My sedan didn’t enjoy the ride as a I got stuck twice, but finally made it safely and am glad to be warm. Along the way, I took several pictures, I thought I’d share. If you can’t see the pictures below, look to the right or click here.

Personally, I have never operated, worked at or even wanted to open a restaurant, but I have had businesses fail (yes more than one) and it’s tough. It’s tough on your pride, your wallet and your confidence. I recognize a business closing isn’t life or death, but I do think we as customers forget how much it takes to provide a great meal, service or product, so support the ones you truly like.

For those of you who prefer to read, click below to see the primary points in text.

Here’s the top three things I think we could all do to support our favorite restaurants.

1. Tell them they’re your favorite – I know running a business is tough and from what I hear running a restaurant takes an extreme amount of hours, so let them know their hard work is paying off.
2. Put your money where your mouth is – Its quite cachet to say this is my favorite restaurant, but the reality is sometimes we talk more about having a favorite spot than actually patronizing the business with our pocketbook.
3. Bring, not tell a friend – Sure, it’s great to spread the good word about a business, but its even better to help reinforce #2 by introducing your network to the business.

We know there are lots of fun meetups, so we asked our friends at several web companies to pitch in some swag (t-shirts, stickers, etc) and we’ll be streaming it live on UStream with the always-funny Joe Bennett as emcee for the event.

So show up Thursday, June 12, 2008, from 6:00 – 8:00PM at Fox and Hound Pub & Grille (Map & Directions). You can RSVP on Upcoming, Facebook or DM the twitter account @letstweetup. If you still aren’t convinced, I offer you these three reasons to show up at the Tweetup and read the full details at the web site, LetsTweetup.com.

Our Great Sponsors: Heaven Hill Distilleries, Lijit, Louisville Mojo, Metro Mapper, Mixx, Profilactic, Simple Media, TubeMogul and UStream.tv.

I’ll be at most of the sessions and blogging over at Louisville’s city blog, More Than Derby. I’m specifically interested in the following sessions. If you’re attending look me up or follow me on twitter. If only they had Jacob’s Conferenceer, which is still the best conference app I’ve seen.

Thursday
9:00 am – The Big Jam
1:00 pm – Money circulation science
2:30 pm – Darfur and…
5:30 pm – Taste of Innnovation
Friday
9:00 am – Google World
10:15 am – Declaration of Independence (Tiffany Shlain!)
5:30 pm – Woz (TeN dinner)
9:00 pm – Film Screening with Tiffany Shlain
Saturday
9:30 am – Internet is not flat

Rob and I talk a lot about who might be doing cool stuff locally, so it was nice to finally meet several I’ve exchanged emails and read through RSS. When I got home I knew I had real conversations with people and achieved my purpose because I took home zero business cards (one email on scrap paper). So, here’s the link list of who I ran across… Shawn Morton of Profilactic was just great to talk to about their startup Mike Neagle and I finally got to catch up after almost five years, Tom Osborne of Profilactic I found out he’s not the Nebraska Coach, but is the “Principal”, Craig dos Santos – in town for the Ironman race and I need more time to talk to him, James Karban – good to see him joining the local crowd, we need good seo guys, David Finch – I wish I had more time to talk to him because his posts are right up my alley, Jason Brown – Another SEO name, I’ve been hearing about, so glad to meet in person.

There were also the crowd I get to see other times and was nice to briefly catch up (Joe Wheeler, Andy and Landon Swan of MyTrade, Scott Drake and Brian Heil. I know there were a few others I didn’t get to meet, so if we didn’t meet or you read this, please contact me… Lenny Grover, Dwayne Dowell (you’ve done work for me and we’ve never met!), Allen Miller and Jason Hiner.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjpjGh2vcfI[/youtube]

But last week, I was asked by Louisville LinkedIn user to connect him with another Louisville LinkedIn user about a job. While this may regularly happen in other markets, it was nice to see the power of online networking has made it to good ol’ Kentucky.