I Went to NME, well, sort of

I had a virtually great time at New Media Expo in Las Vegas.

This past week I've been busy doing some Olympic housework so that I could spend some quality screen time for two days with my favorite characters in the Land (or is it ether?) of Social Media (who happen to be real people, kind of like on Big Brother only better but my dad would totally disagree).

If you're a social media junkie like me who also happens to be a mom, I find that it helps with the mommyguilt when you can feel like you're rewarding yourself with geek time for having a clean we'll call it tidy, close enough dammit house. (That way I can tune in while the kidlet runs around the house and systematically undoes everything I just did to clean the house. Oh well, kept him busy and out of trouble.)

The two-day event to which I am referring is The New Media Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada which is winding up this evening. Ha, ha, I say this evening as it's really after midnight, but I know darn well most of them are still up and capping off the party tonight/this morning. I really would have considered going except that, as you might know, I've recently returned home from a very long cross-country road trip, so needless to say, I'm a little tripped out right now. (That and the fact that I have yet to spend 24 hours away from my son who is still not yet completely weaned, so the farm here still kinda needs the cow to show up and moo on occasion.) (And while we're being honest here, I know I wouldn't get my money's worth in liquor at Las Vegas anyhow because I rarely drink and I would be a super cheap date.)

I really want to say thank you to Tony Walla who has carried me around in his pocket (see illustration above) these past two days while he has been schmoozing and hanging out with all of the internebrities at the conference. It almost felt like I got to hang out with a bunch of them. Tony, through the powers of social media, was able to 'channel' TheMacMommy on his iPhone via Twitter and say hello to Geoff Smith and Lisa Bettany for me. He even promised pictures too! I can't wait to see them.

I've had lots of geeky fun these past two days hanging out in the chat room over at TWiTLive.tv and pinging my friends on twitter saying "what are you doing?" here and "where are you now?" there and "hey, Leo wants to talk to you, get over there!"

I even got some Leo Love™!! w00t! Ok, so how much of a dork am I? I even copied and pasted the text from the chat window into TextEdit to save it because Leo Laporte actually typed in the chat room to say hello to me. Is this the geeky equivalent of saving a dirty napkin in a scrap book? (Something about that dude just makes people giddy when he says hello. This was the second time he's said hi to me and I hope it will be one of many!)

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch! Click to enlarge.

This is what I love about social media. Even from my living room, while folding laundry and potty training my son, I felt like I was a part of the action because I could have my laptop on a table near by and watch a glimpse of the event on TWiTLive. I loved being able to communicate with the people who were there.

The fun really started when the cameras showed Victor Cajiao standing in the audience. So I tweeted Victor:




And, moments later, Leo follows me on Twitter, just sayin Victor was seated at the table interviewing with Leo Laporte! What a treat that was.





At one point it got really exciting as Rob Hanson and I made a concentrated effort to get Allison Sheridan back on the roster to talk to Leo Laporte on TWiTLive. Thankfully she got our messages and made it on 2nd to last! Whew!









I was even able to capture a screen shot of it and send it to her within moments of the broadcast. Boy, was that fun! (We're both suckers for instant gratification.)






The chat room on Stickam for TWiTLive was very, well, lively. I was even giving Santa Claus tech support as he was trying to join in.

Yes, Santa is real and he's even on Twitter! Don't believe me? Go follow him and get on his nice list now. It's August already!








While I was chatting in there, I also tweeted Geoff Smith to let him know some nice discussion about him had brewed. He even logged in and joined us in the chat for a bit. He let me know that he saw my tweet. It was a real delight to see him perform live the very next day! If you haven't already, you should really check him out. He's a new classic. I've really enjoyed watching his live concerts over on Ustream.TV. Just like with this event, I like to participate in Geoff's shows using seesmic. I've posted a couple of videos while interacting with the show. Lucian loves to sing along and it's great fun.








Well, they say what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, but that certainly wasn't the case for New Media Expo where the keyword is short for expose. All I know is I had a great time and didn't even lose any money.

Now, the challenge for you is: Can you count how many social media tools I've used to participate in these events? Maybe you'd like to try one out for yourself. It's great fun. Let me know by contacting me on one of the platforms. I'd love to hear from you!