I was sitting at work today when I received an email about the joining of Blogworld's expo and the New Media expo into one event. I attended the first Podcast Expo (had a great time, met lots of awesome people) and the second which I believe was changed to "New Media Expo" the following year, both in Ontario, CA. Although I haven't been able to go since, due to family and work, I still follow all of the happenings in the podosphere and in the new media expo world.
The email I received today was titled "BlogWorld Expo & New Media Expo Merge to Create One Huge Event for the Entire New Media industry!" from Rick Calvert, founder of Blogworld and New Media Expo and Tim Bourquin of the Podcast and Portable Media Expo (later named New Media Expo). The two gave their perspectives on how the joining expos came about one, big mega nerd get-together. The full contents of the email from Rick's perspective was published over at Blogworld.com and Tim's perspective at newmediaexpo.com.
Ah, the old days of sipping beers in the Ontario, CA Marriott hotel bar with the likes of Keith and the Girl, Brother Love, Dawn and Drew, the guys from Nobody Likes Onions, Rob from Podcast 411, Nate and Di, Swoopy, Bibb, and countless, countless others.... (my old Flickr photos of the first year's event can be found here)
It's nice to see the two groups getting together and hopefully an official "sticking it to the old media man" expo will come out of this. As active in the podcasting community as many of us are, either as content creators or fans/listeners/viewers, we new media folks need all the togetherness we can get. I think that by these two forces joining together, we might be in for some of the best new media expo adventures yet!
-Corby-
