Dunes Blog

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Just walked in the door from the long car trip back to Valparaiso. It went by quickly. Had lots of great conversation with Nichole. Had an awesome time with my peeps from Livemercial.

The panel at BlogIndiana after lunch was pretty cool. They talked about building communities around blogs, which is something that really interested me. I was also finally able to meet Steve Dalton! Nice to meet ya Steve! Keep in touch!

After that was a session on how to plan out your blog to generate traffic. Basically it was all about content, content, content! Lots of good stuff in that presentation and I learned a lot of stuff that I will be applying to my work stuff and my personal projects. The guys was from Hanapin Marketing were great.

After that I went to the session on building a corporate blog with David Doug Karr. It was really good with some really good questions and responses on some of the issues we face with corporate blogging. Very awesome stuff.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the conference. It was finally nice to see something that I spend a lot of time doing, being validated by so many people who do the same thing. It was also fun meeting fellow bloggers and meeting people who run tech start-ups in Indiana. There is some really cool stuff going on in the Web Industry in Indiana!

I think, quality wise, the second day was better than the first, but that’s just my opinion.

IUPUI has an awesome campus and I fell in love with the IUPUI Campus Center building. I love gorgeous modern architecture like it. That’s why I took so many damn pictures.

Indy was great. Hadn’t been there in a few years. Definitely would like to do a weekend away there with the wife soon. Looks like there is plenty to do and lots of fun to be had.

I hope they decide to have BlogIndiana next year. It was fantastic fun and I definitely will go again!

Empty Campus. Bet it will be  crazy busy in two weeks.

View towards the Hospital

The swanky networking event after the conference. Cash bar, booh!!!

The Blogging and Elections Panel.

Cool class curtain wall of the IUPUI Campus Building.

Really cool tower at the IUPUI campus building. I tried to climb to the top but it was blocked off.

View from the top floor of the IUPUI Campus Building looking North over Indianapolis.

View looking east towards the Downtown Indianapolis.

More of the impressive modern architecture in the IUPUI Campus Building.

After lunch we attended the “Blogging and Elections” discussion. It was very interesting and I was really interested to hear what the Obama rep had to say. She came a long way and is really busy, so it was really nice that she was able to make it. I only wish the panel had been for longer and maybe a little better moderated.

After that I attended the Social Media session by myself. I was really disappointed with it. The guy presenting was really nice and I enjoyed hearing him speak. However, it took him half an hour to talk about why we were there. He only talked about Social Media in the ‘big picture’ concepts and quickly ran through two examples when he realized he was running out of time. I was hoping for more tips on how to use social media to generate traffic and revenue. I spend a lot of time in my job doing this (and personally as well). I probably could have given a more substantive nuts and bolts presentation.

The last session was about monetizing blogs. It was pretty interesting. The presenter was selling a product but he kept that until the end and I was actually interested in the product. He was from a new company called iSocket, that’s developing a new ad platform. I was sure to sign up for the  beta. I hope they accept me. I was a little disappointed at how negatively recieved PayPerPost was. I just got accepted into the program for my Ennui blog just yesterday and I was looking forward to making some extra cash doing it. I don’t know if I will now, since it’s so negatively perceived.

After that was over, the crew and I went over to Keystone Mall to the Apple Store. My co-worker got himself a fancy new 3G iPhone and I drooled over all the beautiful macs. Almost bought an Apple TV, but realized it wouldn’t work with my TV; it’s simply too old.

Now, we’re settled in the hotel for the night. Stay tuned for more pictures from today and check back tomorrow for more updates.

The really cool IUPUI Building where BlogIndiana is being held.

A pretty good crowd showed up.

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The really cool swag bag. There’s Play-doh inside!

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Nichole and Nathan happy to be here.

Cool hallway in the IUPUI Building

Picture showing four floors of coolness.

Right now I’m eating lunch at blogindiana. Didn’t really care for the sandwiches, so I ate lunch consisting of delicious cookies.

The first morning session was about Legal Issues in Blogging. It was very informative and I learned a lot of principles to apply to my blogs. The presenter was pretty cool and a lot of excellent questions were asked.

The second session we attended was Advanced Corporate Blogging. It was okay, not that informative for us. It really wasn’t that advanced and seemed focused on selling the concept of corporate blogging rather than the nuts and bolts of advanced blogging. We’re already sold on the concept of corporate blogging and are pros at it. We don’t need to be convinced. The presenter was also trying to sell his company’s services, which isn’t really relevant for us and we disagreed with their methods. Oh well.

IUPUI is a really nice campus. I’m very impressed. Who thought the bastard child of Purdue and IU would be so nice.

Oh and Nichole ate my extra double chocolate cookie!