Photo-A-Day #1824

Tonight I went to Dillon’s (Back Bay) in Boston for the Media Leaders Networking Event. I met a ton of great people and I am going to shamelessly namedrop all the cool folks that I connected with during the event. I spent much of my time talking with the two people in today’s photo, Joselin Mane and Amanda Del Balso. Joselin is the host of BostonTweetUp.com and his weekly show about all the tweetups in the Boston area is a must for anyone looking to connect and network in Boston. Amanda is from Google and was one of the hosts of the event. I arrived early and we talked for a while about her job over at Google. I had no idea that the Google AdWords division was based in Boston. Very cool.

You might notice that the photo taken today and the photo taken yesterday have many of the same settings. I kept the ISO at 100 and even though the room was a dark one I was able to get good bright shots using my external flash. I also put the diffuser screen on the flash to soften it a bit so that it wasn’t too harsh. I don’t use the flash often enough and need to learn more tips and tricks on how to use it. I do know a bit about doing a bounce flash but the room was not conducive to that at all. The exposure was a bit slower than yesterday but that was also because of the less light available.

I was shooting in aperture mode because I wanted to have a low aperture to get some good shots focusing on the people I met and wanted to blur the background a bit so the subjects popped more. Okay enough about the photo let’s talk about the event.

I drove into Boston from Framingham and parked in the first parking garage I could find, off Dartmouth Street. It was a nice day and I had plenty of time so I decided to walk over to Dillon’s. Let’s just say that I have a habit of picking the most expensive and worst parking garage options ever. I walked over to the Hynes Convention center and took a walk through the shops. I had a dinner at Pizzeria Regina in the food court. I sort of think of food courts as dining Russian Roulette. You could end up with a very, very bad choice that you can pay for later. Luckily I picked a decent option and had a good dinner. I got my parking ticket validated and figured I was good one the parking, nope I wasn’t. More on that later.

After dinner I took a walk through the Apple Store on Boylston Street. That is a beautiful store. I got my hands on an iPad and boy it is a nice little device. My iPad jones is really starting to creep in big time. I tried to set the background to one of my Photo-A-Day images but couldn’t. I think I will start adding BenSpark.com as a bookmark on any computer I can find in any store, sort of some guerrilla marketing.

I got to Dillon’s early and got to spend some time talking with Amanda and Alex. They were really nice and were there to host the event and check people in. I settled in for a good night of networking.

I met Mukhtar Mohamed of itsmyurls.com a service where you can create one profile with links to all your social media profiles in one place. I created mine http://itsmyurls.com/benspark. Mohamed is a very passionate and driven guy. ItsMyUrls has grown so quickly and organically. The idea is to simplify your online life by creating one link that will connect everyone to all of your social network profiles and web pages. Pretty cool concept!

After I spoke with Mohamed I ran into Joselin and we talked a bit about planning TweetUps. Joselin is the host of Boston TweetUp.com. I’m working on one for late summer that should prove to be a fun time. Joselin has a great approach to organizing tweetups and the one that I attended last year was awesome. The Mega TweetUp was a great night. I got a photo of Joselin with the other hosts of the Media Leaders event.

As I walked around taking photos of everyone, whic was really fun and I was the only person doing it, I met a ton of people. I met Harrison Lounsbury and Lauren Hubbard of Proforma. Proforma is a company that prints promotional product offers printing services, Business Documents, eCommerce solutions and so much more. It was very nice talking with Lauren and Harrison while I was at the event. I snapped their picture too.

Walking around a little more I ran into a three people who were very excited about having their photo taken, Tim Wong, Nathan Watt and Kelly Fallis. Nathan, Should I send you my address so you can send me that bottle of wine :-).

I next met Craig Grant and Alicia Carlson. Craig is known as the homeless art director. Love the branding. Alicia is a photographer and I hope that she likes the photo that I took of her and Craig. Alicia told me all about a fantastic photography project opening tomorrow at the Boston Photography Center. The project is called the Boston Neighborhood Project. I can’t get back into Boston tomorrow to see it but it looks to be very cool, if you are in the area you should go.

I next met Todd Horton and Thad Peterson. Todd is the CEO of KangoGift. The idea behind KangoGift is very cool. You can send a gift to anyone via text message. Imagine if I wanted to buy Mr. Chris Brogan a cup of coffee or maybe a plate of bacon from the Roger Smith Hotel, I couldn’t do that one, yet but I could send him a tickets to a show at Club Passim just by using my cell phone and an SMS message. Actually Todd gave me his card and in it was a coupon for a free cup of coffee that I could send. So Chris, one cup o java is coming your way. The service is so very cool.

It started to get late and I took a few more photos which I posted on Picasa, Flickr and the Event page on Facebook. But before I left I met and talked to Sean Horrian of PR Guy. Sean was a pretty interesting guy and he had some great suggestions of books for me to read, too. You have to check his website, it is very visually compelling and cool.

With each event I attend I do get to meet more and more interesting people and I love it. This event I was much more comfortable going up to people and asking them if I could take their photos for the event. I also did a good job of talking and listening, in my opinion. The event was great and I hope to do one again. Now If I could only get in and out of Boston without getting nailed with big parking fees, such a rip off, and the validation did nothing.