Disney Social Media Moms Conference – Day 2

Conference Day 2 at Disney World!

We got some fantastic information from our speakers today, and had a great dinner with dancing afterward at Hollywood Studios Disney Junior. I’ll take you through the day and evening.

The main portion of the conference was on Friday March 18th – which just happened to be my birthday! It was so much fun to be in Florida, at Disney, with my blogging friends, where it was beautiful sunny and warm… on my birthday! The only negative part was that my own family wasn’t able to be with me at Disney.

We began the morning by walking into this beautifully decorated huge room where the speakers would be.  They even thought to have a power strips at every table! Awesome extra!

Look how pretty the table arrangement was! You can’t see that the clear castle has a blue light that glows at the base.

The first speaker was Meg Crofton, the President of Walt Disney World

We also heard from Matt Jacobson, head of marketing for Facebook.  I realized how much more you could do with FB. I’m going to have to work on that. He took loads of questions from us bloggers and admitted that most of the groups he talks to, do not use it the same way we do. He was surprised by a few of the questions asked and didn’t realize some of the issues that we have problems with.  I think he was educated a bit himself.

Rene’ Syler was an awesome speaker. She got a standing “O” from us bloggers! She was real, she was inspiring and she has been through the ringer.  This isn’t a great picture of her.  I wish I had gotten her great smile. She had us in stitches and tears.    She has a blog called Good Enough Mother that you should check out.

They had some raffles going on and gave away some Dooney & Bourke Handbags and also a night in Cinderella’s castle!  The Fairy Godmother got to present it to Andrea Deckard from Savings Lifestyle! She got to take 5 other bloggers with her to stay the night. You can read about her experience here.

Fran Capo posed as a blogger before she got on stage. She is the worlds fastest female talker, comedian, author and motivational speaker.

We had a yummy lunch and when we went back to the room after lunch we had this little cutie gracing each of our seats!

Minnie Mouse Princess Leia dressed and ready for Star Tours – The Adventure! It is coming back to Disney Hollywood Studios on May 20th, 2011.

Chris Brogan was great as always. I love listening to Chris speak. He has some great insights and just says it like it is.

We were served champagne!  That is a different kind of afternoon snack for a mom conference! lol  Probably better than chocolate, because I didn’t drink much champagne, but I would have been up for the chocolate!

We were then treated to Susan Egan who sang most of her speaking time. She has such a beautiful voice. She played Bell in Beauty in the Beast on Broadway for two years and she is also the voice of Meg in Hercules, along with a zillion other roles.

Also playing and singing with her was Georgia Stitt who is an award winning composer and a lyricist. They had great harmony on some of the songs they sang together.

The great table center piece they said would go to the blogger at each table who had the closest birthday to today’s date which was March 18th. Guess who?  lol  One fun thing about having a birthday while at a conference.  But – there wasn’t any way I could take this on an airplane!  It just so happened that Amy Hodges at our table was local and she had just been admiring how cool the light up castle was in the arrangement.  So I took a picture to remember it by and gave it to her.

Then someone at our table suggested we all get our picture taken together.

From left top: Maria Strong from Saving Queen; Connie Robers from Brain Foggles; Kim Janocko from Crafty Mama of 4; me; April from Simply the Sweet Life Magazine; Amy Hodges from A Million Boxes and in front is Jennifer Leet from The Dirty Shirt

After the conference sessions my roomie Zippy from Champagne Living came! She tried to get into the conference, but like so many others who tried that afternoon, she wasn’t able to get in.  But.. since it ended up that we just couldn’t afford the airfare for the whole family to come, I was able to invite Zippy to stay with me. She got to come as my family member. lol (sis!)
We had a wonderful time talking and eating and walking and talking and eating.. lol

Friday night was Hollywood Studios!  All gazillion of the bloggers, mostly with families loaded onto buses and headed out.

So many tables were set up. I don’t know the exact number of how many people including families were there… but it was a lot!

They had it all set up for the kids.  Lots of food and then they had food set up for the kids. I love how they make sure the kids have food they like to eat.  I snuck over to the kids table to get a cupcake. I figured.. it was my birthday and I wanted to have some birthday cake. lol

I love these pictures of Kim’s  kids.  Doesn’t that just epitomize a kid after a day at Disney?  Tired eyes, blank star, Mickey ears on crooked, eating a Mickey rice krispy treat. lol

Her younger son enjoying his also

The kids all got to dance and have a great time with music and characters

With kids trying to see over crowds and having a little help from their dads -

To Quatro Mom and Dad from 4tunate feeding their boys.

Everyone loves the characters at Disney

And Donald Duck

I had to get a picture of Daisy Duck for my step daughter.

And I think this is one of my favorites.  Look at the little girl on the left! Arms spread out, ready for a big hug!  How precious is that?  I love it!

If you happen to know who’s daughter the little girl on the left is, please let me know. I’d like to send them this picture.

Thank you  Disney World, Maria Bailey and Amy Lupold Bair,  and Susan & Janet from 5 Minutes for Mom and all the sponsors.

This trip was heavily sponsored through Disney Social Media Moms, but I did pay the required charge for it and full air fare.

Disney Social Media Moms Conference

Thoughts on the Disney Social Media Moms Conference

As I write this post I am sitting in the Orlando airport waiting to board my flight home from the Disney Social Media Moms Conference and I am reflecting on how much I got from it.  I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it due to the weather and some other factors…and after missing my initial “great flight that would have had me there by noon” I spent 12 hours getting to Orlando and got into my room about 11:30 pm this last Wednesday.  But it was worth it.  Getting home is another story since I had one of my “old lady brain farts” when I scheduled my trip and instead of arranging my flight for Saturday the 13th at 7:30pm I scheduled it for Sunday Feb 14 at 7:30pm. (Yes…Valentines day). I changed that flight so that I at least get home by 10pm instead of 11:30pm tonight. Just because I’m an organizer doesn’t mean I don’t mess things up. (for sure)

Guy Kawasaki giving his presentation

Guy Kawasaki – Founding partner of Garage Technology Venture & Co-founder of Alltop.com

Our first speaker of the trip was Guy Kawasaki. He gave me some new insights on twitter.   He discussed twitter  and how he uses it and how we can best use it to further our businesses.  He shared that he was originally against it, not caring that “Jimmy was drinking his coffee” , but realized that it can be an invaluable tool in your business.  Some of the tips that I gained from listening to Guy was that we should tweet out 4  times each thing we tweet.  He schedules them about 6-8 hours apart so that he doesn’t lose page views.  He states that more than 4 times is too much, but less than that we are losing valuable page views.  He also doesn’t tweet what he is doing during the day and he is not talking about tweeting out responses to people 4 times.  He is constantly searching for information that others will find interesting and informing us of that on which is linked to his All Top Site which of course then brings him more traffic.  The site is a pure meca of information!  He also stated that we need to have a tweeter-feed. So that each time we post something new…it shows up on twitter. (I need to do that)

Maxine Clark founder of Build a Bear

Maxine Clark – Founder and Chairman of Build a Bear

Maxine if my new idol I think.  She is the founder and chairman of Build A Bear. She shared with us how she has a love of bears and how much her bear meant to her as a child. Persevering and believing in your dreams and working to achieve them was her message.  She was truly amazing. She told us about her 2nd customer and how neat it was that a boy can get a Teddy Bear and dress it up in Army gear and it’s acceptable for him to get that and be a kid too.  She has kept in contact with these people. She listened to a little girl in Canada who e-mailed her and told her she would like a Build a Bear store in her town and why. That little girl was at that store on opening day along with Maxine. How cool is that?  She manages her own Twitter account, e-mail account and answers people back. She is a very busy running a Build a Bear empire….but she still has time to talk to her customers and friends…she is real. She is a gem.

Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan – Eleven year veteran of Social media and Author of Trust Agents

To be honest I was excited to listen to Chris Brogan at our conference, but I didn’t know how entertaining  he would be. When I saw him at Blog World speak….he was on a panel with a few other people and no offense at all….he didn’t really get to “shine” like he did when he was on his own. I didn’t expect to be laughing as hard as I was. But he also passed on some really great information to us. Listening….Connecting…Publishing… The 3 pieces to Social Media that Chris spoke to us about and the importance of them.

Marissa Jaret Winkour

Marissa Jaret Winkour – Tony Award winning Broadway Actress and Veteran of Dancing with the Stars

You may remember Marissa on Dancing with the Stars. I never saw her in Hairspray the Broadway play she won her Tony for.  Since she was on Dancing with the Stars she has dyed her hair blond and lost a lot of weight and has a son. She told us she was due to have a baby 2 months after she was on Dancing with the Stars. She shared that she was a cancer survivor and before she under went her treatments she froze some eggs and her surrogate was 7 months pregnant with her child. She then went on to tell us about her life as a actress with a baby and how difficult it was.

Kathy Ireland – Surprise guest appearance

Kathy Ireland was not on our programs and we didn’t know she was going to speak to us. She came out looking beautiful as ever. She told us about her work ethics and a business she began going bankrupt, her 22 year marriage and her new book about daily devotionals due to come out soon. (She didn’t push her book, I think someone knew about it and asked her the question…and she answered)

Maryellen Hooper absolutely cracked me up.

Maryellen Hooper – Veteran in the world of Stand-up Comedy

I can’t tell you how hard I laughed. She was cracking me up.  Her act was about motherhood and life as a wife. She has a blog called  Stinky Flowers that you will have to go visit. You will have to get her DVD…she is really entertaining.

Disclosure:  I was not sponsored to go to Disney Social Media Moms conference.  I paid for the conference on my own. We did however get a discounted rate on the conference, our room and Disney tickets, and some of my meals as that was part of the conference package I purchased. I was not asked to blog on it, so any blogs or pictures I post are because I have chosen to do so.