So I’ll just say it – I saw MC Hammer in concert in Oakland – his home town.

[For more, click below.]Yes it was the early 90′s, and it was insane. I probably lost 10 pounds from dancing, and his dancers probably lost 50 pounds. I don’t think they ever stopped dancing. It was crazy!

So where is the Hammer nowdays? Well, I just found out he’s on Twitter – That came via Brent telling me & me discovering it online all around the same time last year. He’s got a site called dancejam.com a community of dance-jammers (so to speak) getting together uploading and voting on dances.

Hilarious!

West Coast Tour

Brent, Cadie and I just returned from a 5-day trip that actually turned into 12 days. Holy cow!

We had lots of fun doing our ‘West Coast Tour’, I’ll call it. We started up in Seattle for Thanksgiving and stayed a few days afterwords hanging out with family and friends. We ate at this cool diner that Brent’s cousins saw on the FoodNetwork’s Diners, Dives & Drive-In’s. Way good. We saw Brent’s old high school buddy & wife, and I got to go to my FAVORITE coffee shop in Seattle: Vivace!! (What-up Vivace homies!!) Vivace actually had to move locals… some sort of “emanate domain” issue. The word on the street is that the city was going to build their light rail right through the old shop. It was a great old place, very “coffee house”-esque, but their new place is so beautiful. You have to check them out when in Seattle up in the Capitol Hill dist. A bonus- we got to meet Brent’s friend (and mine now!) Derek Punsalan for coffee and we also hung out with Chris Pirillo then too. They were both gracious enough to talk tech talk with Brent for a few hours while Brent’s & my friend (Fred) and I talked seminary talk. We concluded our long stay with seeing friends from Maple Valley & we chilled at the SouthCenter mall – that’s what you do when you’ve got 4 kids under the age of four tagging along. Yep, we had a blast up in WA. And I even saw the sun the afternoon we had coffee with the fellas.

So we’re at the SeaTac airport about to head back to Phoenix, and Brent’s like, “I don’t want to go back to Phoenix yet.” So what do we do? We jump online (while sitting in the airport parking lot) & re-route to the Oakland airport. That’s right, OakTown baby. After buying some Crocs at the airport (not the ugly kind), we fly to the Bay Area – that’s where I’m from. That means I’ve got family and friends there too, whom we saw. That was great! After driving past Emeryville where Pixar lives (and watching Brent cry his sorry eyes out for not being able to visit them), we drove to the north bay. Brent, Cadie & I stayed a few nights at the Union Hotel in Benicia (the town where I graduated high school BTW). It was kinda nice acting like a tourist in my old home town. It’s a rather cute water-front artsy type of town that I totally recommend you vising one day. So we completely surprised my mom at her work. She was totally shocked to see us. It was worth it all to see the look on her face! We concluded our little Bay Area trip by driving up to Napa to see the beautiful vineyards and landscape there. We ate at Napa Style, Michael Chiarello’s restaurant (he’s on the Food Network) and it was so good! And guess what, Micahel Chiarello totally showed up. I sort of freaked out. Brent was like, “Are you gonna go & meet him?” Nah, I was having too much fun eating his food & feeding Cadie some of their yummy bread. We took some great pics of Cadie up there & I’m pretty sure Brent streamed a little bit of our time there too.

We finally booked our “return” flight to Phoenix on Friday… which actually included a stop in OC. So on Sunday we left Oakland for …. you guessed it… Disneyland!! We met up with Justine and were able to be her “tour guides” to Disneyland and California Adventure since it was her first time there. Gosh, we ran around everywhere in those two theme parks. Cadie was such a trooper. So was Justine. I totally have a blister on my toe from it all (dumb Crocs). We had a midnight dinner at IHOP, where Brent captured the funniest video of Justine making Cadence laugh. (As of right now, close to 17,000 people have viewed it on YouTube.) You’ll have to check it out! We concluded our Southern California adventure with hanging out with one of my best friends Kelli & her daughter at the Gypsy Den in Santa Ana. Brent says that he felt like such a hippy eating there, but I totally love it & the food/coffee.

Then, we came back to Phoenix where it’s in the 70′s. Bet you’re jealous!

Have a Merry, Merry Christmas everyone!

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BE THERE!

2) ALL feedback on PodCamp AZ’s content was positive.

3) It’s the only PodCamp in the South West.

4) Only ONE no-show presenter last year. (If you know anything about PodCamp – that’s a miracle!)

5) Location is UAT – max size is 1000. (We’re expecting anywhere between 300 & 600.)

6) PodCamp AZ is self-funding.

7) Lunch and t-shirts will be provided for a small cost. All other parts of the conference are free to attendees.

8. Presenters last year included some of the top podcasters of the southwest. This year, top social media gurus from around the U.S. will present.

9) Podcast AZ will going all day long again.

10. There will be a vendor fair again with things that you will be interested in.

11. PodCamp AZ will be twitted live. (Follow us!)

12. USTREAM is already signed on as a sponsor – they will stream for free November 1 and 2.

13. All volunteer led, organized, and presented.

14. Today’s technology encourages you to get in the game and join in on the conversation more than ever before! PodCampAZ 2.0 is all about relevant media. What’s relevant to you?

Follow podcampaz or #podcampaz for information. Visit us at podcampaz.org. Brent and I want to see you there!!

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to be as involved in the organization process over the past few months. But I’m sure as my baby girl gets a few more months under her belt, I’ll be able to help more!

GO PODCAMP AZ 2.0!

I pretty much worked on PodCamp AZ all last week, with Thursday and Friday being the two most insense day. Thursday was all about picking up things we had ordered… PodCamp banners, signs & t-shirts, as well as rounding up some volunteers. I had also sent some reminder emails on Wednesday & Thursday to our PodCamp AZ community

Friday we went down to UAT around noon-ish, maybe later, after running around all morning, doing last minute things. That afternoon, Brent and I got to have lunch with Clinuts McGintus, Justine, Micah G., & this really helpful guy from Texas named AJ. Afterwards, a few of us stuffed all the swag bags, assembled the name tag/lanyard things while Brent ran around figuring out the technical aspects for Saturday. Whew.

We finally got a chance to get out of UAT and went to dinner with even more PodCampers. Yea. We ate at a really good Mexican restaruant right by the First Fridays event. It was definitly a zoo down there. Jody Gnant was able to make dinner along with a Viddler friend (Jason Waldrip), Kent Nichols, Crispy Lettuce… Yikes the list goes on & on. So fun. Life casting -a-pleanty. Interesting & hilarious conversation. But seeing has how I’m pregnant, and knowing I’d have to get up early on Saturday, Brent & I bolted for the night after dinner.

We woke up early on Saturday in order to swing by the store before getting to UAT by 7 am. There were already a few people there ready to help. Wow! Brent’s job was to ensure that Chris Brogan‘s live streaming “un”keynote would go off without a hitch (which it did… thanks Chris!), as well as setting up the Ustream stuff – We were on the home page of Ustream all day long. Oh dang, Brent threw in a little “Twitter Camp” which was projected on the wall all day long during PodCamp. [I think we might have broke twitter...] My job was to hook up the registration table (t-shirts, name tags, swag bags… yikes too much stuff), as well as set up my “green” room for a breakfast for our sponsors, speakers & volunteers. I’m pretty sure I walked up and down UAT’s stairs 150 times at least. :0)

9 am was our “un”keynote, which Brent managed well along with the help of Micah G. & iMatty. I had made the dumb mistake of putting out iBAM t-shirts without being around the table (or at least displaying a price), so… our t-shirts got wiped out, with no cash left in their place! My fault… all the other tables had free stuff on them. My friend Danielle sold her yummy bread, we had free coffee, the sponsors were rocking their tables… A lot was happening. So finally around 10:15 – life started getting a little bit more manageable, since everyone headed off to their classes.

The lunch time show was just so cool. Jack Mangan, Jody Gnant & Gilbert Martinez were troopers, playing in 90-ish degree weather. The BBQ Cuban Pete’s had going on was tasty. (So I was told… I actually went & got Wendy’s – I needed chicken! Hey & I’m pregnant, so shut up!) The 2-hour lunch was nice… some thought it should only be one hour. Oh well, next year we’ll know!

The afternoon sessions went well, so I was told. I was just making sure people were happy, knew how to get to their classrooms, and were having a good time. Our final closing session was so fun. We did a super-long raffle because we had so much to give away. And, we seemed to pull numbers that didn’t match anyone’s tickets! So, we just picked the ticket-winner by who was closest to the number pulled. Ha ha. Oh & I scored the most incredible cutting board from The Wood Whisperer!!! Yes! Sweet!! I am so happy about that. It smells so good. I call it my purple heart, because it’s made with both maple wood & this exotic wood called ‘purple heart’ – I think.

Anyway, after cleaning up UAT for a while, we headed off to Rustler’s Rooste to meet everyone there. Brent and I were so tired, that we basically just inhaled some food & took off. Oh yeah, we were in bed by 9:45 pm.

So here we are on Sunday. Clintus McGintus just twittered Brent saying that he was running home to shower because he smells like geeks. Oh what a freak. We’re all supposed to go to brunch this morning. Hmmm…

Until next year!