The best valentine ever... I think?

I got pretty excited when my wife sent me an online valentine.  Then I opened it and found this:

For those of you non-techies out there Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple, and the genius behind the iPod and iPhone.

Go Steve!  He got his name on a Valentine delivered to thousands of women (and men) he doesn't know.

Private tour of The Children's Hospital

BlogFrog enables and improves online communities. As part of that, we also want to improve offline communities as well. This month we're raising money for Haiti, and in December we did a fundraiser on behalf of The Children's Hospital.

We were thrilled when The Children's Hospital invited us on a private tour on behalf of our users. The Children's Hospital serves the sickest children in a 9 state region. It has the only Level 3C Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the state.

model of the children's hospital made entirely out of legos

The tour was fascinating. The attention to detail is amazing. No wheelchairs - only red wagons. Art is placed at the kids eye level. Each floor has a "pain free" play area where no medical procedures are allowed (this play area is funded completely by donations). Every room has an XBox 360 for a sense of normalcy for older patients.

the 3 buildings in the distance are nothing but lab space - 1.1 Million sq feet!

The Childrens Hospital is about more than treating sick kids, they also have huge research and advocacy efforts. They have over 1.1 Million square feet of lab space where they are researching curues for the most dibilitating diesieses. They run huge advocacy campaigns to prevent child abuse - since at Children's child abuse is the #1 cause of trauma death (can you believe it?)

The technical highlight of the tour for me was the touring the Gate Analysis Lab. This is a room where they combine infrared sensors and cameras with a pressure sensitive floor to diagnose motor impairments in children. Take a look:

Rustin Banks at Children's Hospital from Holly Hamann on Vimeo.


BlogFrog Newsletter Feb 2010 from Holly Hamann on Vimeo.
Our newsletter from The Childrens Hospital

That was our amazing tour. Tune in this week for lessons learned from the Mom 2.0 Summit in Houston Texas.

Top 10 things Blissdom did right

I learned a ton about blogging and life from the Blissdom conference.  Another post will talk about what I learned about blogging.  This post is about the conference itself.  Following are the top 10 things the conference organizers, Alli and Barbara, and Paula really nailed:

1. Opening keynote by a non-blogger
It was certainly a risky move to open a blogging conference with a motivational speaker rather than a blogger, but the gamble paid off big time.  Kevin Carroll set a tone of inspiration and tone that lasted the entire conference.  The first brilliant move by Alli and Barbara. 

2.  Minimize the choices 
Instead of having many panels in small rooms, Blissdom had just 2 tracks in two rooms.  This made the choices easy and minimized the number of conflicts when you wanted to be in 2 (or 3 or 4) places at once.

3.  Late Breakfast
After a late night of socializing (oh I mean networking), the last thing someone wants to do is get up early.  At Blissdom there was plenty of time to get decent sleep, and still get to eat breakfast.

4.  Location, location, location
At Blissdom the location left all the attendees breathless.  I think it's safe to say that most of us never knew that anything like the Gaylord Opryland with its 3 indoor terrariums ever existed.  And the room was the cheapest I've paid for any conference.

5.  Organizers you can relate with
Many times you feel that conference organizers are a little separated from the attendees.  At Blissdom this wasn't true.  When Alli speaks, she instantly connects on the attendee level (if she isn't crying that is ;)

6. Central Location
I met very few people who flew over 2 and a half hours to get to the conference.

7.  Brands that "get it"
The brands that expo'd at Blissdom were some of the more savvy I have seen.  They got the space and knew how to interact at a conference.  A whole post dedicated to the brands is coming later.

8.  Not too much focus on swag
At these conferences there is a temptation to really focus on the free stuff.  Blissdom did a great job of minimizing this.

9.  Multi-media during panels
Panels are very interactive experiences and you need to be able to present audio-visual helps and cues.  This is the first conference I've seen where the panelists were allowed to display slides, videos, or demos.

10.  No "celebrity" cliques
Everyone was very accessible.  There was very much a feeling of common ground where nobody was above anybody else.  

Blissdom was a great conference that I highly recommend.  Coming up, the things I learned about Blogging @ Blissdom.  Stay tuned!

Blogging about Blissdom from 40,000 feet

I’m now in the mile high blogging club.  The plane doesn’t have wireless, but through the magic of Live Writer (which I have a love hate relationship with) this post will hit as soon as we have a wireless connection again.

 

I have my headphones on, but nothing is coming out of them because I have no music on this laptop.  Those of you that know me, know I love to talk, but the guy next to me has not stopped talking since I sat down.  Literally I think I have said two words.

Now he's telling me about the Tea Party convention with Sarah Palin which was held in the same hotel we were in.

   

Blissdom was an amazing conference for me personally and for BlogFrog.  The things I learned will stay with me for a long time.  I just wrote two other posts that I scheduled throughout the week so stay tuned for my take on the conference!