I have so much to cover on here. First, let's talk about BlogOrlando while it's fresh on my mind.

The day before the sessions, our fearless leader and BlogOrlando organizer, Josh Hallett arranged for the lovely people at Delaware North Corporation (a park service tour company) to provide the session leaders with a comprehensive tour of NASA. Personally, I was primarily looking forward to meeting and spending time with the other session leaders, some of whom I follow on Twitter or via their blogs, others I've spoken with via email and never met, and of course, reconnect with those that I count as friends.

Thank GOD for Dave Coustan, whom I met through Josh last spring and did a bang up job leading a session at BlogPhiladelphia last July. I hitched a ride with Dave for most of the unconference - I'm city girl, I don't know the way of these "car" cities.

So Dave gave Tom Biro and I a ride to NASA, during which, they made me laugh several times while trying to record my outgoing voicemail for work and somehow determined that I am a "spacist" because I questioned why we must continue to dedicate billions of federal dollars to continue to send equipment and people into space. In my mind, we landed on the moon, it was an amazing feat, and as suspected, there's nothing there - case closed. Dave and Tom, on the other hand, were excited to see the rockets and learn more about the program.

The tour we were given at NASA changed my mind about the Space program. We started with the IMAX movie that was narrated by Tom Hanks and other actors from the Apollo 13 movie. The 3D aspect of the film was incredible on an emotional level of starting to understand the firsthand experience of the astronauts who've landed on the moon and their jobs there. The explanation of the escalating political situation of that time between the US and the Russia helped me understand the political, societal and patriotic need for the US to have a successful mission to the moon. The physics lessons that came later in other films demonstrated that the minds at NASA have defied the laws of nature and made the impossible, possible. Those scientists, likely too many to name here, not only stretched their imaginations, but carried the weight of knowledge that the fate of astronauts lives, were contingent on them thinking through every step of development - without ever having the chance to truly "test" their work. And all of this with the world watching. That's what I call pressure.

We were treated to a lunch with a special guest speaker, astronaut Bill Pogue. Wow. That guy has some stories. Bill spent 84 days in space aboard the Skylab 4 and he talked us through some footage from his time in space.

Of course, most of us jumped at the opportunity to ride the rocket simulator, which is a remarkable experience. If you have the opportunity, definitely try it. The gravity-less portion is wild.

Thanks to our excellent tour guide, Nick, whom we all agreed must have been the VIP guide because he knew more about the NASA space program than you can imagine and his enthusiasm was contagious. As someone in the tourism industry, I was truly impressed with our tour.

I should also apologize here, to poor Nick, who probably didn't know what he was getting into with a bus of bloggers who communicate in 140 characters and try to make everything into an LOLcats joke.
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But let's get to the event, already! I know, I know.

The incredibly tan Shel Israel opened the event with a great discussion about his background and evolution as a blogger and reinforcing the importance of blogging and social media as conversations among real people. Unfortunately, it was during Shel's keynote that my work kicked in and I had to excuse myself to find a corner and rapidly do my social media magic for the 2007 Liberty Medal, which had been presented by President Bush (41, not 43) to Bono and his charity DATA the evening before in Historic Philadelphia. At least I had the company of my Social Media Club liason, Kristie Wells, who was running check-in. Love Kristie. How can you not? It was fantastic to finally meet her in person.

Although I was working, I tried to take advantage of my surroundings and attend some morning sessions. Connie Reece gave me a few things to think about with her session on "Building Connections and Networking Online." Not all of my social network accounts have the same username, which doesn't help my personal brand.

I caught about two minutes of Alex Rudloff's co-working session with some help from Philly co-worker (and my friend)Alex Hillman, before I had to hop out to connect with work.

I raced against the clock for the entire lunch hour, plugging directly into Rollins College's high speed network in their Computer Repair Services dept. Huge thanks to the both the college for lending their GORGEOUS campus to BlogOrlando and to the guys in the Computer Repair Services room for letting me plug in and literally hole up in a corner muttering curses under my breath as I raced against time to get my work done before my session.

I barely finished uploading the last file when it was my turn to speak. I was a bit disoriented from the frenzy of work I'd been rushing to do that morning, and I wasn't at my best. I spoke about the social media work we've done at GPTMC to promote Philadelphia on both gophila.com and uwishunu.com. I also showed people TubeMogul, a beta tool that I had used all morning to upload the Liberty Medal footage simultaneously to 10 top video sharing sites. People seemed to be interested and asked questions, so I hope I provided value. I had intended to speak about other DMO sites I think are going a good job, like: Uniquely Knoxville, Explore Minnesota, Montreal's Brits Wanted and even Starwood's redesign of the Sheraton site. Fortunately, the group was great and asked questions and before I knew it, I ran out of time.

My pal Dave Parmet did an awesome job of presenting nothing and pushing back on the audience to ask questions about his topic of "Business Blogging and Next Steps."

Someone else I really enjoyed meeting, was Geoff Livingston, and I'm not just saying that because he's a former Philly guy;) I could tell early on that Geoff is a smart guy and a strategic PR counselor - two things I love. I got the sense that Geoff is one of the elite group of high level PR people who takes the time to listen to a client and understand their business first and then works to develop objectives/strategies/tactics that will help them achieve their business objectives rather than "yes" a client looking for the placement on their favorite media outlet or looking to be a part of the social media buzzword of the moment. I say this because that's how his session "Participation in Marketing" felt. It was thoughtful, engaging and an open dialogue. Geoff gave the sense that everything he said had a great deal of thought behind it and his topical questions to the audience made me think more too.

I hopped out of Geoff's session early to catch some of my girl Alicia Dorset's session on "Separating Your Work Life from Your Personal Life," a session that Alicia led for us at BlogPhilly but I wasn't able to attend as the organizer. Alicia and I met at a Blogher conference in NYC last winter and she, along with a few other bloggers, was one of the best takeaways for me from that event. I hope that MS&L knows what a star they have in their agency. Let me just say, I am so glad I made her session. Holy. Hannah. The conversation was en fuego!!! One woman in the online scrapbooking community told us firsthand accounts of some CRAZY flaming that goes on among some members. It's like a Blogger version of "Mean Girls"! Other people shared stories of online stalkers and job opportunities they happily walked away from because of their social networking pages. Again, I heard more people heatedly express the opinion that a client or employer who wasn't cool with their personal/weekend/recreational flickr photos or blog posts, weren't people they want to work with. That's something that I hear more and more and still surprises me. I guess that's because I remember when the bubble burst back in 1999 and we all learned quickly that jeans and t-shirts worn to "cool" dotcom work places with outfitted with fooseball and fridges stocked with beer were memories of the past.

Dave Coustan led a discussion that was very educational for me, "Using Blogs for Product Development." I learned more about applications that can foster creative collaboration and advance R&D. Thank God for wifi, as I had to google a several terms that came up in this discussion.

Finally, we get to Chris Heuer, someone I've spoken with on Social Media Club con calls and emails, and followed on Twitter but hadn't met. Josh warned the crowd that Heuer was returning to BlogOrlando with a fan club that had formed after his session last year and you can count me in as the club's newest member.

If you get a chance to meet Heuer or listen to him speak, run, don't walk to that opportunity. Here are a few of my takeaways from his presentation:

• There’s still value in editorial perspective but some of the editorial is coming from in here (meaning all of us), because we’ve learned to trust one another

• Social media is tearing down the walls that keep us apart and changing the rules from what’s kept us from being human inside our companies or organizations

• People having conversations – it’s messy

• Why would I want to work for a company that doesn’t trust me?

• Companies: make clear your intentions

• Live the life, love the life

• Social media = human organizations

• You can’t rely on just one source (like digg)

• The brands with the best storytellers win – how do they have them – because they have the best products. (When you have great products, you can find great stories)

• Pondering for reflection; who here stops and thinks about what happened this week? Stop. Remember to step off the fast track, unplug and reflect.

Heuer really brought it all home for me. We're all so busy living this life that is our work, but by nature of it being in a community, it requires us to make our work our life. That said, don't forget about YOUR life. Live YOUR life TOO. Don't just use the media tools, be social too. That's something I lost sight of at my last job and much of the reason I moved to Philly. I needed to take back my life and find the joy in living again. I'm happy to say that Heuer's discussion made me realize that I've done just that.

There were so many other smart people at BlogOrlando that I regretfully just didn't have the time to see. I've been reading everyone's recaps about the event to see what I missed and I encourage you to do the same. Google "BlogOrlando 2007." I especially enjoyed reading the recaps about my bus seat partner Jake Mckee, Tom Biro and Jeremy Harrington.

Congratulations are much deserved to Josh Hallett and his team in Orlando who made the event fun and valuable. Thanks to Rollins College, NASA, Universal Parks, the exquisite EO Inn and all of the sponsors who made the event possible.

I will *definitely* return for BlogOrlando 2008.