Guest Blog: Birmingham - Secret Magic And How They Won Me Over

Today we'd like to introduce the next guest blog in our new mini series: Remembering 2010 Travels. Our fourth guest blogger is Chris Brogan is president and CEO of Human Business Works (humanbusinessworks.com), a company providing business systems for small businesses. He lives on airplanes but does his laundry in northern Massachusetts.

When I first started traveling all over the US, I went to the obvious places a business person would go: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles. As time went on, and as my own business focus changed, I found myself taking the flights less traveled. I went to Madison and Memphis and Milwaukee along that road. But one place that really knocked my socks off (and don't worry - they manufacture socks there) was Birmingham, Alabama.

MY PRE-CONCEIVED NOTIONS
If I asked you what you thought about when you think about Birmingham, and you were really honest, we both have a sense of what you'd answer, wouldn't we? When I thought of Birmingham, what I thought was that it was a place that had a past of racial strife. Beyond that, I thought "southern" and I thought "not likely very techy-nerdy" (which is a good thing sometimes, as it's easy to burn out on tech stuff). What I found instead was something altogether different.

BIRMINGHAM IS ABOUT GROWTH AND REBIRTH
One thing that excites me about Birmingham is that it's a place in transit. The past was iron and iron ore, and in a lot of ways, Birmingham is an echo of Pittsburgh from the economic and industrial perspective. It went through this incredible pop-up experience of being not much of anything to being a huge industrial hub, and then in a short amount of time, it imploded when steel went elsewhere, and is now in that sweet spot of realizing that steel's not coming back, but that there's a lot that makes Birmingham inviting and gorgeous.

My guide to Birmingham was one Merrill Stewart of Stewart Perry. He came to my office quite far north of Boston and asked me to come and speak at an event, but more so, to come and experience a city he loved. It was Mr. Stewart's passion that excited me into going, and it was his engagement with so many people and places throughout the city of Birmingham that made me a huge fan.

The railroad park area of the city is a perfect example of it. I had the pleasure of meeting the people behind making this park a reality, and what it symbolizes will be quite different (and yet vital) to many segments of people in the room. When I visited, I saw what excites me most in architecture: adaptive reuse (words that I never knew existed until Merrill Stewart turned me on to their value in the green building world). Imagine a bunch of green land with gorgeous open area architecture mixed with all kinds of brick buildings that have been reborn as lofts and retail space, and the like.

BIRMINGHAM IS ABOUT ENGAGING PEOPLE
There's a college/learning vibe to the city, fueled in part by the university right downtown and its commitment to many subjects (their medical program is top notch, for instance). I met with a bunch of the new media types: the bloggers and Twitter types and podcasters, plus I met with the people who drive the economic levers in the city, including the Birmingham Business Alliance. Between these two groups, I got the sense that Birmingham is a city full of engaging people with ideas about growth and renewal.

Alan Hunter, one of the original MTV video jockeys, runs Hunter Films from there. He and I bumped into each other while I was out with Sarah Robinson for coffee, and this experience, running into someone I'd met the night before at a really hip coffee place inside a reconditioned building, is one snapshot in my mental photo album of what makes Birmingham a lot more cool than I'd imagined.

WHAT BIRMINGHAM GAVE ME
I'm wearing my "It's Nice to Have You In Birmingham" tee shirt while I write this. It was a gift from Andre Natta, someone who also adds to this feeling of Birmingham being all about engagement and the future. The folks at Holland and Holland advertising gave me a book full of historical and current delightful things to know about Birmingham. Besides the giant iron railroad spike that caused me some trouble at the airport, the gift was a really wonderful way of giving me a time machine on the Magic City. Oh, and they gave me some great Skana socks, made in B'Ham. (See? I told you it was okay that my socks were knocked off.)

But beyond those kinds of gifts, what I got from Birmingham was a passion to fly and discover the places that are reinvesting in themselves, the cities and towns that are rebuilding out of an old economy into a new one. And for that, I'm forever grateful for my trip to Birmingham, Alabama.

Have you ever, like Chris in his visit to Birmingham, visited a city that unexpectedly caught you by surprise when you arrived? Does Chris' experience in Birmingham inspire you to visit the city? Or, have you visited Birmingham and had an similar experience as described by Chris?