I am writing because I am excited. I just booked my flights to attend/work at Blogs With Balls 2.0 in Las Vegas next month. My good friend Chris Lucas started Blogs With Balls (BWB), which is a conference for sports bloggers and people in new media, and they hosted their first conference in June in NYC. I offered to go to the event and do some filming for him; I figured it’d be a good time, and I wanted to help him out. It turned out to be an amazing event! They had a great turnout with over 300 people in a great venue, and a top-notch list of panelists talking about all aspects of promoting social media brands. I am not a big sports nut by any stretch and did not anticipate the relevance I would find in the conference, but the underlying messages about promoting your blog, your business, your brand, etc. had nothing to do with sports and was all useful information to anyone trying to market themselves. Plus, all the attendees were in the new media business, of which video is a HUGE part of, so it turned out to be a superb networking experience.
BWB was such a big hit, that Chris and his partners were asked to hold another conference as part of Blog World & New Media Expo, a huge industry conference. Fortunately, through some very generous donations, BWB got enough funding so that I can go back and work the event again. I don’t typically do a lot of event work, but this turned out to be a blast last time, and the conference is one I would benefit from attending otherwise, both for the content and the networking.
Plus it’s Vegas, and I’ll never turn down a job in Vegas. The icing on the cake is that Chris organized a BWB poker tournament hosted by Annie Duke (a major poker pro). I am an avid poker “hobbyist” so getting to go work a fun event AND play poker with a famous poker pro sounds like a total blast.
So that’s it. I am just excited! You can check out the highlights piece I put together right after BWB 1.0.
http://www.vimeo.com/5655931
Tags: Blogs with Balls, freelance, travel