My Entire #ChevyNAIAS Set of Photos is now up on Flickr

While weather became a contributing factor to major annoyances today it in no way dampened my mode or thrill at being at NAIAS. Today was going to be a good day. We had lots of fun things planned and we met with some very very cool people. Despite wrong turns, cancelled flights and being on hold with AmexTravel for an hour it was still a good day.

Today started out with a fantastic breakfast with the Buick Team in the Renaissance Conference Center. This building is fantastic. There is so much to do here and so many cool things happening. It is a little cumbersom at some points to get from point A to point B but I did need the walk after all. At breakfast I sat with Chris Barger (Who got himself a great Case Crown Case for his iPad from me on day one), Manny Ruiz (An extremely passionate blogger and conference organizer, superb marketer), Jewel Figueras (she is a hoot! So fun and cool), and also Cali Lewis (GeekBeat.TV internet podcasting superstar) and John Poz (I’m not even going to attempt at saying or spelling John’s name).

Our breakfast conversation ranged from the origin of Livid Lobster to Woopra and on to doing family road trips. This was a fantasticly stimulating conversation and that is why I am reminded over and over how much Social Media outside of just being online is so important to me, it is the personal interaction with passionate smart and fun people. And they had tons of bacon at breakfast, always a plus.

We had some free time after breakfast and so I went with John and Cali over to the COBO center. Well, it ended up that I was with John, Cali stopped off somewhere and by the time she came down I had wandered off into my own little zone of shooting every car that I saw and collectiing every press kit that I could. There were some very cool ones and I’ll do a separate post all about the press kits, eventually.

We went back to the Ren Center and had lunch (a very nice boxed lunch, gourmet even) with the OnStar people. After that lunch and the conversation that we had I most definietly think that we should have a car with OnStar in the future. So very important and they do great work. We were shown the command center and many of the great features of the OnStar system. Did you knwo that if your car is stolen there is a feature where you can have OnStar remotely slow down the vehicle, that way these high speed chases that are so prevalant, could be avoided. The tour there was fantastic.

We all booked it back to COBO because we were going to have some time to meet with Joel Ewanick. I didn’t get Joel’s title but he’s one very important guy. What he told us in this interview session was such valuable information not only for bloggers but for anyone looking into social media for thier business. GM is going to be a huge influencer in this, in time. They are going to have 100 bloggers and social media people who do the job of creating social media, connecting with customers and more. How do I get on a Big Fuel team in the Boston area. to Me, working on Social Media all day long and producing valuable content is such a dream of mine. Well, you can watch the video here.

After that it was time to head to the GM Heritage Center. This was supposed to be a half hour drive away. Factors like weather and the unreliability fo GPS made the trip much longer. Not a problem, we just rolled with it. Or rather rolled and stopped, rolled and stopped. But we got there to the Heritage Center and had about a half hour to explore and photograph the cars. The collection was incredible. Cars dating back to 1903. Chevy is in their 100th year and that is amazing. I took a ton of photos there and will try and label them as best as possible.

After exploring we headed back to the downtown for dinner at Cliff Bells, a sweet jazz spot that served some delcious items and paired them with good drinks as well. I spent the bulk of my time talking the ear off of Joe Guy Collier. He was such fun to talk to and was also the man to give Vinny’s card to. My friend Vinny runs the Cadillac Country Club a blog for Cadillac enthusiasts. Vinny would be a great person to attend a future NAIAS. Joe Guy and I talked about social media, blogging and I went into affiliate improv mode again and talked like crazy.

I also spent some good time talking with Manny Ruiz or PapiBlogger. Manny has skills on getting connected to the right people for sponsorship of projects that he is doing. He showed me some very cool promotional materials that he has. I’m seriously thinking about leveraging the knowledge and skills that I’ve acquired these past years to put together a project of my own and that will start with some media related materials. Thanks for the talk Manny and also inviting me to come speak at the Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference. Not sure if I could swing it but if I was sponsored in some way I could take care of the lost money from taking days out of work (I used every last hour of my vacation to go on this trip.) But who knows, it would be a great opportunity to get in front of a whole new audience and share my knowledge with them.

After dinner I got rebooked on a flight and Chevy took care of me to stay in my room another day. Despite some little bumpy issues today that aren’t even worth going into and had nothing to do with the Chevy team that organized this trip the day was a perfect one. Meeting amazingly talented and passionate people and having stimulating conversations was fantastic. I had the best time and got to see some wicked cool cars. Now if I could only drive a Volt or a Sonic or a Convertible Camaro, now that would be even cooler.