**Update 11.29.07**

I knew I was forgetting people when I put this post up but more than anyone else DJ Steve Boyett (who posted in the comment section) really did an amazing job at the opening night party and deserves a huge thank you and a sincere apology from me for this and other slights (.

**

All of you, from our exhibitors and sponsors to every speaker and attendee who came out; Thank You for all of your support. Thank you for believing in this idea and thank you for putting so much effort into making our first industry wide event a huge success. Thank you for your faith in us and for being a part of this revolutionary medium. Here is just a sampling of the buzz out there for the event. From national television coverage, to six hours of national radio broadcast from the show , to nearly three thousand posts about the show being tracked by Technorati, to over 2,000 photos posted on Flickr, Videos and more.I would also like to thank several people for going above and beyond including Jim Turner from One By One Media who really bought into the vision of the show and volunteered so much of his time to help out, Eric Olsen and his wife Dawn from BlogCritics, Jeremy Wright, Darcie and the rest of the b5 media team, Roger L. Simon and the crew at Pajamas Media, Rob Neppell at KithBridge / TTLB, Scott Bourne at Podango, Tony Conrad at Sphere for all of his help and introductions, Hugh Hewitt who plugged our event more times than I can count on his radio program, Duane Patterson, Chuck Defeo and the rest of the Townhall.com team, Marc Levin, Jerome Armstrong, Tyler and SB Nation, Aaron, Derek and the rest of the Technorati gang, Ward and Loree at Military.com, Andi, John Noonan all of the milbloggers for coming out and for their service, Tim and the Know More Media team, Professor David Perlmutter from the William Allen White School of Journalism, Dustin from GodblogCon, all of our keynoters including Matt Mullenweg, Leo Laporte, Richard Jalichandra, Jason Shellen, Brad Hill, Larry Benet and the amazing Mark Cuban who gave the perfect closing keynote, my partners (Dave and Libby) and staff for all of their hard work, my wife Dawn for putting up with months of 18 hour days missed family outings etc, Dave Taylor for all of his work on the conference, Stephanie Agresta, Chris Heuer, Brian Solis, Jeremy and Jeff from Under The Gun Media, Scales, Kris Krug, Chris Brogan, Kevin from the Weblog Awards, Henry from Blogads and many more. I am sure there are at least a hundred I have left off of this post but to everyone who helped make this dream come true and for believing that our industry was ready for an event like this; THANK YOU.

I’ve finally sorted through all of my notes from BWE. From the sessions to the exhibitors I gathered a whole lot of information. As promised to each exhibitor I visited you’ll be seeing a post up here about your product and my thoughts on it. I’ll also be peppering in thoughts and comments from sessions that I found to be quite interesting. Stay tuned posting will start in about an hour!

 First of all thanks to the folks at Fox and all the other MSM outlets who came out and covered the show.  It was great to see our exhibitors and our industry get the recognition they deserved and to see the MSM understanding just how influential our industry is and the significance of this inaugural event.

This is actually pretty funny. First the Fox report filed on Thursday.  and then this goof video that Smidgets did for us about a month ago.  How did Curb know that was the angle the MSM would take?

On a serious note both videos show exactly what I have been preaching to veteran bloggers for  a long time as big as this revolution is now it is just the beginning. Most people in the world have no idea what a blog is.

First off I apologize to everyone for not responding to this sooner. It’s the day after the show and I was wiped out this morning, then stuck in the car all day driving back from Vegas.

I just spoke to Mike again after re-reading our email exchange on Nov 6th and 7th and apologized profusely for giving him bad information in one of my emails.

This was a simple miscommunication and he certainly didn’t intentionally not show up. I tried to tell folks at the show who were understandably disappointed that this was a mistake and we were not blaming him and we would figure out exactly what happened after the show. This kind of thing happens when you have more than 100 speakers at a conference. People get sick, urgent things come up and sometimes wires just get crossed and the latter is what happened here.

So here is the background in all of it’s glory. Mike and I spoke on August 16th. I told him what we were trying to do with the event and asked him to speak at the conference. He said he would love to as long as we would cover his hotel and airfare. I agreed. He asked if he could be on a panel with Om Malik as they are friends and thought they would give a great talk. I agreed. We also talked about a panel titled “raising venture capital for your new media business” which would be similar to a talk I saw Mike moderate at Web 2.0. Mike agreed to do that one as well. I also had my staff send over a confirmation email and a speaker agreement several times.

At the end of our conversation on the 16th I asked if we could start promoting his appearance and he said ok.

We did.

Mike was on the home page of our site for the last month, included in several email newsletters, print and web ads. Lot’s of people were talking about Mike’s upcoming appearance including Duncan Riley who writes for TechCrunch. It never occurred to me that Mike was not clear on the time and date. We were all expecting him to come and very excited about it.

Skip to Nov 6th (my staff and I are were already on-site setting up) I got copied on an email from Brad Feld saying Mike may not be able to make it. I emailed Mike that night to please let me know if he wouldn’t be able to come. He replied right away, told me he just never got the event on his calendar and had a conflict on Thursday the 8th but offered to fly in Friday morning in time for his first panel:

I am booked this week, particularly on Thursday when I’m doing an interview with Senator McCain. Friday is open, though. It’s possible I could fly in to Las Vegas in the morning and be there by 10:15…want me to do that?

So obviously he was trying to make it. Mike told me this morning and again tonight that he really wanted to come and was excited about the event. He just didn’t get it on his calendar and had forgotten about it. I understand exactly how it could happen. He is an extremely busy guy with thousands of demands on his time. I know there is no possible way he can read all of his emails because I can’t read all of mine and he is much busier than I am.

And here is a case in point where I completely failed. In our email exchange on the 6th and 7th I had told him his panels were on Thursday the 8th. That was incorrect.

Hi Mike,

We received an email earlier tonight from Brad Feld saying that you might not be able to make it out to the show for the two panels we had you scheduled for.

Both are on Thursday Nov 8th. The first is The Cult of Blogging with Leo Laporte and Om Malik at 10:15 – 11:45

The second is Raising Capital for Your New Media Business at 1:30 pm with Brad Feld, Dan Rua, David Cohen, You and Ted Murphy.

Please let me know as soon as you can if you are not going to be able to make it. I know how busy you are but people are going to be disappointed as we have been promoting this for a couple of months now on the website and in our attendee newsletters.

Looking forward to hearing from you and hopefully seeing you on Friday.

Now I knew his panel was on Friday but for some inexplicable reason (6 people asking me questions all at the same time while I was typing that email most likely) I said Thursday.

I didn’t realize my mistake until re-reading our emails tonight. As soon as I figured out what I had done, I called Mike to apologize. He accepted.

Our goal for BlogWorld from the beginning has been to create a market place, a meeting place, a learning source, and help build a stronger foundation for this amazing medium that we all care so deeply about. We know each other online, and BlogWorld is a place to get to know each other in-person, educate one another and strengthen our community. We’d never mislead anyone, so the few comments raised today implying we did are simply misplaced, Those of you that know me and the BlogWorld team know better. The comments disparaging Mike without hearing all of the facts…well, let’s just say that we’re all human and jumping to conclusions can be a learning experience. Instead of rushing to reply to comments made today, I wanted to be sure I had clarity about what Mike and I had discussed first. And, as you can see, I made a mistake that led to the calendar confusion, and that simple communication contributed to Mike missing the first BlogWorld.

I’m going to ask Mike to come out for the 2008 event, and I certainly hope he does. And you can bet, I’m going to double check my email before hitting “send”. Sorry Mike, and thanks for understanding everyone.

Blog On!

Rick

Plenty of goodies on the Blogworld Expo show floor, fun for everybody!  Squishy cows / T-shirts from Utterz (Booth 519), Sodoku books and travel mugs from the AOL Developer Network (Booth 109) and if you like Fake Steve Jobs or have an iPhone, head over to Blog Critic Magazine (Booth 319) for a copy of “Options” or the iPhone missing manual. 

1:30 PST on the Blogworld Expo Show floor, utterz.com will be giving away $250 for best utterz post. Go to utterz.com, sign up and post an utter!

New Plan! You have 24 more hours! Best mobile blog post award of $250 will be made tomorrow (Friday) at 1:30 PST

The Blogworld Expo show floor opened at 10:00. There’s something for everyone, go to Know More Media to have a seat and play some Wii or swing by the b5 media booth for some poker!


Read the rest of this entry »

All of us just had the pleasure of hearing Matt Mullenweg (founder of Wordpress) be interviewed by Ed Sussman of Fast Company. This was a great way to start the conference off and there were a ton of great points brought up within the interview. The show floor has opened and the tracks are about to start. For everything that’s going on be sure to keep checking back here for a constant stream of updates.

There are quite a few ways to follow us here at Blog World Expo if you couldn’t make it.

1. Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/blogworld
2. Blog World blog, you’re here already
3. Flickr! We’re using the tag BlogWorld or BlogWorldExpo in all photos so feel free to search the stream of photos that will be coming through over the next couple of days.

Time for a few announcements!

Jason Shellen our moderator for this afternoons keynote is asking for folks to suggest questions for his panel. You can head to http://www.shellen.com/2007/11/footnote-in-blogging-history.asp and leave a comment on the blog post.

Utterz, the official Mobile Blogging Solution of Blog World Expo is giving away $250 for the best mobile blog post during their presentation on the exhibit hall floor on Friday. Be sure to set up an account over at Utterz.com and submit your entry!