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We've added a few more session leaders and reposted some sponsors. On the sponsor-side of things, Kissimmee Utility Authority is back (thanks Chris) and so is cnp_studio (thanks Nick).
For sessions we have confirmed that Sarah Perez from ReadWriteWeb will be leading a session as well as Greg Pollack.
You can check out the session list to see the growing list. In the next week or so we'll begin to post session descriptions and hopefully a finalized grid schedule.
A few more session leaders:
Frank Gruber, AOL - Shiny New Objects, a Review of Tools
Etan Horowitz, Orlando Sentinel - Twitter in Journalism
A few more session leaders to add to the mix:
Marketing/Comms Track:
David Alston - Monitoring
Geno Church and Spike Jones - Movement Marketing
Paula Berg - Social Media in a Changing Industry
Journalism
Tommy Duncan & Chuck Welch - Hyperlocal
Community
Jim Johnson & Bob O'Malley - Politics
Erik Hersman - TBD
Technical/How-To
Leah Jones - Finding It/Search
Ted Murphy - Monetizing
Mark Jaquith - Advanced WordPress
Jeremy Harrington - Basic WordPress
Josh Hallett - Flickr
To say we experienced some growth last year would be an understatement. However bigger is not always better. It's always difficult to provide content that a room full of 300 people will all benefit from. That's why we've always split into the diverse tracks.
Many past BlogOrlando attendees will tell you, sometimes smaller is better, as in the smaller sessions they sat in provided some of the best content and interaction.
We're trying to do the same thing this year, that is offering a diverse array of topics.
One of the things I struggle with when planning sessions is going back to the well again. What I mean is inviting the same people back to lead sessions. For a while I was really trying to avoid this since folks may look at the session leaders and say, 'Well nothing new here, he/she had a session last year....'
Then I thought about it some more and realized it doesn't really matter that much. Why? Well the format is generally a discussion and not a 'presentation'. In that sense the topic really is driven by the room. The session leader's job is to keep things going and provide some inspiration. It's not the same person giving the same powerpoint you've seen three times before.
With that said I want people leading sessions that can do a good job of this. A great example is the hyperlocal session. For the past two years I've always had Tommy Duncan be one of the leaders. Last year's session was great and really was an open discussion that went in a number of different directions.
If I was overly-concerned about 'going back to the well' then I'd look for somebody else to lead that session this year. Buy you know what, Tommy and Chuck Welch are probably still some of the best choices and can lead discussions....so I'm asking them back.
Now look for a few 'repeat performances' from BlogOrlando past. If you don't like it, you can have your money back :-)
Registration is now open for the 2008 edition of BlogOrlando. So go do your thing:
Like last year we're breaking things down into different tracks, but adding one. The tracks will be:
Marketing/Communication: Those folks again.....yes PR/ad focus
Journalism: Old-school and new-school, with some multimedia thrown in
Tech/How-To: Mixture of how-to's on podcasting/video and things like WordPress
Community: Mixture of local Orlando stuff and broader community items
New Media/Old Media: Film makers, musicians embracing new tools
The following people have agreed to lead sessions, exact details will be coming soon....but we're getting there quick:
Marketing/Comms Track:
Chris Thilk - Movies/Entertainment & Social Media
Phil Gomes - Internal Training
Joe Thornley - TBD
Journalism
Nik Willets - Photojournalism
Community
David Parmet - Social Media & Education
Brian Oberkirch - Using Social Media for Local Good
We're working on other topics like:
- Media law for bloggers
- Investigative reporting, information requests, etc
- Blogging basics
- WordPress (Basic/Advanced)
- Podcasting/Videocasting
- Monetizing your blog
- Politics
- The Orlando Scene
to name a few.......more coming soon.
Once again the question comes up, where should I stay? Same answer as before and before:
The events on Friday and Saturday will be taking place in the downtown/Winter Park area. Perhaps poor planning on my part, but finding a cool meeting location that offers free wifi like Rollins and is close to the theme parks is difficult.
One option is to pick a location and stay there the entire time, the other is to switch hotels for the weekend. Switching hotels might be tough to do though. Here are the pros/cons:
Downtown
Pro - close to the action on Friday/Saturday
Pro - cheaper hotel rates
Pro - Might be able to car-pool to Disney
Pro/Con - You have to drive to Disney on Sun but it's weekend traffic
Con - You miss some 'on property' Disney benefits
Con - driving anywhere after a long day at the the parks
Disney
Pro - close to the parks for the weekend
Pro - 'on property' benefits
Con - you have to drive to downtown for the evenst
If you're going to stay downtown I would suggest the Embassy Suites on Lake Eola or if you want a cool place the EO Inn. If you're staying at Disney there are plenty of hotels to choose from.
The dates for the 2008 edition of BlogOrlando have been set, Sept 25-27th. Of course the big change is the main event is moving to a Saturday.
In the past I always debated about the Friday/Saturday thing, but this year we have some external forces....mainly the venue....we're just too big :-) In order to accommodate close to 300 people (like we had last year) we need to hold the event on Saturday.
Registration will be open shortly and we'll start to fill in the session leaders and schedule as well.
As I referenced in my previous post there will an invite only event on Thursday the 25th. The main event will kick-off Friday night with a reception and the full un-con and happy hour on Saturday.
If you're traveling in, then you can look to arrive on Friday and head back out on Sunday.
Of course we're always looking for sponsors to keep the event FREE. If you're interested let me know.
I know it's the same weekend as SxDS, but BlogOrlando has always been held at the end of September, and I wanted to keep that consistent.
More to come....
