Photo-A-Day #2018

I stuck around an extra day at Mandalay Bay because I don’t like flying out the night of the last party and the only flight I could find for my airline miles was a red eye that would put me home at 6:20am on Monday. I figured that I would spend the day exploring Vegas and then head home, shower at the office and do the day of work. I also wanted to make sure that I got to use one of the cool amenities of the hotel, the beach and wave pool.

The first priority however was to pack and also post my photos and videos up on Flickr. I have my BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2010 Flickr Set all posted. The wi-fi in the room was weak but I let it go for the entire time that I was at the pool so it was all good. I’m glad that I packed up a bunch of swag and mailed it home because my suitcase was bursting.

As I walked down to the pool I ran into Mike Mcallen (@mmcallen) of Grass Shack Events & Media. Mike was going to go check out the pool too. So we hung out and talked and swam and body surfed in the wave pool. That is one really nice pool. I wish that BlogWorld Expo had some sort of fun pool party or something there rather than us running up and down the strip to other things. If someone organizes a party at the host hotel they are gonna crush it with the attendance. Or rather, I’ll be there because I hate taking cabs.

Mike is a very interesting guy and we talked about all sorts of things. I think we both ended up walking away from that experience with some practical ideas that we could both implement. I’m thinking that if BWE is back at MB next year I’ll organize a Lazy River meetup or something like that. Would have been a perfect venue for people to try out the Kodak PlaySport cameras as they floated around the river. I know you cannot control the weather but doing something at the beach at MB after hours would have been epic.

I had to check out at noon (thanks MB for the late checkout, that was great.) I then brought my suitcase to the USP store in the hotel and shipped it home. I’m doing that through a campaign with UPS and collective bias. Not having that giant bag with me all day was so nice. Also not worrying about where it was all day was equally good. I just feel safer with USP then say the airport. After having our bags out in the rain during our Disney vacation and then to have things stolen from them makes me very wary of trusting the airlines. So, I dropped off my bag and then headed over to the Mandalay Place mall that connects Mandalay Bay and I went to Hussong’s Cantina for lunch. It was so good. I got a great ribeye steak and some carnita sopas, unfortunately the appetizer came at the same time as the meal, I don’t like that. I had two of the sopas and devoured the steak, it was like butter and also had some jalapeño butter to spread on it. Yum! With my tummy full I headed over to the shark reef to take some photos and relax before going to the airport.

Again I ask why we didn’t spend more time at the host hotel, the shark reef was really cool. I think that would have been a good venue for an after hours sort of meetup. Today’s photo is of the golden crocodile that they had at the Shark Reef. I spent much of my time there making video of the fish swimming around, I’ll be putting that together into a long video that will have music. I noticed that the PlayTouch worked really well in that sort of lighting and the M580 had a bit of trouble so I stuck to video. The shark reef was a good time, I enjoyed just taking my time and viewing everything that I could while I was there.

I have to apologize to the wonderful Miss Britt (@MissBritt), I think we were trying to connect via twitter but for some reason while I was in the shark reef I had no service and totally missed a tweet from her saying that she was “here” which could have meant the shark reef or Hussong’s. I hope that she didn’t think I was ditching her. It would have been fun to tool around and take photos together. I guess I should have just figured out a better way to communicate or been more specific.

I grabbed a cab and headed to the airport where I finally got to start writing a few of the recap posts from BlogWorld & New Media Expo. Being at a conference and blogging a conference are not easy to do at once. There is a thing called sleep that I tried to include on the trip as well.

Prior to my flight I caught up with Andrea Martins (@AndreaExpat). She won the Kodak M590 from me during me Content You Care About session.

She was headed home to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That is quite a ride. Yikes. Andrea thanked me again for the camera and showed me a message from her husband. He was reminding her to pick up an inexpensive camera while she was in the states. Guess what, taken care of! Nice. Then it was time to board the plane.

I had first class again (airline miles, gotta love them). I was able to relax, watch a movie (Invincible) and sleep (some). It was a good ride home and I even got home earlier than expected. More on that later.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

Day Four of #BWE10 – Going Solo

Photo-A-Day #2017

Today was the last day of Blog World Expo and I don’t think I was the best conference attendee today. I woke up and just hung around the room for a while in the morning not really motivated to go see the opening day keynote. I wasn’t hung over or anything like that, I was just not motivated. That and I figure I can go watch the keynotes later when I am up for absorbing the knowledge from them. Sure, it is not the same as being there but I just was not into it today.

I headed down to the show a little after the keynote had started, had some breakfast, Fruit Loops and Rice Crispies. How I thought Fruit Loops would be a good choice after watching Ted, The Human Cereal Bowl, sit in them yesterday and even pour some on him to boot, is anybodies’ guess. So I had that and got a cup of illegal coffee for Lisa Picarille and she interviewed me for Affiliate Summit or something for Shawn Collins to hang on to, or maybe even something for their podcast, Affiliate Thing. I don’t know but I wonder how it came out.

I sort of bounced around the exhibit floor for a while and this time trying to go to more than two of the exhibits. I am finding that I really need a partner of some sort where we can strategically map out what we are going to attend and how we are going to cover events like blog world because I got a little overwhelmed with how I was not in six places at once. I lost track of time and missed most of Ted Murphy’s session Back to Big, which was a hands on session, a type of session I love. But I did get over there, however not before finally getting up the courage to ask Darren Rowse if he’s be interested in being on the Photo-A-Day Podcast.

Ted’s session was a good one but not well attended. I know how that can be, but Ted is a pro and kept his motivation high. He had the group pair off and come up with an iPhone app. There were about six teams of two and we all came up with something pretty interesting in a very short period of time. Ted showed us how no matter how much technology we have we can easily go to the low tech tools and our imaginations to make some of the best things. I really enjoyed the session and wish I had better track of my tie and didn’t miss the beginning.

After that I grabbed lunch because I didn’t want a repeat of yesterday. I had a nice lunch with Stephanie Schwab whom I met at the EVO Conference in June. I had to leave lunch early because I was catching up with Melissa Murphy from YouCast to get some swag from the TV show LEVERAGE. I’ll be doing a few more posts about that show and hopefully be able to give away some cool prizes again. Melissa and I finally connected and she gave me a copy of Stephanie Agresta and Bonin Bough’s book “Perspectives on Social Media Marketing”. I then got that signed and had my photo taken with Bonin.

You Might notice the shirt that I am wearing. I got that from the guys at Man of the House at the M3 Summit. I took it with me and I just wasn’t feeling like wearing the BenSpark.com shirt all day so I wore their shirt. You can only imagine how many people asked me if I was working with Man of the House. Those guys have a great buzz going and I would love to do some writing for them at some point. Maybe we can make that happen.

After meeting Melissa and Jessica from YouCast I headed back to my room because I needed to drop off a box that I got from GourmetGiftBaskets.com. It was a great gift basket with one of my favorite tings inside, pretzel dipping mustard from Stonewall Kitchen. Yum. So I headed up towards the escalators and stopped at the area where UPS was giving out their special luggage boxes so that people could ship things home for free from the conference. I debated about it but in the end picked on up to go and pack and bring back down.

As I was heading to the up escalator I spotted Sara and Lee O’Donnell of Average Betty! I was so excited and shouted up to Sara and started waving like a goof. Luckily she recognized me and she and Lee stopped and chatted with me for a bit. All that I had thought leading up to this meeting was true, Sara is awesome! I had never met Lee before and he was awesome too! Meeting them was one of the highlights of my entire trip. Lee was kind enough to take a photo of me with Sara. I said goodbye and went up to my room to pack up the UPS box but I would see Sara and Lee again, later.

A quick trip upstairs where I packed up a box full of swag and relaxed for a moment then it was back into the fray. I took the luggage box back downstairs and got that packed up, and shipped out quickly and easily, and for free, thank you UPS!

I popped back into the exhibit hall and made my way round once again. I caught up with Scott from Antonia’s Nuts and was so happy to see how much the business has grown in the past year. This year they were there with their Nut Truck and a celebrity surfboard. They of course had their chocolate covered nuts on hand which were as delicious as always. I snapped today’s photo of them in front of the truck.

Hanging around the booths and then catching up at the Kodak booth I ran into Sara and Lee again. I knew that Sara had once done a promotion with Kodak and one of their printers for one of her episodes but when we had talked earlier she told me that she’d never met Jennifer Cisney. I had been doing some work with Jennifer for a little while and I hadn’t formally met her until two days prior but I said I’d introduce them to her. So we caught Jennifer and I was able to introduce some great people to each other. Sara, Lee and Jennifer talked for a bit. I hope that this meeting sparks some great things for all involved.

I got a headache and decided to skip the ending keynote. I have no idea why I had such keynote aversion this year, my intention was to hit them all. I went back upstairs, took a nap and nursed a sudden headache. Around 7:30 I got dressed to go over to the Palms for the TechKaraoke Party. I had VIP access to the YouCast table. Don’t get too jealous because it wasn’t that great.

The “VIP” table was the swag giveaway table. How was the swag? Weak, canvas bags with golf tee holders from Men of a Certain Age, Beer koozies from the upcoming Glory Daze and flashlights from the show LEVERAGE. Standard trade show trinkets. They did go and get some branded fortune cookies though and that was pretty cool. I think if they had just done that and been more subtle about the sponsorship then people would have eaten the cookies, read the custom messages and then gotten curious about YouCast. Then have the swag table on the way out to give people the bags as they left.

Domino’s was also a sponsor and they provided a ton of pizzas for the attendees. Domino’s had a decent social media campaign but the pizza itself, still is terrible. If I only eat one slice of a pizza then you know it is terrible because I can stomach pretty much anything. There were a ton of pizzas still out when I left at 11:30pm.

Once the karaoke got underway the place picked up and was really fun. I took my Kodak PlayTouch and recorded many of the singers and the crowd enjoying themselves. Here is the crowd getting into Living on a Prayer.

I hung out for a while and then caught a cab back to the Luxor with Heather in BC and Nadia. I thought I’d catch the tram back to Mandalay Bay but that didn’t happen because I missed the last one by minutes. So I walked back through the Mandalay place, a mall that connects the Mandalay Bay and Luxor. I got myself a strawberry crepe and called it a night. BlogWorld Expo had come to a close.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

Day Three of #BWE10 – Conference Overload

Photo-A-Day #2016

Today was the day that I presented my session called Content You Care About and it went really well, but more about that later. I’m writing this up on Sunday night from a table at the airport trying to remember what happened on what day. It was a whole weeks worth of experiences packed into four short days. Today though, today flew by like nobody’s business.

I didn’t really stay out that long on Thursday night but I still wanted to take a little me time this morning and I wasn’t really interested in the keynote this morning so I sauntered down to the conference hall a little later on and went to the Sony Social Media Lounge and spent some time talking with Lisa Picarille. I’m really glad that I’ve gotten to know Lisa in the past couple of years because she is so smart and funny and fun to talk with. She has some great ideas and the time passed quickly as we talked before the Expo hall opened. Right before the expo hall opened I ran into Andrew Lock from Help! My Business Sucks. I met him back in June in Utah. He’s a rather quiet guy in real life. We talked for a little bit and I asked him about some podcasting tips. He said that he had a program that can help. It is called Start Your Own TV Show and it is $997.00! Well, sorry Andrew, love your stuff but that is steep especially after learning more about video from Steve Garfield later in the day.

I bounced around the exhibit hall for a bit and then picked up the Seagate drives to give away for my session later in the afternoon. I then rushed over to see Aaron Hockley and Kris Krug talk about photography tips for social media. Kris Krug is an amazing photographer and so is Aaron in his won right, they were definitely good people to have teach a session. I learned a lot from the session too.

I had wanted to run over to the Expo Hall and see Average Betty do her session in the BlogWorld Kitchen but I was unable to do that and hit up Steve Garfield’s Video Podcasting 101. This session was completely worth me attending because Steve had some fantastic information that he gave away for free. I learned much about video podcasting and also the key ingredient that I had been looking for and that is how to get my podcast up on iTunes. So look for that to actually be something you can subscribe to via iTunes soon. There is a small investment that I will need to make in the future and that it to get an external mic so that I can record much better sound. That will be well worth it though.

After during Steve’s Session I picked up his book Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business on my Kindle and after the session I asked him to sign it for me.

I was back in the expo hall and this time I was there to see and do as much as I could before my session. I poured a half gallon of milk and some fruit loops on Ted Murphy’s head for charity. Then posed for photos with him. Ted is a good sport. He was cold and smelled of milk but still a a class act every step of the way. It was great to also see the rest of the IZEA crew like Carrie and Ashley and Jamie. Great people who make working with them so much fun.

I ran around like crazy from the time I went into the expo hall till I realized that I had lost my badge and so I rushed to the conference office and got a new one. I realized that I wasn’t going to get anything to eat and prep for my presentation so I rushed up to the food court to buy something and rush back down to put it on the stage and smell it the entire time I did my presentation. Time management during BlogWorld Expo was non existent for me. But I made it to my presentation in a good 15 minutes to spare which was important because my presentation was not loaded on the laptop as it was supposed to be. I am very grateful that I made the presentation on Google Presentation and was able to grab it and pull it onto the laptop but this is a good lesson because I should have had it on a flash drive as a backup. Lesson for another time.

My session went pretty well despite being up against some really heavy hitters and the now open exhibit hall filled with so much cool swag. I had about 35 people who were so nice and attentive as I went through my slides and told them all about ways to use content to enhance their blogs. A few people left and some more came in. I can certainly understand that because there is just so much to see and do at BWE that it is hard to be there for all the presentations. I did have some very cool stuff to give away and I think that at least two of the people who won prizes were over the moon. I had two Kodak cameras an M590 ultra-slim one and a PlaySport waterproof camera. I had a few XShots too (one I gave away in Steve Garfield’s session) and also some of the Flipbacs that I’ve had since IZEAFest (they need to go on a 3.0 inch screen). I also was sponsored by Seagate and Seagate GoFlexMemories and so I had a few Seagate GoFlex Ultra-Portable drives to give away as well. One woman had her laptop and all her digital memories stolen including precious photos and more. She got a drive. Another woman had just recently lost her camera, she got the M590. Those were the only two prizes that I gave directly based on the experiences I heard I picked the rest of the winners randomly through their tweets. So I think that overall the session went very well. I hope that people left good reviews of it.

After my session I hopped over to the one being given by Jonathan Fields. Jonathan is a really nice guy and he had run into the same problem that I did, the session was not loaded on the laptop so he had to run and get his. We started late and that is so tough to have happen but he recovered well. His session was the Money Manifesto, how to create a kick ass manifesto. He did one for his book Career Renegade. It was a great one. The book is also a great one. I had it on Kindle and wanted him to sing my Kindle. In fact, the reason I even brought the thing was to have him sign it and did I bring a sharpie… Nope. Ugh, he was very cool though and said that he’d catch up with me in the morning and sign it, and I still couldn’t find one. Such a fail moment. I did, however, ask him if he would guest on Geek Dads Weekly, which he said yes! So once he’s done with the next book he’ll guest on the show.

I was beat so I went back to my room to drop a bunch of stuff off and get ready for the night ahead. I had the Photowalk at 6:00pm with Aaron Hockley and Kris Krug. Aaron showed but we didn’t see Kris. I was happy to meet face to face with Annabel Candy from Get In the Hot Spot. She did a great post about the photowalk and decided to attend, it was nice to meet her. I stuck with the group for the most part and then peeled off and walked to the Hard Rock Hotel where I caught up with everyone from Collective Bias. We were meeting there for drinks before we headed to dinner at Hofbräuhaus. This was a German Beer Hall what was huge and loud and fun. I got an enormous pretzel, some tasty pork and a spanking with a giant paddle. Two out of three weren’t bad. Apparently when you order a shot there they give you the shot but then you get a whack with the paddle. I don’t do shots but I took the hit for John Andrews of Collective Bias. I then took another because I said the 1st didn’t hurt, why can’t I keep my mouth shut. The second one, that one hurt, a little.

Dinner was great and then we walked back tot eh Hard Rock Hotel to catch cabs back to Mandalay Bay. We hung out there at a little hotel bar and talked for a while and then it was time for me to get some sleep. Long day. Day Two completed.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

Day Two of #BWE10 – Content You Care About

Photo-A-Day #1922

This weather is sapping my energy completely. I work in an air conditioned office all day but when I leave the heat and humidity just crashes down on me so oppressively. Couple that with a late night visit last evening from Eva and you have a perfect storm of energy loss.

Because of that I had no energy or inspiration to take a great picture so I took a picture of a great picture that I had taken previously. The photo is from my cousin Erin’s wedding and I love it so much, it really speaks to me. So every time I turn on the iPad I get to see Eva looking so cute and looking off to the future. I was also pretty tired so I’m writing my post on Wednesday instead of Tuesday (I know I’m breaking the 4th wall here, sometimes I write my post the day after when I am fresher, the photo, the photo is always taken on the day it is supposed to, no matter what.) It could be though that Allison and I have discovered a quirky time suck of a game called Godfinger.

Photo Information Date Taken: July 13, 2010 Camera: Motorola Model: DROID (My Flickr) ISO: 200 Exposure: 1/10 sec Aperture: 2.8 Focal Length: N/A Flash Used: Yes Mode: N/A Lens:N/A

So, Godfinger is the game where you start with a little world and there is one follower, you can affect the landscape and directly interact with the lives of the followers. Their lives consist of working to generate gold or being exhausted and needing to rest. Your job is to give the little followers rain, sun and sometimes lightning. You can pick up followers and “move” them from place to place. You can also flick them so they go flying through the air, which is funny because you get rewards for the longest follower toss. I’m sure the game will lose its appeal but for now it is a fun little 5 minute diversion.

What I’m really using the iPad for is reading my Kindle books. Yes, I have a Kindle but the functionality on the iPad is so much better plus with Whispersync I can now read the same book on 4 devices seamlessly. That is something that the iTunes bookstore cannot do. I cannot read my iBooks on my Droid but I can read my Kindle Books. So I have many options for reading. I think that if I charge all the devices I could almost finish one of Terry Goodkind’s books without having to worry about recharging. That would be if any of the rest of his books get on Kindle.

Oh and the blue sides are from my iFrogz cover for my iPad. I love their stuff.

So, I check my followers on Godfinger right before bed and then check my email (I’m an e-mail junkie and will explain my e-mail methodology for an empty inbox someday). However, that is not the point. The point is that I went to bed with some fantastic news. I found out that my session for Blog World Expo was selected. The session is titled Content You Can Care About. This is my description of the session.

“Drew will take bloggers on a trip through various photo, video and audio hosting sites. Drew will get up close and personal with Flickr, YouTube and many other sites. Blogging is a multimedia medium but many bloggers are not taking advantage of all the free and paid tools available to make their content even more compelling. With Drew’s array of digital cameras, digital video cameras and personal cell phone he will teach the audience many ways to capture compelling content to share with their blog audiences.”

I’ve got a lot of work to do to get the ideas in my head onto a presentation and I may see about using Keynote to do it, but we’ll see. As far as I can tell it is a solo presentation and I am really excited about that.

In other conference news. My proposed session for M3: Modern Media Man got made into a panel, but not to worry. I spoke with my partner for the session, Paul Bowers this morning and he and I hashed out a great idea for the session, it is similar in scope to the one for Blog World Expo but split more into how to take great photos with simple devices and then the ways to get them onto your blog.

Eventually I will write up the session that I wanted to do, Dad as Digital Historian, as a series of blog posts that everyone can benefit from.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

iPad… Well, I’m Pooped

My friend Tim Jones also took part in eating a giant burger that tasted like shame. I set up my camera on a tripod in front of him as he devoured the tasty creation the XXX from Fatburger.

I bop around in the background taking photos. Photos to be posted soon.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

Tim Jones and the Tasty Fatburger