By Joe Klein

Freshly baked from the VOICE 2008 conference, we ventured from sunny Southern California to a sun-baked Las Vegas last week for more mid-summer mayhem, also known as the New Media Expo.

The New Media Creative crew hit Sin City on Wednesday night and, after hooking up with a couple cohorts from the Web 2.0 world (Rock and Roll Geek MICHAEL BUTLER and Madpod Maven JA DONNELLY), the party resumed! Appropriately, we stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel, which is just a couple miles from the Las Vegas Convention Center and far cooler than the Las Vegas Hilton in so many ways! Our first night in town we had the pleasure of attending the Joan Jett and The Blackhearts concert poolside at the Southpointe Hotel. Thanks to Joan’s manager KENNY LAGUNA for allowing us to watch the show from right next to the stage.There was definitely a shortage of parties compared to the previous expos held in Ontario, but we did manage to find a couple of them going on in suites at the Las Vegas Hilton.  Of course, there were on-going schmoozfests in a few of the hotel’s bars.

We dropped in on a few of the Expo’s breakout sessions and cruised around the exhibit floor a few times during the run of the show. Around noon on Thursday, LEO LAPORTE interviewed me and fellow New Media Voice Guy BILL FORTUNE on TWIT Live. On Friday,  SUNNY GAULT of L.A. New Media interviewed us on a live feed from the Ustream booth on the show floor.

We attended the Coverville 500 concert, at the Bally’s Event Center Friday night, which was the Expo’s primary entertainment event. It was quite the cool newmediapalooza,  albeit a pretty long show at nearly five hours. It featured very talented and well-known artists from the online world, including JONATHON COULTON and RICHARD CHEESE. Kudos to BRIAN IBBOTT for a very ambitious and well-staged show and heartfelt thanks for tickets to the show!

On the business side, we reconnected with many old friends, associates and colleagues and made several new contacts as well. Glad to report that some good possibilities for productive strategic alliances presented. All in all a pretty good time was had by all. Still, it’s great to be back at home base after 10 days of mid-summer road madness! Next we’ll be at the BLOGWORLD AND NEW MEDIA EXPO, also in Vegas on September 20 and 21. Hope to see you there! Now, here’s some photo highlights of the New Media Expo…….

 

 
          BILL, JOE AND LEO LAPORTE STREAMING VIDEO LIVE

 
         SUNNY GAULT, JOE AND BILL STREAMING VIDEO LIVE

     
  JOE, TIM BORQUIN AND BILL            CC CHAPMAN AND JOE

      
     BRIAN IBBOTT AND JOE              JASON VAN ORDEN AND JOE

     
    PAUL COLLIGAN AND JOE                     JOE AND ROB WALCH

     
  JOE, ANJI BEE AND RYAN LUM           JOE AND GEOFF SMITH

    
JOE AND KAREN BLANCHETTE              BILL, JOE AND JADONNELLY

 
MICHAEL BUTLER GETS COZY WITH THE NEW MEDIA CREATIVE CREW

     
   COVERVILLE 500 CONCERT           JOAN JETT AT THE SOUTHPOINTE

By Joe Klein

The first event we attended "officially" as New Media Creative was the VOICE 2008 conference in Los Angeles over last weekend. The seminar was at the Century Plaza Hotel, and really was a fantastic event, attended by 500 voice-over professionals and serious "wanna-bees."  On Sunday, I conducted a breakout session entitled "Old Skool Meets New Media," which was well received by the attendees. New Media Creative Guys BILL FORTUNE and BRETT BUMETER flew in for the event. Brett shot video of my presentation and we’ll be posting a few excerpts soon. My good friend Marvin Caesar, presdient of APHEX SYSTEMS LTD. exhibited at the event, displaying his totally kick-ass microphone preamp and voice processor, the APHEX 230 MASTER VOICE CHANNEL. The voice-over people really loved this killer box, which is becoming the "must have" accessory for voice recording.  Over a dozen of the units were sold at the event. We all spent the weekend working hard, hanging out, eating and networking. Next, it’s on the the New Media Expo in Las Vegas and much more of the same!  Here’s a few pix from VOICE 2008……

 

 

  
          JOE DURING THE  VOICE 2008 BREAKOUT SESSION

  
THE NEW MEDIA CREW AT THE VOICE 2008 CELEBRITY BANQUET

  
                      MARVIN CAESAR, JOE AND BILL

  
                    JOE AND RADIO LEGEND DICK ORKIN

  
     FOX AND NBC PROMO VOICE JOE CIPRIANO AND JOE

  
  NBC COMEDY PROMO VOICE TOWNSEND COLEMAN AND JOE

 
 SHOW PRODUCER JAMES ALBURGER AND JOE WITH PRESENTER AWARD