I attended BlogOrlando Saturday at Rollins College in Winter Haven, Florida. Coming from Tampa and then going home to Orlando, the traveling wasn’t terrible for me. But there were people from all over the United States and even Canada. BlogOrlando was in its third year of informational excellence and covered an aray of great topics.

While I was there I saw and met some great people. I was running late and didn’t arrive from Tampa to the small but extremely beautiful Rollins College campus until nearly 9AM. Upon walking in I was welcomed by Josh Hallett the unconferences coordinator where he bestowed upon me a t-shirt and name tag. I began looking at the schedule which had an array of sessions. They held tons of different events, some sessions included: Southwest Airlines Blog, Flickr, Wordpress Basics and Advanced, Advanced and Basic Podcasting, Going Beyond Google, Twitter in Journalism, Hyperlocal, Politics, Shiny New Objects, The Orlando Scene, New New Media, and so on.

I unfortunately was not able to attend all of the sessions, there wasn’t enough of me to go around. Some personal highlights for me include the excellent keynote speech by Jake McKee. Jake works at LEGO Company and has single-handedly changed the companies ideology about social media and community organizing. He basicially gave a motivational speech about how to succed in both business (whether it be in the technology industry or not) and in life. I really enjoyed it and can’t wait to connect with him again.

I then moved to the front of the auditorium for Frank Gruber’s presentation on Shiny New Objects. I am a friend of Frank’s and admire him a great deal. Although I am bias, I think his presentation was amazing. He basically spoke about all of the new Web 2.0 companies that he liked out there.This was somewhat hard for him because there was a $1 fine everytime the term “Web 2.0″ was used. He spoke about companies like: MyDropCard, Gmail, AwayFind, Facebook, Remember the Milk, Flickr, Vimeo, Animoto, YouTube, TypePad, WordPress, Tumblr, Evernote, MyDropBin, Mixx, Digg, SiteMeter, FeedBurner, Google Analytics, MyAOL, Google Alerts, FiltrBox, TwitterFeed, SocialThing, FriendFeed, Dopplr, Basecamp, Quicken Online and many others. I had an interest in just about all of these companies, so needless to say, this was an awesome session. After introducing and explaining these companies, Frank then proceded with Q&A, where we were all introduced to even more companies. This session was extremely helpful and interesting and their was a great vibe in the audience. You can see the full presentation here. You can also see Frank’s personal wrap-up on his blog here.

While at BlogOrlando I also got the chance to meet the ever lovely Sarah Perez, better known to some as “Sarah In Tampa” and/or a writer for ReadWriteWeb. She held the __ session, which was also very impressive. She took us through an eventful day in the life of a blogger. She threw out comparisions between bloggers and journalist while never claiming to be one. During her packed session in a Rollins College classroom. She took us through many of the same tools that Frank spoke of in a previous session and how she uses them to blog in her daily life. She use a lot of Google tools, include their custom search engine. Other tools of hers included Snackr, Twitter, Google Reader and a few others. This was a cool session and I was extremely happy I got to meet Sarah. It’s always great meeting someone from your hometown.

While I didn’t get to see any of his session, John Rife also attended and led the BlogOrlando event. John once again is a friend and an amazing guy, not to mention a podcasting and video guru, something he does simply as a hobbie. This year he gave the presentionation for the Video-A-Go-Go session. I didn’t make it around to see him this year, but if it was anything like last year, I am sure everyone was very impressed. I also got the chance to chat with John some more at the happy hour after-party.

Other great attendees included Judson Collier who lead a wonderful session at last years BlogOrlando. He is an extremely smart guy as well. Phil Gomes, Chris Thilik, Spike Jones, Chuck Welch, David Alston, Paula Berg, Alex Rudloff, David Parmet, Jeremy Harrington, and a lot of others also lead session at this years BlogOrlando.

After the closing session (which everyone attended) by Erik Hersman, who did an amazing job, most people shot over to Finnhenry’s for the BlogOrlando Happy Hour. As one said, “beers all around” (except for me)! This was probably my favorite part of the event, everyone stood around and chit-chatted about everything from technology to world events to sports. There is where I really got to talk with people about what I am working on and have been up to and learn about what they are up to, including some new work that should come to light soon!

After the happy hour and after-party I grabbed a late dinner at a local Thai restauant with Frank Gruber, Leah Jones (an awesome girl), Michael Anderson, Paula Berg, Alex De Carvalho, and David Alston (an awesome character). The food was good, but the conversation was great.

Overall I would say I had an amazing (I’ll be it an extremely long) day. Josh Hallett put on another amazing day for bloggers, journalist, techies, and normal people alike. I applaud him for taking a stand and keeping it free. Everything was perfect! I can’t wait for next year…BlogOrlando Wrap-Up