Nashville Airport Info: Flying into Nashville International Airport? Be sure to look for our welcome sign!

Ground Transportation:Make your way downtown to the Sheraton via taxi (flat rate of $25 to the downtown area, plus an additional passenger charge of $1 to the same destination), shuttle or rental car.

Get around Nashville with a special rate from Uber. Enter code SPARKLETWAANG for a free ride up to $20. (Code is for new users only.)

If you want to show your hard work to fellow AAN members, ship a few copies to the Convention. We suggest from 25 to 30 copies, but you may send as many you want. Schedule your shipment -- preferably one that can be tracked -- to arrive by Tues. July 8. Be sure to visit the Trade Show in the Capitol Ballroom and see what other members are doing.

AAN Convention Newspaper Display
c/o Heritage Expo
2620 Brick Church Pike
Nashville, TN 37207
(615) 467-6322

**If you plan to bring your papers with you to the Convention, let us know so we can hold a spot for you.

Amie Stein's full-day Mastering Sales Fundamentals Workshop opens the 2014 Convention for sales staff. Plan to arrive in time for the 10:30 a.m. workshop start time. You'll learn to sharpen your sales skills to retain and win new business in this interactive session.

If there's anything Tennesseans love, it's a bird that's tough on the outside but tender inside. Our state bird is the mockingbird, a creature that inspires fierce love (see Harper Lee), well-heeded fear, and no small amount of respect. Nashville has a bird like that too. Except ours nests atop two pieces of grease-soaked white bread, toothpicked, with pickles and breading the color of pressure-washed brick. We refer, of course, to hot chicken -- curer of colds, scourge of colons and savior of many a stumbling-drunk Nashvillian when the Waffle House just couldn't cut it.

Gwyneth Paltrow GOOPed it. The Arcade Fire dug it. Patton Oswalt begged for it during his brief Nashville stay. The Food Network and the Travel Channel have profiled it. Even Thomas Keller, the world-renowned chef of French Laundry fame, accompanied The Tennessean's Jennifer Justus on a hot-chicken run earlier this year. On the FX series Justified, set in Kentucky, the lanky lawman played by Timothy Olyphant brokered a hostage standoff at a prison. Among the terms under discussion: an order of Nashville hot chicken.

The South is studded with regional specialties -- shrimp and grits in the coastal Low Country, chopped pork barbecue in North Carolina, the Mississippi slugburger -- that locals revere with an intensity usually reserved for sports teams. But there's something unique about Nashville's hometown delicacy, a variation on Southern fried chicken fortified with a gunpowdery pepper bang. With its tongue-scorching ratio of pleasure to pain, it's as much a dare as a dinner.

UNC School of Journalism professor Penny Muse Abernathy, a former executive at the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, is the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics. She focuses her expertise on developing 21st-century economic models that will improve the ability of journalists to produce news in the public interest. Her book, Saving Community Journalism: The Path to Profitability, shows how newspapers can build community online and identify new opportunities to generate revenue.

The special AAN group rate at the newly renovated Sheraton Nashville Downtown Hotel is $179 single/double, and includes internet access. BUT...you must book by June 13 to be eligible for that rate. Do not delay as guest room rates may be much higher after the cut-off. Click here now to make your reservation.

AAN Member publications: register and pay for four attendees at the low rate of $225 per person and the rest are free. Bring your entire staff to Nashville for great programming, peer-to-peer learning, networking galore and a party or two thrown in for good measure. Click on the link to the left for complete registration info.

The dates are set for the 2014 AAN Convention. Nashville Scene will be our hosts for this year's confab, taking place July 10 – 12 at the newly renovated Sheraton Nashville Downtown.

"Nashville is a happening town and getting press from all over the country as one of the best destinations to visit and an 'it city'-but we've known this for years," said Nashville Scene publisher Mike Smith. "Along with our sister SouthComm papers, the Nashville Scene is super excited to bring our AAN friends to town to show them what all the ruckus is about. The city's lively food and music scene and rich culture will provide a great back drop to the dynamic programming and parties we're putting together for the AAN conference and where we'll ask you, 'What would Dolly do?'"

Full program details will be announced in the weeks ahead. But you are free to save these dates on your calendar right now, at this very second. Do it now. And we'll see you in Nashville this summer.