Guest: Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Host: Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Oh hi, my name is Maryam Scoble, and you're watching The ScobleShow. This is our third episode and number three is charmed. Today we're with charming Miss -- or Doctor, should I say, Dr. Sue Polinsky, at her office and her house. She's been kind enough, generous enough, and gracious enough to have us at her house for the Converge South Conference and she is the 'Tech Momma' of Greensboro in North Carolina; and so I am going to talk to her today, and ask her why she is named 'Tech Momma' and ask her to tell us a little bit about her. Hi Sue.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Hey Maryam, welcome to Greensboro.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Thank you, we feel welcome and hosted very well here, we're very happy to be here. When we were driving over to your house, Ben told us, they call you 'Tech Momma' of Greensboro. Tell me a little bit about that. I love that name.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
'Tech Momma' came from 'Blog Momma', which I -- I like 'Tech Momma' better. 'Tech' is technology, its young person's business; it's the young person's field. I mean look at Ben, he's a child, and young enough to be my son.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Hi Benny.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Hey there, wake up Ben. I'm old for this business. I grew up with it. I came from when it started before there was Windows, before there were browsers, before there was a Web. That's what I do when people now want technology to work for them. I think you need to know what it was and where it came from and how it happens, and then you can decide which computers do I need. The funniest thing I get is when people say, my son is really smart, he wants to get into computers. What should he do? He wants to get into computers, and you go like, I can't -- I used to try, and now I just say like that's nice, that's nice. So, being with 'Tech Momma' I guess is -- we have a very active non-profit community, civic sense of community, and sometimes all they need is to ask a question, and you can't get it answered anywhere, and so they call Sue, and I get it answered. Sometimes I get new clients and sometimes I don't, but it's just, ask Sue first before you buy a computer, ask Sue first before you go and sign that contract, and ask Sue first if you're having a problem with your email, and that's kind of what I do. It's a small town.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Sounds like a true geek goddess here.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
I know that goddess; I don't know, but this is the only time you've seen me all weekend that I wasn't wearing black.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
So tell us about what you do at Greensboro, about your business?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Okay. TechTriad is a company I founded in 1998, by myself, in the bedroom you're sleeping in, back there, with one Pentium133 computer, and a dial-up Internet connection. I had one client, which was the multiple listing service, which is the 11 counties and 5000 realtors. They had gone online, they'd put in their database. They'd gone from DOS to Windows. They went to SQL Server -- it was just -- it was very complicated, and they did all this before they met me and then they said, can you make this work? So, they bought this software which was not stable and not finished. They had it on servers that were not handling it. They had 5000 realtors that did not know how to use the Windows computer, let alone dial-up to the Internet; nobody had Internet accounts. So, that was my client. That's what kept me busy for the first six months. As time went on, and it started with real estate. As I got to know different real estate companies, I built real estate websites; and over the years it's gone from websites to advice on what computer to buy. So, we became basically, an outsource IT firm. I have programmers, I have engineers, I have whatever I need to call on, I just do it all from right behind me on my three monitors, well sometimes I sit there and I think I run the world.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
And number three, this is extra three (Inaudible) and you have three monitors back here. Let's tell them, why three?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Because I can't fit four.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Excellent.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
I would have -- it's great. I mean, I have got computers up and down here, I have got two sets of phones. This one is an extension of one set of programmers and we've got my phones and we've got cell phones and I have got ear-pieces, and sometimes people work here, part-time people that come in and do things. I have so much fun when things are tense, if there is a server down and -- people are really funny when a server goes down. It's up 99.79% of the time. When it's down unexpectedly just normally when we take him down, say after 11:00 o'clock at night and we tell him to go to bed, but when it goes down unexpectedly, people call and tell you, "I cannot conduct my business, because I have no email." I think that's fabulous, because a few years ago -- I don't want to be a techno -- I don't want this, that's for geeks -- and now they call -- and I just put a message on them, we're working on it, but they call and say, "I cannot do my business" - and that's what's cool -- they can't. You can't do business without your online databases. You can't -- and that's one rule that's why they pay us; and it's so much fun. And then, when you talk to people and say, okay your website is five years old. It's very pretty, because I built it -- it's very pretty. But don't you want it to do something? You want RSS feed because you heard about -- or you put anything on that site, do you understand RSS feed is no good unless you update your site?

Let me show you how to update your site. We have new tools. I do so much education. I've so much fun. I deal with people directly; and in 2007, the big deal is, I've got a great group of management consultants who have chosen to do it. It's through the eLearn colleges' MBA program; they had to pick a business to consult with, and I got lucky enough to get picked. And they have given me such good advice and ask me questions that I realized, how do you do this? I don't know how I do this. So, we are putting process here and we're going to go 'bricks and mortar' in 2007. For this I've hired designers, we have programmers, we have engineers, we have all sorts of things. We have guys working in different places and we're going to put ourselves into one place; I'm so excited. Ben showed me this website with these creative, fun place -- what is it called, cool places to work or something. And I'm going to have glass walls and we're going draw pictures on them and we're going to have -- we're not going to have cubicles, we're going to have plots. We're going to have very cool things. So, we're going to make that move in probably second quarter 2007.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Awesome.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
That's what I do. That's working for me.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
So, you build offices, you build websites; you host many of the websites in town, you have a lot of clients -- different businesses come to you. We were walking downtown and you were like the queen. Everybody was coming to you at every street corner, saying hi Sue, seems like everybody knows you here.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
I am the host -- the hostess of Elm Street. So many businesses on Elm Street, we host their websites that I -- I've been called by the people we met at the restaurant; they call me the hostess of Elm Street, because I host their websites and there is a lot of non-profits left, business left foundations up and down Elm; and Elm's such a good place -- I haven't been down there much at night. I am old, I go to bed.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
I don't know. We were watching some live rappers as you said last night. You know how to party!

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
I was at a club; you guys came to town, I had a date. Ben was my date for the night and I went out to a club and saw live rap, because I had never seen that. Now come on, your husband was in there taking film too. I don't think it's something he does everyday; but it was very pretty cool.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
He's just trying to get his son Patrick to look after -- look at me I can go to him up concert. So, speaking of last night, we had a great day at Converge South, which ended with us being at 'Flying Anvil' at the bar, but...

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
That would be after midnight.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
The day started early for you at 07.00 a.m. -- and tell us little bit about Converge South. It's been an amazing experience for Robert and I here.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Converge South was the brainchild of one question that Ben asked. It's not quite a question; it's more like a wish. He said, click this link -- we're big I M buddies -- he said, click this link, so I clicked it and I looked at it and I am, "This is cool, why am I looking at it?" The link was 'South by Southwest' and I said, "This is very cool." But that's huge, that's great, that's envious; and he said, "Why can't we do stuff like that in Greensboro?" I was like, "I don't know - why can't we do stuff like that in Greensboro?" So, we found our third partner in crime Ed Cone, we opened his rolodex and we said...

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
And who's Ed?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Oh, Ed is like Mr. Blogger. They call him, the Blogfather of Greensboro. Ed writes for several Tech Publications, Ziff-Davis, I think, Wired, a couple of others. Ed's pretty well known. He's probably the best known blogger in Greensboro and part of why the Greensboro community is 30 seconds ahead of the curve.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
So, we have Ed Cone, who is the Blogfather of Greensboro, we have you, the ''Tech Momma'' of Greensboro...

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
And we have Ben.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
And we have Ben.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Ben Hwang is a civic activist - we have turned him into one. He works for Motorola, he is a Senior Systems Engineer in cell phone software type stuff. He is very smart and he is also young; and he likes the music side of things, he comes from Seattle. So, he is used to night life. He is used to all this, and he'd like to bring a little of that to Greensboro. He is one of my good advice people. He says you are using aim? No, get game. Let me tell you about SourceForge -- Open Source, Open Source. So, Ben is my advocate for that. He shows me stuff I never knew about; Free Solutions, Open Source Solutions.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
So, we have the 'holy geek trinity'.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
And so the three of us just got together and said, "We can do this." And Ed said, "No it's going to cost some money" and I said, "I think I can help with that; not that I have any, but I can raise it" and said, "Ben you're in charge of the music, the talent, the technology." And Ed said, "I've got few people I can call." And the first year for Converge South was last year and we called Ed said, "Let's make it free" and I...

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
It was the one of those real on conferences.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Oh yeah, I could not believe it and he said, 'let's make it free'. That violates every sense I have of how to do things.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
As a businesswoman.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Yeah. So we got good, wonderful support from the foundations in Greensboro and some private citizens. We got huge acceptances to our invitations. We over-invited a little bit, we had too many people, because they didn't have enough time. So this -- that's the change...

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
You've done this in two weeks, I heard?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Yeah, I think two weeks last year, it was...

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Not a conference plan...

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Yeah.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
It takes a year to plan a conference.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
We didn't have a year. Our first meeting was in May for an October conference and that was just, do we want to do this meeting? So, it was pretty much pulled off in a few weeks over the summer. That's why I have three monitors. We go through the communication -- I did everything last year, that was a mistake. But, I was so exhausted that when the conference was over the first night, I didn't get to the barbeque, because I came home, fell asleep. The second night was the Saturday night dinner, after the conference was over, I couldn't walk. My feet were -- my legs were -- I was just, just let the young people do that. This year we got smarter. We had experienced...

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
How did that change from first year to the second year? How did your conference planning experience change? How did it change for you?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Well, we learned that we had too many people. They didn't have enough time. We had three tracks; we should have only had two - and if we had something really great on this track, and really great on this track, you have to make a choice. We should have repeated them and let people have choices; so you could go to a session at 9:00, or you do it again at 10:00. But instead, we had individual speakers. The rule of thumb on conference planning for the kind of conference we do is that it costs about $1000 for each speaker you bring in. So, if you're raising money, you're charging, you have to - we had way too many speakers. So this year we had fewer speakers, but very high quality speakers.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Well, thank you.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
What you call markey (ph) names, we had Elizabeth Edwards and we had Scoble's; and that would have been enough, but we had more than that too. So there were the first Norg which is news organizations, if you are into New Media. News organizations, you got to know what that is, its Will Bunch's concept from Philadelphia, I think Inquirer and what's his blog, Attytood. This whole thing, the first Norg meeting that I know of outside of either Philadelphia, New York or some major Northeastern city, that's my understanding -- could be wrong, but I think so. And we had our newspaper folks, who are handling that side of the program. They said, we are not going to -- we're against Scoble, we're against the SuperBowl, our time is -- we don't need a big room. So, he said, we're not going to have a dozen people. So, I got a room that set 35 people very comfortably and they had 80 people in the room.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Awesome.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
So, everything was so -- we had over 200 in the Scoble Talk, we had 80 going over to the Norg side of things and that just kept on all day.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
And I know the registration was closed a few days before and you were asking people to be on a waiting list?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
We, were asking them to share lunches. We didn't think there was going to be enough of anything. We also learned last year that when you make things free, people sign up on dotcom (ph) at the last minute, it's a good idea, my teacher said I should - they don't mean it. This year, we kind of did the same thing, but because new tools -- I've a bulk mail program now -- I was able to just keep importing the list and reminding people, "If you've signed up for this conference, if you can't come, just let us know." And I was getting email, going in the database and deleting them; next year, we have plans to make it better. First of all, you gave us huge, good model for next year, which I am not talking about right now. So, tell me what I was talking about. I feel...

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
You were talking about next year, but you said you going down and getting to it, but you were excited about plans for next year...

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Oh, we have our new model that I'm really tinkering with, where one day is free, but the second day has a different focus, and is not necessarily free. So, the people who like the free conference can do that, because that's the only (ph) conference atmosphere.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
And a discussion.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
But if you want -- I love your word -- implementation, then we'll just look at that for the second day and...

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
You might get your hands when the keyboard and actually do something?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
We can -- I just wanted to ask people to charge $15 for the day. People -- $15 would have made them come. It's so easy early on a Saturday morning just not to show up; specially when you have a family and there is soccer games, things you have to do; but we had beautiful weather, no excuse. So, next day I am looking for like a $10 commitment; and will give it back to you when you come in - and the rest will just be a donation to the conference. But, I think people who -- first of all, it's worth paying a little bit for - this one I am going to get into it with Ed Cone. Ed thinks it should be great. And so, next year -- we're looking forward to next year. The conference is here to grow up; we got wonderful publicity - it was a great conference, we got great publicity. Elizabeth Edwards was phenomenal, and you are in North Carolina. Elizabeth Edwards is from North Carolina, and she is married to -- what I think announced to you yesterday, was a man running for President, which might be one of the first blog announcements that, 'Yes I'm running' that I know of. So, here you come flying in 3000 miles to North Carolina and break North Carolina news on your blogs, and then everybody is going to copy it all over the place, it's pretty exciting.

So, we just had great people and longer sessions for a conference at next year with everything we've gotten from -- learnt from this year and the positive reaction of the community. I think it's time to start doing some more formal -- Ed's going to hate this -- a little more formal things, look for some sponsorships, make it little bit easier for me; just a little bit of funding, let's me breathe and let's me say, 'Yes, we can commit to your airfare and your hotel room, even though you are coming from Japan because we really want Joy Edo (ph) to come out here and bend those Joy and we're going to get Joy. But, that's a commitment to airfare and hotel that will make, if I know we've got a sponsor for something like that. This year, I think the positive conference is going to make that happen, so if you want to sponsor Converge South, and pay Joy Edo (ph) air fare, but Ben's looking at me with that inscrutable face. He shouldn't say that out loud, and this morning at breakfast, I mean you've told us, all these people we should be inviting to come out, but some of them I don't know, so we're going to have to get together, and write those names down and then have to put Scoble in the subject line. Scoble says...

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
What really surprised, in a nice way, Robert and I was the fact that the entire city it seems, entire community was involved with Converge South, that everybody just was so passionate about it, the pre-conference dinner or the VIP reception dinner was hosted at one of your friend's house in the neighborhood, the whole neighborhood came out to greet us, the City Council Women, Sandy Carmany was there to present us the key to the city.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Which got started on a blog, I asked her on her blog, Sandy, how you do a key to the city, what's -- how do you do that, I don't know. She said, who would you like to give the key too? I said, well we've got these people, and she looked up who you were, she Googled you, went up to Wikipedia pulled his bio...

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Does she blog herself?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Oh, she's a fabulous blogger, she's a model for any elective official, can't say enough about her. She's...

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
What's her blog address?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Mine?

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
No, no, hers.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Hers, Sandy's place? Is it sandycarmany.blogspot.com

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
I think so.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Yeah, I think that's what it is, Sandy Carmany, Sandy Carmany. She is just getting clicked on all over the place, if you do a Technorati search on stuff with Sandy, you'll see she's been mentioned by the Los Angeles Times as the model of a blogging politician. The LA Times doesn't talk much about places like Greensboro. We've got to do something really good or really big, we hope its good, to get mentioned in the Times, and they called us blogsboro, a year and a half ago. That was good -- its one of the reasons we started Converge South because the whole community blogs.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
That party at David Hoggard's house, he's a controversial blogger.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
David's just controversial, but we love him.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Good barbecue though, awesome barbecue.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
He's from Kentucky.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
It was awesome.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Kentucky Barbeque.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Then Mike Groth (ph) walked over, he lives in the neighborhood.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Right.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
He also is a blogger for, he was involved with...

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Howard Deans (ph) campaign and he's working in other political campaigns right now on a grander scale.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Right, exactly. We saw him with Elizabeth Edwards, so that was really good. Also, lots of other ones that I want to think of is the, one person that really impressed me the most was the person, Carol Mitchell, we met her at the barbecue, but she was the one who took the left over sandwich boxes. Now, as a conference person I'm always worried that we won't have enough food, but then you have too much food and you're always thinking, where's this going. Now, she felt that's wrong, she just picked them up and delivered it to the homeless in the street, it was amazing.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
We had people who helped her carried it into the cart. Carol Mitchell, who goes by Mitchell, her blog is chosenfast. She's a deeply religious girl, but she's such a wonderful -- but one doesn't preclude the other, she's not a girl, she's a woman, people are young to me, I still call Ben a boy, because he's not 35 yet.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Well you're the 'tech momma'.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Yeah, it's a bad habit, you shouldn't call grown women girls, but they are to me because I'm old. (Inaudible) is, she just puts her money where her mouth is, we should do something about the homeless, no we should get in our cars, and we should drive at night and bring them blankets and we should bring people food when we have it, and I know where they are, and we should go on a night, which she does this every once in a while with other homeless advocates, and they find where homeless people are staying, because sometimes they move, and make sure that they're taken care of them, and that they know there are shelters, and if they don't want to go to the shelters, here's at least some warmth, there's some food.

She took -- and she convinced our City Council through a blog post that voting against a particular resolution was a very bad idea for the homeless people. One of our council member commented on her blog I think something like, I didn't understand it till you explained it, I wished the city had told us what you did, and then they wouldn't pass the resolution as its going to be very effective and helpful for homeless and out of luck people or people who are just homeless, I don't mean out of luck, that was bad. She's deeply committed, and her blog has given her a (Inaudible) city like voice, county (Inaudible) like voice. She's not looking for a national voice today, I don't know if ever. She wants to help individual people right there, right now.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
Think globally and work locally that seems to be her -- actually everyone here that I've met, they seem very committed and passionate about the community, about the improvement. It's a commercial and well-spoken blogger's all around, any tips and tricks, any last minute as a thought that you want to share with our audience.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
I don't have the 16 ways to a killer blog, I am actually, if there's an A list, a B list, I'm in the XYZ list. Nobody reads my blog, I have the head counter, I don't even look at anymore. Even with Scoble links to me, I don't get hits; it's not that kind of blog. I talk about some local issues and some family issues; I'm not that kind of blogger. So I'm not going to tell anybody that I'm blogging like really good cool model after me blogger. I'm more of a philosopher about this, what I was -- there's a lot right with America, but one of the things that I thought was wrong with America is that too many people had a story to tell, and no place to tell their story, and I think that's what blogs started to fix. Anybody could tell a story, you didn't have to be smart; you didn't have to be rich. We have a homeless family in Greensboro that was blogging that got international attention, name of the blog was View from the Sidewalk.

It was a family, who just had a series of bad luck, and they were homeless, and he blogged, the father is a wonderful writer, he blogged about being homeless, anybody can blog. Just commuting by the way got -- it's supportive of when they found they got, housing; we brought them a lot, we brought them computers for the kids, and 19' monitors and all sorts of things, they're a very generous community. Some people like David Hoggard went out to Sam's club and called me, and said, what kind of software would his daughter like, what kind of educational reading software, I'm going to buy some software. It's just the kind of community this is. So, words of -- what makes Greensboro different, we're 30 seconds ahead of the curve. We keep up that way, we have the ninth biggest blogger meet up, we're not just people hiding behind three monitors, we're people that go out to a restaurant one night a month, and visit with each other and say things like, you're conservative or whatever, I really hate what you write, but boy, you're a nice person and I like you.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
I like you; I just don't like your blogs.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Yeah, but I like you and that's what yesterday was about when the Red's gate (Inaudible) people, and the democratic Edward's people were having a wonderful conversation and endorsing each other. It was -- it's a community, if you don't live in the place with the community, then I think you have the obligation to try to start one. You don't want -- I think blogs can help with that, I think you have to take the responsibility to say, it could be better, what can I do?

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Well Greensboro was one of the first places that had Wi-Fi in the downtown area, right, and how did that happen?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Wi-Fi downtown was a civic means free thing. We got a group -- we've a group called Synergy which is the young professionals group. I'm kind of a person who hides in the background and sort of mentors, pushes the group along a little bit. They got a really good grant from the Community Foundation's Young Leadership Group, future fund of the Community Foundation. They said we want to put Wi-Fi in the park, we're built, no, we have a new park, and I said you want to do Wi-Fi, call Ben. Ben put the wireless together for the park. Time Warner was a great corporate citizen and donated the bandwidth, and I helped write the RFP and we hired companies to do stuff through the limitations of this grant and then we decided to do Phase two which was to go up and down Elm Street, which is where you were walking last night, we had white wireless because there's so many young people downtown, there's so many cafes and things on the street that we never used to have.

Ben came back and we had -- I showed you the antennas and where they went, Ben decided what we needed. We had a little bit of money, and I helped them finish out a grant. He got one grant and he was a few thousand short, so we found another foundation to fund it, Community Foundation funded part of that, Weaver Foundation were big on, our foundations are really pro-city. Then all of a sudden, we then had a launch event, we had parties, we had street stuff and there was wireless downtown, and now you see people with PDA's doing email at lunch, sitting at a restaurant. We know where the antennas are, so we know where to stand if we really want to do a fast download. It just happened because it was good for Greensboro, we couldn't do it without the support of the newspaper, without the support of Time Warner. I just can't say enough about how good they are to us. People like Ben and folks he works with just being smart, and having seen it at some place else, he said, why can't we do that here.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Tell me about the Woolworth's, that's on down street too, right?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Everything's on down street (Voice Overlap).

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Everything's on down street in Greensboro seems like that.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
We have a historical monument in Greensboro, its right now being turned into a museum. The Woolworth's on Elm Street on February 1st, I believe 1962.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
It was 1960.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
1960, okay. The people at dinner last night were wrong; I was off by ten years. The four students from North Carolina A&T University, which is where we had our conference, four young African-American men went to The Woolworth's lunch counter, which of course in 1960 was segregated and sat down and wanted service, it was, you have to remember (Inaudible).

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Sixty-five.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Make me feel older, so I am the blog momma, these are my children. The idea that black people cannot be served at a lunch counter is something that, think of this many young people don't even understand, when I was growing up, there were -- it was just taken for granted. It's amazing to think that in my lifetime that's changed so much that, the cultural change -- anyway, I'm being philosophical. So these four young men sat down and said, we will be served, and that led to what's called the Greensboro Sit In, and we -- they eventually were served, it did work out, but there were arrests, and there were marches, and there were the girls, there were college girls who'd been at college, which is historically black women's college. They were involved and there was very polite -- Greensboro is very polite, it was serious, it was country altering, it was loose worthy but it was polite.

We eventually made what we think is one of the first changes in civil rights history, because of that they're building the international civil right center and museum in the spot, in the Woolworth's building where you were last night and saw the footprints and the banners and stuff. It's a bond issue right now in Greensboro to help pay for it, which we should because it's an international museum. I think the original lunch counters is at the Smithsonian, if our museum is built to Smithsonian standards, we can have that back. It's really a phenomenal thing to think that a relatively small town, because I believe we have about 238,000 people here, which is like not big from the places you live. We gave something that may have been the impetus for something that happened in this country, that's just cool, and that needs to be celebrated, that needs to be made into more than just a monument, it needs to be an interactive museum where people can go in and say, I touched history and it happened right here.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
What was amazing, we were taking tour down Elm Street, they were cops, and there was a black and white cop walking together and we met, who's the...

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Allen Johnson.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Who was it?

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Allen Johnson.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Yeah, he is the editor of the editorial page on a local paper, and he's black, and he was thinking about how much has changed in 46 years or so, not that long of a time, that's pretty amazing to see what four people changed in the world, so...

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
It's very amazing, there are three surviving members of that group, and there's a statue at A & T for them, and they are -- I don't know, I wonder what it feels like to have changed the world, to have just sat there and said, enough, and I just want a cup of coffee, and to have effectively changed the world, that's got to be, that's life altering, that's just really great. I'm glad Greensboro is known internationally for something positive like that. There's enough negative in the world, this is a good -- if Converge South can be an infinite, infinite as in a little equivalent of having done something good and says Greensboro can do this, that in the South East nobody else is doing. I'm going to be just, I did a good job, like Ed Cone said yesterday, we're cool.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
You are cool.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
We feel cool.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
We have just been amazed by every single person we've met. I believe that we've met many more changes here, they're starting locally, but definitely it's going to be -- the ripple effect, its going to go over. I think Converge South next year is going to be bigger, better, and if possible even more community driven than we saw this year. Good luck to you with that. Thank you for having us here, it's been tremendous value to us to learn from you all, I picked up you all.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Now you can say all 'your', we're going to the park just to meet and see her husband and the dog.

Maryam Scoble - ScobleShow
That's true, thank you.

Sue Polinsky - TechTriad
Thank you, it was a pleasure to meet you, both of you, and thanks for signing my book.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Thanks.