MomentumCon 2012: It’s Ridiculous

After our session proposal was accepted I had this big feeling of “oh FUCK why did I do that???” Because I have the worst stage fright / inability to do public speaking / inability to behave normally in social situations.

And then today…..today they released the names of the rest of the presenters. You go take a look through that and then come back here, eventually.

Back now?

WTF AM I GONNA DO?

Do you see those people??? They’re famous. Or they have letters after their name. Or both. I don’t even know yet what the sessions are going to be, much less the session schedule to know what we’re up against in our time slot, but about halfway through the list three things went through my mind:

1. I hope I can get somebody else to video record the sessions I wanted to see that will be going on at the same time as ours, so that I don’t miss anything good
2. The audience for our session will likely be small
3. Thank god for #2. Any more than 15 people and I’ll likely ask a few to strip to their underwear because I wouldn’t be able to imagine them in their underwear and do a presentation at the same time, my ADD doesn’t allow for such multitasking.

The session AAG and I are doing isn’t intellectual or provocative in the way that most of the others will be. Our session is going to be very slideshow-heavy and I’ll probably make up a something or other to hand out digital session guides with links to all the helpful places we’ll talk about. Our session is “Blogging 202: Take Your Site to the Next Level”. I’ll talk more about it when they officially release all the sessions.

If you think you want to go, you should start saving up now. I remember reading the tweets last year of all the people who regretted not going and I think that it’s going to be an even more impressive and wonderful event this year. Last year they limited the attendees to 250 people….this year it’s 400 people. Wow that’s a lot of people. This year their early bird ticket price will end on January 2nd and I have a feeling that most of the tickets will sell by then. It’s not cheap, but it’s very much worth it – so save up. Buy a few less sex toys or something, lol. REGISTER HERE.

My next step is figuring out how to get there. Can my body handle a nearly 350-mile drive? On major highways that are sure to be subject to traffic delays? Fly…..ehhhh, not so crazy about that idea. Not at all. I could take Amtrak….

Drive – cost of gas, toll on my body at 7 hours of driving, $12/day parking – but I don’t have to worry about lugging around heavy suitcases, which would require to be checked @ airport or lifted higher than I can manage on trains and rails
Plane – not going to find a ticket for less than $300, plus requires a layover in Philly, and then get to the hotel. And deal with TSA. And flying fat.
Train – will take less time than driving, at 5 hours, is affordable at $50 each way. It’ll land me at Union Station which will require 2 MTA rails to get to the hotel. Can I do that without getting lost? Must get a ride to the train station at home both days.