Blogworld and New Media Expo GodBlog.com

Today was pretty interesting.  Probably should be honest and say it was a little bit of a disappointment that ended up well.  Rhett and I hopped an early flight out of Dallas on Southwest Airlines.  Flying Southwest is a little bit like jumping on a Greyhound bus.  They never fly direct and it feels like you are just stopping all over the country on your way to where you want to go.  At one point I joked that they should have a button on your seat that you can press to tell the plane to stop just like they have on buses. We got here and checked into our room.  We’re staying at the Wynne which on the map is right next to the convention center.  The map doesn’t take into consideration the construction though so it was a bit further away. After lunch we started walking to the convention center only to be stopped by a closed sidewalk. I had the idea that if we walked through the hotel we’d probably find an exit on the other side.  We made it to the other side and came to a door that said “Emergency Exit only….Alarm will sound”  I busted straight through that door assuming it wasn’t true.  Just beyond that door was another door that said “Any Wynne casino employees using this exit will be terminated immediately”  Since I wasn’t an employee I assumed it didn’t apply to me so we busted through that door.  Next thing you know we’re walking on the golf course and heading towards a construction site.  I told Rhett to just act like you belonged there and we walked down into the construction site.  Immediately we were out of place as everyone had white hard hats on and we had no hats and only flipflops.  After walking past several cranes, dump trucks and other construction looking stuff we had a security guard come up to us and ask what we were doing.  I told him we were trying to get out of there.  He radioed in that he had two people he was “escorting” to the front of the casino. Rhett looked nervous but I struck up a conversation with him.  He walked us out the front and we were back to where we started before the adventure.  The next step was us walking to the convention center. It was a bit further than I had anticipated and we both got blisters from our rainbow sandals.  Once we got to the Blogworld convention we realized that really nothing was open for a while.  We found some people we knew and hung out.  On a good note we got all checked in which will be difficult tomorrow morning.  After a ride back to the hotel we chilled for a while before heading to dinner with the Godblog folk to the rain forest café.  Quick note that is a bad place to go if you are trying to have a conversation.  It’s raining inside, loud and every half hour there is a big thunderstorm.  Still it was a good evening and we connected with some good people.  After a long walk back down the strip we made it back to the hotel and crashed.  The schedule tomorrow has us starting at about 11am for the first part of the conference.  I’m looking forward to some good dialogue with folks about new media and how it can affect my life and my job. On a good note I explained to some folks the ideas behind RelevantPew.com tonight and they were super supportive of it as a necessary concept.