Influence, Beer and Buffets


Photo-A-Day #1746

After getting to bed very, very early this morning we slept until 7:00am. I got up and made my way down to the Blogger’s Lounge where I could finally get online after a few days away and unable to post my photos and regular posts. The Blogger Lounge was set up very nicely and there was plenty of room as well as power cords, very important when you have a convention with bloggers.

Allison joined me later in the morning and so did our friend Tim Jones (@TheRealTimJones).

Jim Kukral

We headed over to the Penn and Teller theater to see Dr. Robert Cialdini give the opening keynote. He was introduced by the always awesome Jim Kukral (@jimkukral)the master of ceremonies. I’ve been reading Dr. Caildini’s book Influence and it is very good. Seeing Dr. Cialdini talk and also put some of his rules into practice was very powerful. At the end of the session he told us that he prepared a small card for everyone that is laminated and has the six rules of influence on it. It was his gift to us. Also, if we were so inclined we could write “Yes” on our business cards and pop them into a box and he would mail us a case study. So, in return for the small gift Dr. Cialdini collected a huge amount of e-mail addresses from people who would be inclined to listen more to his message. Smart man.

Larry Adams

I went to a couple of sessions today, one was on Product Datafeeds but it didn’t really provide me with much info on how to use them or where to get good information on how to use them. I was a bit dissapointed in that session because I didn’t find enough information, but I was able to take a few photos.

After the session I had a quick lunch with Tim Jones and Trisha Lyn Fawver (@trishalyn) and then off to the Blogger Lounge for a little while. I caught back up with Allison and she was keeping busy in the lounge with a few people. When I went to my next session she went to Spa treatment.

Our good friend Dina Riccobono (@TFNDina) gave Allison a mani/pedi session in the Rio Spa. When I picked Allison up after my sessions she was having a very good and relaxing time. I was invited in and put into the massage chair while we waited for her polish to dry. This was one industrial massage chair, it worked everything. Thank you Dina!!

Peter Shankman

Before I picked Allison up I watched Peter Shankman (@skydiver) do a session called Self-Promotion Will Save The World. I first saw Peter Shankman at Affiliate Summit East 2009 and he gave a fantastic keynote. This session was also a good one and he had so many important points. I sat with Tim Jones and Brett Bumeter (@brettbumeter) and Brad Waller (@BradWaller), we spent a good amount of time tweeting and retweeting the messages from Peter’s session. From the sound of things on Twitter Peter’s session was well recieved. In a little bit of self promotion I gave him one of my BenSpark water bottles.

Back to the Spa. Once the massage chair session was over Allison and I met up with Tim Jones again and we had dinner at the Carnival Buffett, largest buffet in Vegas. Overall it was pretty decent. I made sure that I ate my monies worth of Crab legs. There was a ton of food, some good some decent and some not that great. The desserts were delicious though.

Plate #1 at the Carnival Buffet

Plate #2 at the Carnival Buffet

Allison and I went up to the room to relax. We ended up both falling asleep for a couple of hours. I woke up when Big Bang Theory started. I watched that and then went downstairs to the Trivia Tweetup. Allison stayed up to sleep. I spent an hour at the Tweetup and then went to a special event from GTOManagement.com Karen (@karengarcia) & Joel Garcia (@joeldgarcia) and Wade Tonkin (@affile8warrior) of GTO Management are really nice people and they threw a little party for MakeBeer.net. It is an affiliate program that you can get into where you can sell home based brewing kits. The kits are not at all expensive either and I am pretty sure I’ll be getting a MakeBeer.net kit and brewing some of my own beer in the near future. I tried a few great beers during the event and look forward to making my own soon.

I talked with some really good people last night including my fellow panelist; John Carcutt (@JohnCarcutt). John is organizing the first official Miami Wordcamp and he even asked me if I was interested in speaking there. That would be very cool, not sure If I can get the time away or the money to get myself down to Miami in a very short amount of time. We’ll see.