Conference Notebook

All those lessons, tips & tricks learned along the way are pretty useless if you don't learn to... Do It Fucking Now!

I figured a kind reminder might be useful to some of us ;)

Download the PDF, print it, tape it, read it, do it! Fucking Now!

The holy grail everyone tries to achieve at conferences like PubCon Las Vegas is to make money while they sleep...

Considering the amount of partying going on in Vegas, you have to wonder though: how can they achieve that if they actually never sleep!? :>>

Or at the very least, look at it this way: The more you sleep, the more money you will make during your sleep ;) And the less you sleep, the harder it's gonna be... :P

That is my recommendation to cope with the down economy: "sleep more!" :))

In case you're planning to go to PubCon and you still haven't registered, you can take advantage of the 20% OFF coupon codes that all speakers have been posting on their respective blogs lately. Here are a few samples:

• wa-67720
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All coupons expire on October 30th.

Debra Conrad has put up her Nokia N95 video from the BlogWorld tweetup dinner I mentioned the other day.

I’m not sure the video does us all justice (I hate to say it but I look pretty darn tired – I’m at 4′40″ – … as always!!! Damn! On the other hand, I’m not the only one :)))… nevertheless, I think it gives an idea of how nicely those twitter meetup things work out. All those people showed up in this random Las Vegas taco joint, just because they read about it live on twitter. Pretty nifty dontcha think?

Oh and Debra, I know you know, but my twitter profile is spelled with an “e” at the end!!!

To me, Blog World Expo 2008 mainly started as an excuse to write off a week-end in Las Vegas on company expenses. It actually turned out to be a really good experience! A few things itched me too... Here we go:

What I liked:

1. Live Twittering! The organizers heavily promoted the use of the #bwe08 tag so everybody knew how to participate to the live feed on twitter. This kind of stuff is what makes Twitter awesome in my opinion. (Nothing like "I'm flossing my teeth" tweets :>>)
2. Tweeter meetups aka tweetups! That's the ultimate twitter application at conferences: attendees meeting up here and there outside of the conference. First time I actually went to such a tweetup! Awesome way to meet new people! :D Greetings to Lorelle, Dave, Ian, Mari, Des and you others whose names/URLs I'm afraid I forgot... :oops:
3. Interesting sessions! Huhu I almost thought "what could I possibly learn about blogging?" Well... maybe that you need 24 diverse plugins in order to get WordPress to do what you need. (I thought you only needed a dozen! :>) No but seriously, the sessions covered broad topics from social networking to advertising as well as comment spam moderation and dealing with sockpuppets (Shoemoney explains it best).
4. Meeting b2evolution users. Of course I always wish more of them would come. Awesome feedback though... and lots of work added to the todo list!!
5. Las Vegas: I hate to say it, but I was actually starting to miss Vegas! First conference I attended in Vegas this year!

Okay, now let me bitch a little about what I didn't like! :>

6. Ridiculous schedule: conferences starting at 8:45 am. No lunch break until 1:15 pm. And it gets worse:
7. No lunch provided: it would just make so much sense to have a lunch area where everyone could sit down together and have a lunch box if nothing else, instead of having to leave the convention center to run down some food! You know, they provide that at other conferences. How much would it cost to ad lunch? (Instead of the ice cream mid afternoon... ?)
8. Week-End event: I do understand many bloggers actually have a Monday to Friday day job and that it makes sense to have the conference on a Week-End. But AFAIAC I'd enjoy Vegas more during the week... not to mention everything would be cheaper and also, I wouldn't have wasted a whole day at LAX waiting for a goddam free seat on a plane out to Vegas Friday afternoon... :roll:
9. Temperature: Toasting hot Nevada desert outside. Freezing A/C cold inside. WTF? I don't know a single person who enjoys that! Not even in Chicago (the other place with A/C extravaganza!) Why do you need 70°F? Especially when everybody's wearing T-Shirts!
10. BYOI: Picture this: a conference about blogging where you cannot even blog because the crappy WiFi is useless. You had to BYOI: Bring Your Own Internet connection... Luckily almost everyone had either an iPhone or a BlackBerry. Not ideal for typing long blogposts though... which brings me back to: Twitter rocked the show! :)

All right, see you there next year! ;)