Reflections of the Conference

September 25, 2008 By CJ
Posted in Military News

Reflections of the Conference

Well, I’m not going to rehash what has been written about the events of the Milblog Conference. Instead, I’m going to talk about MY time in Vegas and how Marcus and I spent our time as representatives of the You Served Blog and Podcast. By the way, congrats to VAMC for obtaining the YouServed.com URL. That will go a long way in making it easier for people to find us. Let’s begin where we left off.

We got home at around 0230 in the morning of Saturday morning. Marcus’s phone went off about 0630 and I couldn’t get back to sleep. We were going to get up around 0800 so we could get to the conference by 0900 and register. Marcus and I got up, showered, and headed for breakfast. The MGM Grand gave us a $35 voucher for food during our stay – we used the whole thing during breakfast.

The MGM Grand breakfast buffet was delicious. They had a chef who made custom omelets. Marcus and I ordered our omelets and we went our separate ways looking for more food. I headed towards fruity crepes and Marcus grabbed some waffles. Surprisingly, there were a lot of people in line for breakfast. Many looked like they hadn’t been to sleep yet. I stuffed myself with all manner of life-shortening sugars and carbs and then we decided to walk around the city while it was still cool outside.

We walked down the Vegas strip and made note of all the drunken losers hanging out all over the place. Some people were still sipping on their yard-long alcoholic glasses and hanging onto their friends to stay upright. A group of drunken 20-somethings called us over and asked us about our shirts. We tried to explain it and then realized we basically talking to a wall and left. The guy couldn’t even stay focused.

On the way back, I got the idea that we need to go and grab the video camera so we can record some of these people. We still had over an hour before we were supposed to be picked up by Terri and Angel. We grabbed the camera and I also brought a microphone to we could make it look official (even though it wasn’t plugged into anything). Just prior to going into the hotel, there was a super drunk homeless man laying on the ground next to a wall and being watched over by a police officer. I realized at that moment he had to be our first interview.

By the time we got back to where the guy was he was gone. Marcus wasn’t too keen on interviewing a homeless drunk anyway, though I thought it would have been the best interview of the day. For those that think that Marcus is this big, bad Marine – think again! Marcus actually cares about people! Can you believe the audacity of him not wanting to use the homeless for personal satisfaction?! Pshaw!

So, we took to the streets and started trying to interview people. Our first victim was a Metro Police Officer who was sitting in his car. We approached him and asked if we could interview him for our military blog and podcast. He declined. I accused him of not supporting the troops. He still declined. Then, I cursed his momma. Nothing. Finally, I spit in his face and told him that Code Pink sent me. He smiled and then I woke up. We talked about something, but I can’t remember what it was. He wasn’t budging and didn’t want to be interviewed. On the way out, I slashed his tires and smudged his badge.

We decided we needed to get aggressive, so I started asking passers by if we could interview them. Marcus kept the camera rolling as people strolled by and declined to be interviewed. The excuses were terrible. One group of guys actually said they were going to work, as if anyone really works in Vegas.

Eventually, we were able to find an unsuspecting victim who agreed to be interviewed on camera. Below is that interview:

A bunch more people declined to be interviewed before we found Sue, whose father was a WWII vet. I thought we had struck pay dirt when she said that she was a professor of horticulture or something. I was confident we had our first liberal. She actually turned out to be a fun interview:

Eventually, we recognized that we needed to get all our junk and head out to get picked up. We grabbed our free-shirts and 300-pound bag of equipment and sloughed our way to the pick-up point. Oh, did I mention that I played a dollar in the slot machines and won $1.50? I immediately cashed out so I could say I left Vegas on top.

Upon arrival to the conference, we got our registration badges and made our way into the exhibit hall to start collecting free swag! Free swag is good. You can never have enough t-shirt, pens, fridge magnets, useless bumper stickers, and stress balls with websites on them that you’ll never visit!

Word got out that Matt had not yet arrived yet and Wendy, Sherri and I had arranged to have a bunch of people embarrass him as he arrived. Matt really hates attention, so bringing attention to him is the perfect gag. I created a few t-shirts for my blog store that said “Paratroopers for Blackfive”. A huge picture of Matt was centered on the front of the shirt and underneath it said “Blackfive for President 2012!”

While I was screwing around in the exhibit hall, I got a call that Matt had entered the building. I was to ambush him from where I was and they would come up from behind. I made my way as quickly as possible and ran into him in the main hall. I hid behind a larger gentleman so that he wouldn’t see my shirt before the group got together. The group was nowhere to be seen. I stopped Matt and started stalling him until the group of screaming fans could catch up. It was probably obvious at some point that I was stalling so I showed him my shirt and he fell to his knees laughing. At about that point, a group of about six or seven screaming Blackfive fans came running from around the corner and Matt was floored. His face turned beet red as our group tried to get him to sign books and pictures and other stuff. Let me make this clear: the only part I played in this was making the shirts! It wasn’t my brainchild, but I’m getting the credit.

Okay, the conference itself has been posted all over the place, so I’m not going to rehash that. However, I’d like to take a moment to sum up the conference itself. Some of this will come out when I finally get a chance to mess with the video interviews of various milbloggers I took after the conference.

I wasn’t impressed this year. I loved that it was in Vegas, but the panels were too closely packed together. There was no time to enjoy each panel AND have a chance to speak with the speakers before or after their turns. There was supposed to be a 10-15 minute break, but even if the panels didn’t run over their time allotment, which is not enough time to use the bathroom and/or hold a conversation. Condensing the conference down to one day was an unnecessary strain.

Having the conference in conjunction with the BlogWorldExpo was a brilliant idea, but we failed to capitalize on the benefits this could have reaped. I’m not sure if this was a requirement or not, but the door to our panels was always closed; very uninviting. Additionally, there was no huge announcement – a la GodBlogCon – announcing the presence of the greatest bloggers in the world. After all, the military blogging community is the creator of the term “blog” to begin with. As I informed many attendees during our YouServed interviews, BLOG is actually a military acronym that stands for “Basic Logistical Oratory Guide”. True! Would I lie to you?

I get home tomorrow and will begin uploading and editing my footage from the conference. That is really what I went there to do. I should have some good stuff coming soon. Anyone can blog about the conference, but only YouServed Vlogged it!!

4 Comments »