Today I am leaving Las Vegas (too late in the day if you ask me but I only have myself to blame on that one). This was one of my favorite Blogworlds that I’ve been to. I think that is mainly because of the confidence level I now have because of all the great people that I have met over the years and continue to meet at each show.

This show I roomed with Buck “Daddy” Rogers, The Original Daddy Blogger. Buck wouldn’t tell you this about himself but he is a guy who makes things happen. Why? Because he asks. Buck was able to secure us a room and get sponsorship, this cut way down on expenses. He was instrumental in pulling me into Collective Bias and because of that I was able to participate in the Speed Dating session where I talked to five people about blogging and their brands. He pulled me in and introduced me to many of the Mommy bloggers and I made some nice friends. And also we became closer friends, that really made the trip.

Yesterday I posted about how I met Anthony Edwards and about his Shoe4Africa charity. Meeting him was very cool. Anthony was on a panel with a few other people that I didn’t get around to mentioning but they were also engaging, they just didn’t resonate with me like Anthony. The panel was moderated by Brian Solis and he does a good job of moderating a panel, a very good job, they should have had him do the closing keynote rather than Guy Kawasaki, but I’ll get to that. The rest of the panel was Matt Goss, Jermaine Dupri and while we were supposed to have Soleil Moon Frye we got Robin Antin of the Pussycat Dolls.

Matt Goss was interesting and he talked a good game about his use of twitter and engaging people but immediately Timothy Jones checked his twitter to find that he hardly ever tweets and was only following 22 people, way to engage. Robin Antin ummed and ahhed and you knowed through the panel. Jermaine Dupri was interesting and he did rock the mic with much of what he said. I was impressed and had actually never heard of him before. Apparently he’s the guy who came up with the backwards clothes idea for Kriss Kross. Wiggidty Widdigty Whack.

After the keynote you know that I stuck around for about half an hour waiting to talk to Anthony. After that I went out to the show floor. I met up with a few people including Eric Schechter of Clickbooth. Eric and I did a nice interview at the booth. He asked some great questions and that is one smiling guy, seriously he has a great smile that makes you want to smile too. That made talking to him so much easier and so I think we had a long interview overall. I never did do my other interviews, which bugs me because I stood waiting for the people wanting to interview me to get their act together.

I went over to the session The Money Making Potential of Continuity Programs. This was a panel with Tim Kerber of Membergate, Ryan Lee and Jim Kukral. Jim was the guy organizing the monetization track and he did an excellent job picking speakers and pulling things together. Sessions in that track were some of the best at the show. Unfortunately, I had to cut out and never got to see Tim

the reason that I had to cut out was that I needed to run to Speed Dating. Speed Dating was something new and it was very fun. It was set up by Collective Bias and it allowed bloggers to sit down with major brand representatives and have a conversation about their brands. The first person I talked with was George Smith of Crocs. George did two quick interviews with me where I talked about myself in one and what I knew of the Crocs social media campaign in the other. I’d seen George at IZEAFest nut didn’t get a chance to talk with him and I haven’t opened that big box of swag that I mailed myself from IZEAFest either so I hadn’t tried the Crocs yet. George was cool, he just wanted to get to know who I was as a blogger and how if there was something that we could work on together how we could do that.

Next I spoke with Deb Friar of Catalina Marketing, they supply the coupon machines in the supermarkets. We also talked about my doing much of the supermarket shopping in the family and my trip through the supermarket with Eva and a time lapse camera. That was my Shopping Cart Experiment. She was pretty excited about that and was interested in how her company could do more with bloggers in social media. We certainly did not have enough time to chat.

I then rotated to my next person who was Laura Southwick of USA Weekend Magazine. We talked about ways in which USA Weekend Magazine could work in the Social Media Space. Again I talked about my blog and also the ideas that I had for USA Weekend and how they could work in this New Media space.

It was time to rotate again and I met with John Kim of Whrrl. I still don’t totally understand Whrrl but it looks pretty cool. When I get home I will set up my actual account because the computer I am using is useless for anything other than typing out a blog post, so frustrating.

After John I met with three people from Con Agra Foods, the makers of Healthy Choice. We talked about how their brands could become more active in New Media and places like Twitter. For each person who asked me about that I made sure to tell them that their twitter name needs to be prominently displayed on their product with a question for customers to take action. they asked me how they could be more active int he space and engage customers. I picked up a can of Healthy Choice and scanned it for a moment. “Is your twitter name on your packaging?” I asked. The team was interested in that as a concept and I went on further to explain that if the twitter name was on the packaging that is automatically free advertising for the twitter feed and a way to engage customers, further if a question was asked and people were directed to respond via twitter then they could immediate begin engaging their customers.

After speed dating I went over and filmed Tim Jones of The Real Time Jones.com as he did the Fatburger Challenge. He found it very easy to complete and he came in third. I have a video of the entire event and will post it soon. I should have stayed around because Buck competed in the last round of the challenge.

This was now nearing 2:30 and the cocktail/networking party was in full swing on the exhibit hall floor. I got myself a little something to eat and also had some Blue bunny Ice cream. I went by the IZEA Booth and Ted’s eyes lit up at the ice cream, he’s a big fan of it. So, I went back over and got him a cone of Oreo. He was most appreciative. Later he invited me to dinner but I had to say no because the restaurant was way down the strip and I needed to meet up with people at the closing party at the Hilton pool.

I went to two more sessions in the afternoon. I caught one Social Media Customer engagement, Customer Loyalty. In that Session I met Tony Welch (@frostola) who is the community manager for HP. He gave me a $100 coupon towards a new HP computer. Maybe I will take the plunge and get a netbook for these events. The session was a good one and the panel also had Michael Brito (@britopian) of Intel and John Hendricks of Scene It.

After that I went and saw a screening of the Warner Bros show called The Middle. It is a pretty funny show overall and stars Patricia Heaton from Everybody Loves Raymond and also Neil Flynn from Scrubs. At the show were many of the Mommy bloggers and I met up with Linsey Knerl. Linsey and I talked for a bit before the show and then we met up later at the Pool Party and talked for a very long time, she was really nice to talk to and she’s doing great things for helping people with personal finance on the blog Wise Bread.

Also today while on the floor I talked to some guys who are with Heifer international. I talked to them about Eva’s Farm, or family project on giving to Heifer International. They told me about a facet of the Heifer site that allows people to make teams for giving. Teams can se tup goals and I’ll be setting up an Eva’s Farm team soon. I also ran into Bruce Christensen of AlbinoPhant.com. Bruce remembered me from last year because he came to Blog World Expo with a cement mixer. Bruce has a new venture that he was inspired to create after attending Blog World last year. He thanked me for helping Cart-Away get noticed last year and gave me a shirt from his new venture.

The final session of the day was a Keynote that was set up sort of like the Tonight Show and it was with Guy Kawasaki, Kevin Pollack, Matt and Arron from Chad Vader and Jenny the Bloggess. Kevin was very funny. I’ve always liked him as an actor and comedian. I haven’t watched his show but I think I will starting now. I have hours to catch up on.

Matt and Aaron were also funny and talked more about what Chad Vader has done for them. I like those guys, they are funny and personable too. Then the last guest was Jenny the Bloggess. Guy asked the question who didn’t know her. I didn’t, not my taste at all. She is funny to some but well, not my palate. The panel started very strong with Kevin and I think he should have been the closer, Guy was not a good host, he was just a little off. Kevin would have been the better host overall.

after the keynote Buck and I dropped out stuff at the room and headed over to the Las Vegas Hilton to go to the Scene It party. We wanted to make sure that we were part of the first 100 people to attend. We were the first two I think. The Scene It party had good good and a Scene It-tini. I had one, it was blue and good. There were also some impersonators like Marylin Monroe, Robin Williams and Johnny Depp. They were all impressed with the pocket Xshot that I’ve been testing our for Michael (this is a prototype and a smaller version of the Xshot that I currently own and which I gave out to Gary Arndt, Anthony Edwards and a random guy at Scene It, totally missed the opportunity to get photo with him.) I did manage to get shots with each of them before the party opened.

When the party opened we were given a great swag bag that included a Scene it Game. I got the Simpsons one but traded for the 80’s version one. Oh, and when we arrived at the party we caught up with Dwan Perrin (@MommaDJane) and Alan Parker (@). So the four of us got a personal sneak look at the Scene It .com site. We played a little of the game and I for one am impressed. I remember playing You Don’t Know Jack online way back when and I loved it for the trivia. This online version of Scene It was very well done and it is still being tweaked. We were even given super secret previews of the Facebook version of the game. What is great about it is that eventually the two games will work in tandem. what that means is that you will not lose your levels when you switch between the versions. I was impressed with that.

We left that party and went up to the Pool Party, the offical end of Blogworld & New Media Expo. I caught up with Dina Riccobono and Lewis Howes at the MarketLeverage cabana. I hung out there and had a nice meal and a great conversation with Linsey Knerl. She made me cry earlier when we were watching the Middle. I had explained about what we just went through and are still emotionally reeling from. She asked for Allison’s name because she would pray for her. That got me and I teared up. It has been an emotional weekend with such wonderful giving people and so many new friends. I can’t wait to meet up with everyone again.

After the Pool Party there was TechKaraoke. I did not sing. I wasn’t feeling it from myself last night. what I did do however is meet a number of wonderful people. Buck was instrumental in introducing me to many people and for that I am so grateful. I went back tot he hotel around 1:00am. I was beat.

I wrote part of this last night and the rest today. I am not using my best equipment and so I cannot upload all my photos from the event, however once I get home there will be a large batch of them and I will also fix the linkage to everyone I mention in this post.