Last year, I heard about the wonders of IZEAFest via my dear friend, Lucretia Pruitt (aka @Geekmommy) She is one of the WalMart 11 Moms and an amazing blogger advocate. When she says a conference is a "must attend" then my ears perk up! Lucretia suggested I connect with Ted Murphy, IZEA's founder. I did a little digging on IZEA and their take on sponsored conversations. IZEA is a governing member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) and they require mandatory disclosures for bloggers associated with IZEA. Blogger outreach is a topic I wanted to learn more about for my own blog and for my corporate brand marketing role at EMBARQ. Then I dug into IZEAFest via bloggers' comments, the post that really whet my appetite is from Ben Spark, 10 Best Reasons to Go to IZEAFest. This looked like a must attend for me. I made it a goal to meet Ted at SXSW and pitch my case on why I should be on an IZEAFest panel. With Lucretia's introduction, Ted, Ashley Edwards and I not only met, but we hung out for an evening with Lu and Rick Murray discussing social media trends and blog talk. Ted asked me to speak on an IZEAFest panel before I had the opportunity to plead my case. I'm thrilled!
Check out the amazing line up of speakers and the schedule is jam packed with relevant social media topics. And if that isn't enough to get you going, IZEAFest is listed in the Inventor's Spot Top 10 Meet & Tweet Gatherings.
Interested? IZEAFest is at SeaWorld Orlando on October 1-4, 2009. All the details are at the IZEAFest website. You can also follow the lastest IZEAFest news on Twitter via @IZEAFest.
When Rachel Young from The Social Media Group asked if my family would like to test ride and me test drive the Ford Flex a few weekends ago, we jumped at the chance. My family loves the look of the Ford Flex and I am a Ford girl at heart as my very first car was a 1978 Ford Thunderbird. As a mom, my first van was a 1999 Windstar.
The Whats and The Weists What we noticed immediately is, this cross-over is truly a head turner. The unique boxy design with the grooved door panels, 3-bar chrome grill with fun two-tone, vista roof makes ya look twice. Everywhere we went, we were getting double takes. What surprised us the most was how roomy the Flex is. Our family of six, with car seats and all, traveled down and back to my parents' home (almost a four hour round trip) very comfortably. In our Flex, we had bucket seats in all three rows. The Weists could get used to this roominess.
And as you see in the following videos, there's plenty of room in the cargo space for our weekly grocery store run (and also how easy it is for a younger child to get into the third row.)
The retro look of the dashboard appealed to me and my husband as well as the luxury interior including the tech-savvy, SYNC voice-activated system. The reverse camera option thrilled my kids and came in handy for Mom.
What we were extremely impressed with was how well the Flex handles the road. This cross-over drove like a luxury sedan and it was such a quiet ride (well, the road noise was nil the kids kept the chatter going inside.) The responsiveness was a night and day difference from my van. I actually enjoyed driving! I mean the experience of being behind the wheel. I was so glad we decided to visit my parents so I could drive on the highway for awhile. I never thought I'd say that about a cross-over!
Oh, and what was the kids' favorite feature? This was a toughy between the one button "pop and fold" second row, the "hidden" refrigerated console, and the absence of step bars (the little ones didn't need to step up on a running board or step bars, they could just slide right in.) After much debate, the frig in the second seat console won out!
The Ford Flex is a blend of comfort, safety and sleekness. For a girl that grew up on Ford Thunderbirds and has moved into the utility of vans with our young family, the Flex cross-over provided me a silver lining SUV. It was fun to get back behind the wheel and enjoy the drive again...all with plenty of room for my family of six.
I have to say my husband and I are Yanni neophytes. We certainly know of Yanni and his new age instrumental compositions but can't recognize a Yanni song. Lucky for us, One2One Networks provided us with the opportunity to see the Yanni Voices concert at the Sprint Center in Kansas City last night.
We walked into the Sprint Center with an open mind...not really knowing what to expect. It was obvious to us from the first note, that this concert was a hand-crafted Yanni experience composed of talented artists. The best musicians, vocalists, composers, and producers were on stage in front of us. And like a fine art piece, the composition speaks more about the creator than anything else.
The orchestra was beyond phenomenal. The instrumental, virtuoso solos, including a unique Paraguayan harp by Victor Espinola pictured above and dueling violinists Anne Marie Calhoun and Samvel Yervinyan seen below) brought the house to a roar. Yanni has assembled an amazing group of young vocal soloist. These artists are multi-talented and passionate performers. All are in their early twenties! Youth and Yanni, I know, you wouldn't put the two together but the well-known composer naturally melds with the young artists accentuating their strengths. Each artist has taken at least one of Yanni's instrumental compositions and created their own lyrics highlighted below.
Leslie Mills (@Leslie_Mills) has confident, gentle rain voice that is a sweet Colbie Caillat and Carly Simons blend. Leslie performed her amazing Before The Night Ends with Yanni's composition.
Nathan Pacheco is a powerful, operadic tenor whose voice aligns with the legendary Pavarotti in Viv il Tuo Sogno. This was a "Susan Boyle moment" for me in that I was blown away by this "unknown" young man's range and power. We'll be hearing a lot more of Nathan's rock solid vocals, hopefully in the operatic pop vein. And the dude hails from DC, ya got to love that!
Chloe Lowery, has a presence that took over the stage and amazingly an even stronger voice. She powerhoused Change (her poetic lyrics) with Yanni. She is truly a seasoned artist performing on stage since she was three.
Ender Thomas has a passion for entertaining with his voice as you can see with Ritual de Amor. He commands the salsa-style lyrics with rigor...and his eyes hold you in the palm of his hands. I've heard him likened to Fabio but this boy has one heck of a set of pipes so ya know, Fabio doesn't hold a candle to Ender in my book.
The orchestra and the singers have an incredible energy that kept the audience going. You could tell each performer was enjoying living in the moment. It was definitely a magical moment that we were thrilled to be a part of.
We left the Sprint Center blown away by the Yanni Voices experience. And we're craving more orchestra-style music because of it.
As some of you know, I work for EMBARQ , a regional telecommunications provider, in the corporate brand team. A few of you have asked that I share our social story on my blog. I typically don't talk shop so this is new territory for me...
Amber Nashlund, Radian6's Director of Community, interviewed our social media outreach team and created a comprehensive case study in handy PDF format of our social conversation endeavor.
We have several partners and internal teams that have helped us accomplish our key objectives. We wouldn't be where we are - helping our customers online daily as we do - without their efforts.
First and foremost, Dan Alcazar, EMBARQ Brand Vice President and Consumer Marketing Officer. Without Dan's executive support and advice, we wouldn't have passed go. Jerry Green, Brand Group Manager, helped lead the charge on our key online marketing initiative, the EMBARQ YouTube Brand Channel, with our customer-focused, Kevin Cobb masterminded "how-to" series. Our community manager Linda O'Neill championed the online customer outreach process under the direction of Mark Akason that Joey Harper (aka EMBARQ_Joey) leads fantastically everyday.
Also, much appreciation to Harry Campbell, EMBARQ Consumer President, who championed our roadmap through the enterprise and made it sync with his entire organization's vision. Our internal video team under the direction of Jerry Bova, y'all kicked serious bootie and continue to on the production of our "how-to" series! Our external communication team in partnership with their online communication agency, Metzger Associates, led an amazing online PR outreach campaign for our YouTube channel launch.
Our partners helped bring our social conversation vision to life. Google and YouTube provided us strategic guidance, best-in-channel direction, and key research findings while taking our feedback back to the engineers and getting vital changes made for our success. iCrossing developed our YouTube contest concept/creative and continue to lead the brand team's online creative, media, channel outreach strategy and search engine marketing. Metzger Associates continues to work in conjunction with Radian6 helping us keep on top of the social conversation.
I feel very fortunate to work with such passionate, knowledgeable individuals on evolving our social media story. Ok, that wasn't so tough of a post to write.
If you have written about your company's social story, please share the link in this post's comments.
Yanni Voices 2009 Tour is heading to Kansas City in a few weeks on Tuesday, June 9th.
The Yanni Voices website is jam packed with more details including specific tour dates.
Thanks to One2One Network, my husband and I are going to Yanni Voices in KC. And I have wonderful news for one of you: One2One Network have offered me two Yanni Voices tickets for the Kansas City show to giveaway along with after show meet & greet passes!
Here's the quick and easy rules on the Nothin' but SocNET Yanni Voices giveaway: 1) Leave a "Why I Gotta Go to Yanni Voices" comment on this post spelling out why you should get the two tickets to Yanni Voices in Kansas City. Also, please include your preferred online way of me contacting you (email, twitter id, etc.) in your comment.
2) You must be available to pick up the two Yanni Voices tickets and meet & greet after show passes before 7:30p on Tuesday, June 9 at the Kansas City Sprint Center Will Call window.
3) The contest will close at 10am CDT on Saturday, May 30.
4) I'll pick the winner from the comments on Saturday, May 30 before noon. I'll notify the winner personally and post the winner via a comment on this post sometime Saturday afternoon pending my Saturday mommy to-dos.
Best of luck! I'm looking forward to reading your "Why I Gotta Go To Yanni Voices" comments and seeing at least one of you at the KC concert.
@MySpyderWeb, a powerhouse Kansas City blogger, sent me a Twitter direct message in mid-March about pre-ordering The Horse Boy book with a link to the documentary clip. I knew nothing about the book or documentary.
After watching the clip, I understood why @MySpyderWeb sent me the link. She had been experiencing little 140 character glimpses into our family's autism journey and our new joy with horseback riding therapy.
My husband and I began reading the book and nodding our heads with Isaacson's (@TheHorseBoy and yes, the tweets are from Isaacson, not a ghost twitterer) first few chapters on their family's experience with Rowan's tell-tale autism signs: the tantrums, the loss of focus, the loss of words - the feeling of losing your child more and more each day into the autism world of blank stares.
For us, the first part of The Horse Boy brought back a lot of raw emotions and an appreciation for the long, hard fought journey that got us where our family is today, but that story - our story - is another post. A few Thursday ago, I was suppose to be flying to Chicago for the SOBCon kick off with the Chicago Social Media Club. For some nagging, mother's intuition reason I decided to book a Friday morning 6(gulp):15 a.m. flight instead.
So Thursday morning, I'm driving to meet my husband for lunch, listening to NPR and Isaacson was being interviewed by our local station, KCUR, about The Horse Boy. It just so happened he was in Kansas City promoting the book and speaking that evening at Unity Temple sponsored by a local bookstore, Rainy Day Books.
It was too late to get a sitter for the evening, so my husband and I decided I'd go alone to see Isaacson. As I was leaving, our 10 year old, autistic son "L" asked to join me. I'm not sure if my husband or I was more shocked by L's request. We explained that it was going to be an hour of the author telling the audience about his book and it would be all adults. We explained it might be boring. What we didn't know is our son had looked through The Horse Boy focusing on the pictures documenting the Isaacson family trip to Mongolia.
Our son, L, said, "I'm suppose to help Rowan. I need to go meet him."
We explained most likely it would only by Rowan's dad, Mr. Isaacson, and our son shrugged and said, "The dad will do."
So our 10 year old, high functioning autistic son and I headed to Unity. We talked on the way about autism as he flipped through the book. L told me he wasn't happy about all the "not nice" terms that some people have about autism and all the "stuff" that is associated with it, and that people think it needs to be cured.
I told him that our family felt so amazingly blessed with our autism journey and didn't see autism as needing to be cured. We just wanted to make sure he has every opportunity to live life to the fullest.
On one hand, I felt sad that he understand the label baggage but on the other I thought he's moving toward typical acknowledgment.
When we got to Unity, I said a little prayer that the evening would go ok. Ya just never know what L is going to say or do.
I was picking up our Rainy Day book before we walked into the Unity temple auditorium. Our son spotted Isaacson and walked right up to him and started talking and they conversed for quite a bit before I came over and introduced myself as L's mom and asked L to introduce himself.
"Hi, I'm L and I'm autism. I'm here to help your son."
Isaacson looked at me.
"L is high functioning and was diagnosed at 2 1/2. He's 10 now. Looks like L and Rowan have a lot of similarities. And L loves horses as well."
Isaacson talked with us, well actually he and L chatted about horseback riding, Mongolia and their family journey. Isaacson (looking at me) asked L if he'd like to bring his family to their family horse camp outside of Austin. I nodded.
L said something about it being too hot in Austin in the summer but absolutely in the fall. Isaacson agreed, with a smile, that the fall would be much better. It appeared that he had become just as smitten with L as we are. I just stood back and watched our son's magic and took in the moment.
We broke away so Isaacson could take the stage. L asked a few insightful questions during Isaacson's talk. Afterward, we went to stand in line to get Isaacson's autograph in the book. L asked why we needed another book and I said we would give it away. Then I realized I hadn't taken any pictures so I began looking in my bag for my camera not noticing that L was writing in our book.
L said, "He's giving away all his books, he needs a book."
Still digging through my purse, not looking up, "No, really, hon, he has plenty. This is what an author does...signs the book he wrote for his readers."
"Um, Mom, I'm giving him this one. I wrote him something."
I look up, "Let me see"
L had scribed (and I wish I had written it down so I could get this exactly right):
Trust in your son Trust in your heart and your troubles will be gone
The search for my camera went bye-bye and I just tried to keep my eyes from welling up, "Ok, son, I think that's a great idea."
When it was our turn, L very proudly handed the L inscribed book to Isaacson, "This is for you."
Isaacson, "Oh, L, will you sign it and I'll give this to Rowan."
"Good idea because I'm here to help Rowan."
Isaacson asked for contact information so we could stay in touch. He said he only knew me as L's mom. I handed him my business card, showed him my twitter handle and put my personal email on it.
L and I walked (or I should say floated) to our car as L was on cloud nine...I think I was on cloud eleven. He was talking a mile a minute about how he was the only one that gave the author a book and how cool that was and how much the author needed that book and how he was going to help Rowan. We called my husband and L went on and on about the amazing time we had. After about five minutes of chatting, L handed me the phone and the tears started coming, "Oh, hon, I wish you could have been here to see our son. I can't talk now or I'll start crying (and added for L's sake) happy tears."
L said, "Mom, I agree with Mr. Isaacson"
"On what, sweetie?"
"Autism is an adventure."
And that - those four words from my son's mouth - that's why I needed to stay in Kansas City that Thursday night.
Zena Weist's Disclaimer: This blog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. All posts are solely my opinion. Comments posted can be deleted if they are irrelevant to the topic, in anyway could make my mother blush or are just blatant pitches about your product or service.
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