BlogOrlando

BlogOrlando, hosted at Rollins College, kicks off tomorrow. I attended last year and I am very excited to be attending again this year. Let me tell you why BlogOrlando is so awesome.

What is BlogOrlando?

For those of you who don’t know, BlogOrlando is an “unconference” (free) open to bloggers and non-bloggers alike. Most attendees are mainly from Orlando though I did meet quite a few bloggers from out of state. There is usually a keynote/wrap up, and breakout sessions which are structured more like a discussion rather than a lecture. Topics include anything from blogging and podcasting to public relations and social media. BlogOrlando brings a melting pot of people together from the well known experienced blogger to the newbie.

More than just that

BlogOrlando is an amazing networking experience and you meet all sorts of interesting people, from podcasters, marketing strategists, video bloggers and social media experts. A few names that stick out from last year are Alex Hillman, Mark Jaquith and Judson Collier.

Friday night kicks off the event with a networking happy hour at Slingapours in downtown Orlando’s Walstreet Plaza. I haven’t been as actively involved in the local Orlando scene as I had been in the past so it will be nice to meet up with old faces and meet some new ones.

Saturday marks the official start of BlogOrlando. The opening general session will be Jake McKee, a 3D artist who discovered the internet (not similar to how Al Gore did). He will also talk about his role with LEGO and his role with the Community Development Team. Should be very interesting, and if you know me, you know how much I like LEGOS.

The main sessions consist of five different tracks.

• Track 1 – PR/Comm
• Track 2 – Media/Creative
• Track 3 – Community
• Track 4 – Technology – Basic
• Track 5 – Technology – Advanced.

You can view all the sessions in each track here. I plan on attending the following sessions:

• Shiny New Objects - Frank Gruber
• WOM and Social Media – Spike Jones
• Making the Moola - Ted Murphy
• Going Beyond Google – Leah Jones
• Scaling & Performance – Alex Rudloff
• Video-A-Go-Go – John Rife
• Flickr - Josh Hallet

The closing session speaker will be my friend, the White African, Eric Hersman. He is a web strategy and marketing consultant, so hearing what he has to say should be very interesting.

Overall I am very excited about BlogOrlando this year. The speakers are great choices, and I think I can take away a lot from this FREE conference. From new media, marketing strategies, and networking there is a lot available. I’m really looking forward to meeting new faces this year so say hi if you happen to see me there.

Tags: Blog, blogorlando, orlando, unconference