical gringo activity outside Antigua.

Not unlike other American travelers outside the States, I had my fair share of moments thinking, “There would so be a guardrail there if this were the U.S.” But even in the more mundane instances of life, I couldn’t help but feel that we Americans are a bit over protective.

Take the children for example. Our host family had four girls under the age of 12. Almost their entire house was floored with the same unforgiving surface, including the landing next to their staircase, which in turn lacked “proper” guard rails. The entire house certainly wasn’t what I’ve learned to consider “child proof.”

And it’s not as if the kids never fell down. They did. They just learned that it hurt like crazy and so learned not to do it again.

It reminded me of a professor I had at Xavier who claimed that, if he had had kids, he would not buy them bicycle helmets. “I want them to learn to not fall on their heads!” he would exclaim.

A happy medium…

That said, I think there’s a middle ground between coddling kids and neglect, when it comes to child rearing, and between overprotective and dangerous, when it comes to safe habits in general.

Besides, as an urban dweller with a bicycle, I’m actually for bicycle helmets.