Upon hearing news of attending Blog Orlando 3, I wasn't sure what to expect. Having worked behind the scenes in an online world, I wasn't sure what kind of environment to expect, people who were new age, older generation, people who were like me, or people who wouldn't get me. Being the chicken I am I asked my girlfriend (who is not a web person by any stretch) to join me so I wasn't alone in the experience.
We arrived to an empty street close to Rollins college (the site of the conference), hoping that we parked in a "permitted" parking area. We walked to the building, with our paper notebooks in hand; we saw people with briefcases and laptops, and quickly felt inadequate and unprepared. After we checked in, we met in the main auditorium.
In the auditorium we were introduced to the day to come. This was the 3rd annual Blog Orlando conference; so far everyone was very friendly and welcoming. There were people from all different walks of life in attendance, a surprisingly diverse group.
We plotted out the day to come. The event was split into 5 tracks:
- Public relations / Communication
- Media / Creative
- Community
- Technology-Basic
- Technology-Advanced
We chose for the first session, Shiny New Objects, it was presented by Frank Gruber of Somewhat Frank. He used an IPhone as a means of retrieving his notes and dropped different sources of new internet tools.
Our second session was Hyperlocal thinking it was to assist in developing your blog for Local Search. I was a little disappointed that it was about keeping your blog local and focused on the local community, nothing to do with search. I would say this is my fault for thinking "search" when it's a blog conference.
The third session was very intriguing, Monetization. The session was led by the founder of IZEA, Ted Murphy. He spoke of his experience and his business, he also emphasized that diversifying and exploring new revenue sources is essential if you plan on generating income. Mr. Murray said blatantly, "If your blog isn't making money, you are a donkey."
Following a quite exciting lunch expedition to the local taco place, we attended our fourth session, Going beyond Google. The session was led by Leah Jones of Edelman, this session basically informed listeners of different search engines other than Google. "Go beyond Google" emphasized Boolean searching. Leah was nice enough to provide the slideshow from her presentation to anyone here http://www.slideshare.net/leahjones/search-for-roi so if you're curious to learn a little more take a look.
Next, we hiked up to the 3rd floor, Rollins has very steep stairs, to attend a jam packed session of Online Identity led by Jake McGhee - Community Guy. The group discussed their personal experiences with websites such as Myspace and Facebook and discussed how risque photos and blogs affected their careers and their futures.
Following a short break, Geno Church, Brains on Fire, presented Movement, Activism and Social Media, which had to be the best PowerPoint presentation I have ever seen which included pictures, video and music. This presentation was the very informative and well put together. He spoke of the importance of passion and building online communities. He empathised letting go of the reigns of your community and letting it grow naturally.
We hiked back down the stairs to attend a session with Josh Hallett about Flickr, the online photo gallery, Josh discussed the uses and technique of Flickr and how to get your pictures seen.
The closing session was that of Erik Herson, WhiteAfrican.com. He discussed his websites, which were very monumental. He has developed groundbreaking African based websites that were very useful to the African people. His website, Ushahidi allows Africans to identify and report civil unrest, disasters and other major problems in their area by SMS.
The after conference networking event took place at Finnhenry's in downtown Orlando. When the group of 100+ arrived to the downtown establishment, there was a Notre Dame vs. Purdue game showing on all TV's, packed with Notre Dame Fans. This unfortunately was not a great spot for networking and talking. The BlogOrlando3 group ended up gathering on the streets of Downtown Orlando, outside of Finnhenry's.
If I could have changed anything about the event I would have split the conference into two days to allow for people to explore all the tracks offered. There were many times when I was interested in two different sessions being offered at the same time and basically flipped a coin to decide on which one to attend. There were a total of 29 sessions with the opportunity to attend only seven. I was very pleased with my first blogging conference.
Overall it was really a great experience, I was able to network with people who share a similar interest and learned quite a bit about the people who make up the local blogging community.