Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

By Joe Klein

Okay, I admit it. We haven’t blogged in quite some time, taking a few months off to work on lots of other projects. Plus there was a lot of travelling (and a bit of vacationing) since our last writing!

Interspersed between completing jobs and coordinating projects, I, personally, managed to visit some cool places and catch some great shows, including a few great oldies acts in my current home base of Laughlin, NV. Since early spring, some great artists appeared, including Eric Burdon (of the Animals), former Righteous Brother Bill Medley, Tommy James, Felix Cavalerie (from The Rascals), former Monkee Davey Jones, Gary Puckett (lead singer of the Union Gap) and “Bad To The Bone Man” George Thorogood. I caught most of the shows, and they were great. Here’s a couple of shots of me with Tommy James and Bill Medley taken a few months back when they appeared in Laughlin.

At the end of August, I ventured to Chicago for a big family event over the Labor Day Weekend. (I was born in Chicago and still have family there.) New Media Creative’s “voice of god,” Bill Fortune, is a lifetime resident of Chicago (except for a few short periods when he worked in other cities as a disc jockey). Bill has a very nice pad in the suburb of Palatine and I stayed with Bill for a couple days before checking into a Skokie hotel for the family events on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday.

Sunday night Bill and I met up in Schaumburg (not too far from Bill’s home) for the second night of the 2009 SeptemberFest. The SeptemberFest is a huge festival that happens every year over the Labor Day Weekend. The event is staged in a very large park in the heart of Schaumburg, and features lots of big carnival rides, carny style game booths, a huge bingo game to support charities, dozens of food booths with faire from many of Chicago’s most popular restaurants and nightly free concerts staged on a huge lawn in the park. Saturdays and Sundays are the biggest days, of course, and the concerts on those nights usually feature pretty big name bands, or, more accurately, bands that were big names several years back. Saturday night Randy Bachman performed (and we couldn’t attend due to my big day of family stuff) and Sunday night’s concert featured Starship with Mickey Thomas, joined by Bobby Kimball, the former lead singer of the hot seventies and eighties band, Toto.

As it happens, I hired Bobby Kimball to sing lead on some very cool radio station jingles I produced over thirty years ago (way back in 1976) and, about two years later, Toto was formed and really took off, with hits like “Hold The Line,” “Rosanna” and “Africa.” I had also hired a couple of other members of the band (Jeff Porcaro and Steve Lukather) to play on recording sessions for other projects (not related to the radio jingles) in the seventies. So when Toto took off, it was really exciting, and I partied with the hot, new band on a couple of occasions in the late seventies.

The concert at SeptemberFest was really great. Each year they build a large and very respectable outdoor concert stage and, with at least 50,000 people assembled on the massive lawn in front of the stage, the concert resembles a mini-Woodstock event. The show lasted a little over an hour and a half, and was then followed by an awesome fireworks show that lasted over twenty minutes and was, admittedly, one of the best fireworks displays I’ve ever seen! The SeptemberFest is really a HUGE event that attracts over a quarter million people every year, and this year marked the 39th year of the annual festival. Kudos to the city of Schaumburg for staging a truly memorable event, for me at least.

Another cool thing about attending was having a chance to meet, for the first time, a fellow blogger named Kent Kotal, who maintains a cool blog at his website, ForgottenHits.com. The blog, which grew out of a twice weekly newsletter that Kent has been sending out for many years, is centered around fifties, sixties and seventies oldies music, radio, the Chicago music scene and, during the summer, baseball, of course! Kent is, admittedly a real “die-hard” fan of sixties and seventies oldies. Kent loves stories about oldies radio, radio in general from the sixties and seventies and other subjects related to oldies music, sports and Chicago itself. He still sends out the newsletter twice a week via email to a mailing list of a few thousand friends and fellow fans, and updates the blog several times a week. The blog contains many of the stories contained in the newsletter. This past summer, Kent featured scores of blog entries, stories and shared memories from the “summer of Woodstock,” forty years ago in 1969.

Kent is a really great, dedicated and hard working guy and his blog and newsletter have built up a loyal following of music artists, songwriters, record producers and deejays, who contribute their own stories and comments by emailing them to Kent on a regular basis. So the blog and newsletter has, in its own small way, become an invaluable source for news about oldies, radio and the Chicago music scene. It’s now a great place where many people involved in the radio in music business a few decades ago (myself included) can write—and read—stories about the music and radio business that can’t be found anywhere else! The blog and newsletter also, sadly, serve the purpose of a kind of “oldies obit page” and are often the first source for the sad news of the passing of a forgotten, but notable, music or radio legend from bygone days. The blog is really worth checking out if your in to oldies or radio from the era, and, at the blog, you can click on an email link and sign up for the email newsletter as well. The Forgotten Hits blog can be found here.

It was great meeting Kent and attending the concert with him and his wife and my old pal and partner Bill. With all the people amassed on the lawn, we chose not to try and sit too close to the stage. The have a huge, thirty foot wide projection screen and display a very nice four camera shoot of the concert. So we sat back a bit and off to the side and enjoyed the show as a TV broadcast on a huge big screen with the most awesome sound system around!

Here are a few shots from  the 2009 Septemberfest. There are shots of Mickey Thomas and Bobby Kimball (taken from the big screen) a shot of Bobby Kimball and myself backstage after the show (where Bobby appears like “The Ghost Of Toto’s Past” because I think the camera was at the wrong setting) and a picture Kent Kotal, Bill Fortune and myself at the festival.

Chicago was a blast, and, having to travel there from Laughlin, I was forced to make an overnight stop-over in Las Vegas going and coming home. It was a burden, but thanks to the Hard Rock Hotel for lightening the load! Stayed in their brand new tower on the top floor. Check out a few shots of the cool new rooms and the awesome view of the infamous Rehab pool and the Vegas Strip from the south facing rooms in the Paradise Tower…..

Now that I am back at home base (at least for a few weeks before my next trip, which will be to Los Angeles at the end of the month) it’s time to settle down and move into the next projects that are up on the board. Look for a cool story soon about my close friend, Russ Terrana (who was the chief engineer of Motown Records from 1966 until 1988 and mixed a large percentage of the label’s biggest hits). More stories and updates in the weeks to come and, hopefully, on a more regular basis now until the end of the year!

For the last sevaral weeks, we’ve been preoccupied with matters of health and matters of state. Dealing with bouts of on and off again illnesses and making constant adjustments to the much changed economy along as well as an ever changing business climate has pre-empted our blogging efforts recently. But, finally, having caught our breath we’re pretty back on track and marching forward once again!

Looking back over the first couple of months of the year, we start with a final recap of our crazy trip to the Bay Area and Las Vegas for the a series of trade shows and conferences. We previously offered up our overview of the MacWorld Expo, Consumer Electronics Show, Social Media Jungle and WordCamp Las Vegas. Our two weeks in the Bay Area and Vegas culminated with our attending AFFILIATE SUMMIT WEST, a great conference targeting those making (or wanting to make) gobs o’cash online with affiliate marketing, blog marketing, social media marketing and other forms online monetization. Even with economy spiraling downward at the beginning of the year, strategies to enhance online marketing efforts have emerged as the true bright spots in an otherwise dismal economy. In fact, attending Affiliate Summit, you’d never guess we were near the bottom of a serious recession.

There was a lot of valuable information at several of the conference’s breakout sessions. The first day’s “Meet Market” and then the “official” exhibits during the second and third days of the event were literally abuzz with the chatter of internet commerce and online profits. Monetization was the overwhelming keyword of the whole event and the scent of money was definitely in the air, literally. In fact, one company, had one of those “grab for cash booths” filled with paper bills and a big fan and let lines of people in to grab as much dough as they could in thirty seconds and one of the event’s organizers, MISSY WARD, was handing out her own customized hundred dollar bills!

New Media Creative associate Brett Bumeter and and I did some intensive networking, made some great new contacts and laid the groundwork for a number of new deals and campaigns. Hats off to organizer Summit organizer SHAWN COLLINS and his team for staging their latest very successful event, which was attended by nearly 3,500 people, with hundreds of exhibitors from the wide world of affiliate marketing.

Of course there were a few more posh parties on Sunday and Monday night at a few of the strip’s hot cubs. including the Moon at the Palms and the Voodoo Lounge at the Venetian Hotel. Probably the wildest was thrown at an established Las Vegas “party mansion” in the middle of the city (off the strip by a few miles) and came complete with the obligatory bare breasted beauties!

Here is a cool little video recap of Affiliate Summit West 2009 in Las Vegas…..

 Here are a few photos from January’s event……

GARY VAYNERCHEK AND JIM KUKRAL	JOEL COMM

BRETT AND TED MURPHY PARTY WITH THE IZEA INSIDERS	JOE AND WARREN WHITLOCK

JOE WITH IZEA INSIDERS	BRETT WITH THE INSIDERS

SHAWN COLLINS ON THE TRIKE	MISSY WARD TAKES A SPILL

MISSY WARD AND JOE	JOE, SHAWN COLLINS AND BRETT

Our trip to San Francisco and Vegas (plus a few additional stops on the way made the start of the year truly memorable.

In the couple of months since, we’ve experienced so much…….the inauguration of our new president, the Super Bowl, a new season of American Idol and the ongoing evolution of new media, social networking and affilitate marketing. There have already been several smaller new media conferences and meet-ups during February and March, culminating over the last couple of weeks with the always awesome and massive South By Southwest gathering in Austin, Texas. We couldn’t make it to SXSW this year but, thanks to the current presence and prevalence of Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, UStream, Qik, Brightkite and a few other social media services, we feel like we we’ve been in the middle of it all! Many sessions and some of the hottest parties streamed live online as they were happening, and we even chatted with some of our friends in attendance as they stepped up to the cameras. Being able to experience events as they happen and even interact with those there is a rich and rewarding new media experience to be sure.

We’ll be doing a bit of travelling over the next week or two and, no, we don’t plan to do any live streaming ourselves as we move about, but we’ll be back with more commentary and observations about this very eventful first quarter of the year. Of course, our blog will also have news about upcoming events and projects for New Media Creative.

We really do hope to blog and, yes, even tweet more often in the coming weeks and months, as this should be a most interesting year to be sure!

So, here is our promised (but inexcusably late) recap of the party scene from our vantage point during the week of the CES last month in Las Vegas…..Again, better late than never!

The CES parties blasted off at full throttle on Thursday night, shortly after New Media Creative’s JOE KLEIN, BRETT BUMETER and party partner, Rock And Roll Geek MICHAEL BUTLER, teamed up in Sin City. First was the annual CES SHOWSTOPPERS show floor and buffet at the WYNN HOTEL, which we dropped in on for a quick go-around, and the G4TV Best Of The Best Of CES Awards Ceremony, which we did not have a chance to attend. (G4TV did air a video recap of the event, which can no longer be accessed from the G4TV sight. But the clip is archived here.)

Here are a couple of shots of SHOWSTOPPERS…..

After ShowStoppers, we headed the few blocks up the strip to the PALAZZO HOTEL for a very nice dinner and drinks shindig thrown by the folks from IBM and LENOVO. Great food and drinks. Then it was on to the INTEL CES KICKOFF PARTY party in the Palazzo’s Sportsbook Bar and Grill. This was a pretty wild bash to be sure, co-hosted by ZAPPOS.COM, BRIAN SOLIS, SARAH LACY and FRANK GRUBER. Both events were well attended by a broad contingent of new media glitterati. Since Michael and Joe were already pretty beat from an eight-hour drive from San Francisco, it was nice that both of these parties were within walking distance in the same hotel! Still, after the Intel shindig it was time to call it a night. Two parties on the first night in Vegas, after a very long day, was more than enough!
 
                 JOE, DAVID BERKOWITZ AND BRETT                                      JOE AND JOHN FURRIER

Here are a few shots of the wild and crazy Intel CES kickoff bash…..

 
Friday night In Vegas is always a party night in Vegas. But the Friday night of CES is always the biggest Friday night of the year, and 2009 was no exception, to be sure. There were parties and soirees everywhere, on and off The Strip. One of the cooler “new media” bashes of the evening was the “IT WON’T STAY IN VEGAS” blogapalooza at the infamous ATOMIC TESTING MUSEUM in Vegas. This very cool event was hosted by JASON PRESTON and the PARNASSUS GROUP, along with an impressive list of sponsors. Helping organize the event and creating a healthy dose of buzz was ROBERT SCOBLE (and his very sweet wife Maryam), GARY VAYNERCHUK, and a very large throng of other new and social media notables, movers and shakers.

JOE AND ROBERT SCOBLE	EFREN TOSCANO AND JOE

RICK CALVERT AND JOE	ROBERT SCOBLE AND SARAH LANE

LEVAR BURTON, who is now making waves as a “celebrity tweep” on the red hot social media network TWITTER was on hand for this bash and decided to take on an additional role—that of  celebrity interviewer—by shooting a brief Flip-Cam video of Scoble, himself a fully established celeb in the tech and social media world and long-time “A-list” blogger.

Here is the video clip shot by Levar Burton…..

It was difficult to stay for very long at the evening’s first party, with so many others raving on this Friday night. For starters, there was a great CES party to promote the Blackberry RIM at The Palm Hotel’s great PEARL venue that featured a nice little acoustic set from recording artist JOHN MAYER.

Here is a video clip of Mayer performing “NO SUCH THING” at the event….

Another “A-list” event Friday night was the Dealer Awards Show staged by MONSTER CABLE which included a concert by DIANA ROSS at the PARIS HOTEL.

A video clip of the timeless diva performing “MY WORLD IS EMPTY WITHOUT YOU” at the show….. 

As was expected, there were  too many after-hours shindigs to attend, or even keep track of (with a constant flow of party info streaming on TWITTER during the entire week). Yet another hot ticket on Friday night was a huge party sponsored by INTEL along with P.C. COM at the Luxor Hotel’s LAX club. The highlight of the event was a set by the COUNTING CROWS, who were introduced by model and television personality BROOKE BURKE.

A couple of other noteworthy happenings on Friday evening included the lavish LEADERS IN TECHNOLOGY banquet at the Venetian and a more intimate and subdued affair at Planet Hollywood’s trendy PRIVE club which was sponsored by the internet telephony service SKYPE. Appropriately, Blue Skypetinis were served.

After we hit the expo floors of the CES and the AEE on Saturday, it was time to party the night away in Vegas, baby! The evening was filled with a handful of smaller, more private soirees, but the big event that dominated Saturday night was the wet and wild 26th ANNUAL AVN ADULT MOVIE AWARDS SHOW at the MANDALAY BAY hotel, and the after-party that followed at the Luxor Hotel’s hot night club LAX. Just as the Adult Expo was during the day Saturday, the awards ceremony was crammed full of adult entertainment stars, celebrities and their entourages. Click on the logo below to visit the official awards show site, which includes lists of the nominees and winners as well as a collection of photo galleries.

The private party we attended Saturday night was itself a pretty crazy one at the rented Vegas pad of popular veteran podcasters DAWN MICELI AND DREW DOMKUS. Dawn and her songwriting partner PAUL BLANN performed some very interesting original tunes, which were every bit as “X-Rated” as any of the adult videos at the AEE! It was very cool to attend a relatively small party of old podcaster friends amidst all of the lavish sponsored tech bashes of the past ten days. D&D’s party was reminiscent of the early days of the podcasting phenomenon a few years ago. (In fact, I met New Media Creative associate Brett Bumeter at a Podshow podcasters party at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo in 2006. The alcohol flowed, the music played and the revelry went on for hours, and it was the last CES party we would attend!

Here are a few photos from Dawn and Drew’s get together during their Vegas Vacation…..
  
                     DAWN, JOE AND MICHAEL                                             DREW, JOE AND MICHAEL
 

In our final Vegas recap post, we’ll provide a recap of the very well-attended AFFILIATE SUMMIT WEST which took place at the Rio Hotel. Coming soon!

Yes, this posting is much delayed, and for that we apologize. But, the first month of the new year was a very busy one. There was lots of catching up to do following the holidays and all the traveling during the first couple weeks of January. The inauguration and Super Bowl weekend got into the mix as well, making January a super busy month. Still, as they say, better late than never! So, here’s the next installment of our recap of the crazy new media related events we attended in January…..

While New Media Creative founder JOE KLEIN was still busy scurrying around San Francisco and partying with MICHAEL BUTLER during the first couple of days of the MACWORLD EXPO, associate BRETT BUMETER headed west from North Carolina to Las Vegas to check out the 2009 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW. All of us had set up press credentials for the CES and the other events happening in Las Vegas during CES week. Brett arrived a couple days before the first “official” day of the huge trade show to preview the exhibit floor with other members of the press corps.

Brett also wanted to attend the SOCIAL MEDIA JUNGLE, organized by JEFF PULVER, that was going on early, to network and check out the new media mavens that were already there.

JEFF PULVER	ROBERT SCOBLE	CHRIS BROGAN

Joe and Michael traveled down, by car, to Vegas on Thursday to join in all the madness already going on in town. It was the fourth trip for Joe to Sin City since the summer. Joe and Michael checked into their hotel and joined forces with Brett at the end of the day and dove right in to the party scene Thursday night. We’ll have a separate CES PARTY POST online within the next couple of days.

On Friday, the boys hit the sprawling LVCC exhibit floors, each with separate, albeit overlapping agendas. Joe and Michael needed press credentials, so they headed up to the CES press office with Brett, where Joe literally bumped into his friend, Las Vegas television news anchorman DAVE COURVOISER and the two decided to check out the exhibit floors together for a few hours while Brett and Michael did their own things.

Of course, everyone wanted to take in as much new technology offerings as time would allow. But Michael again wanted to some video clips for Mevio along with Mac gadget guy SAM LEVIN, who had also traveled down to Vegas from San Francisco to attend CES and meet up with several of his own consulting clients.

MICHAEL BUTLER SHOOTING A CLIP	JOE CONDUCTING A FOLLOW-UP

Brett had certain technologies he wanted to check out and a few meetings scheduled at other convention halls. Then, at the massive LG Electronics booth, Joe and Dave met up with Dave’s good friend, DR. FRANK VIGGIANO, JR., a freelance consultant, television reporter and one of the only professors emeritus in the field of consumer electronics.

Brett joined in for lunch and then all four checked out a private press demo of the buzzed about new PALM PRE smart phone, which had just been unveiled at the show, in a large, catered company suite within the convention center. It was a very cool demonstration of a very cool new phone, that may offer some real competition to Apple’s iPhone when it’s released late in the spring and the device won the coveted “Best of CES” award from the CNET tech television network. Brett, for one, loved this new phone.

CHECK OUT THE CNET VIDEO OF THE PALM PRE BELOW…..

Dave and Frank then proceeded on their own while Joe and Brett also toured around the show a little more before reconnecting with Michael to head back to the hotel and prepare for the evening’s parties.

On Saturday, there were separate agendas. As Brett arrived in Vegas and checked out the CES a couple days earlier than Joe and Michael, he elected to spend most of the day attending WORDCAMP LAS VEGAS to network and pick up tips and tricks for blogging in the Wordpress environment. Brett reported that the event, organized by JOHN HAWKINS was quite well attended and that there were healthy doses of knowledge and information to be consumed. Here are a few photo highlights…..

WORDCAMP CONFERENCE ROOM	ORGANIZER JOHN HAWKINS

MATT MULLENWEG	CHRIS BROGAN

LORELLE VAN FOSSEN	WARREN WHITLOCK

For Joe and Michael, first there was a bit more roaming of the exhibit floors at the LVCC, then a trip over to the Sands Convention Center to check out a few more CES exhibits there. Two of The Sands xhibit halls (behind what is now the Venetian Hotel) are also home to the annual ADULT ENTERTAINMENT EXPO (the name of the trade show says it all) and it’s definitely a little bizarre to see these two trade shows sharing convention center space (espcially since the AEE used to be an official part of the CES until several years ago). After a visit to the AEE press office  and getting hooked up with a couple of press passes, Michael and Joe couldn’t resist turning into two “bad doggs” for a couple of hours in the midst of all the tech and new media stuff to check out product categories of a different nature at this wild trade show. The AEE culminated Saturday night with the annual Adult Entertainment Awards ceremony, which the doggs had passes to attend, but other party commitments for Saturday night took precedent.

Joe Francis (creator and CEO of the Girls Gone Wild franchise) pulled his huge company bus on to the show floor and, later, delivered an address at the event, but Joe and Michael didn’t attend this appearance. Francis recently got the attention of the press when,  along with famed Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, he requested a five billion dollar bailout from the federal government “just to see us through hard times," he said, in a press release. "The $13 billion industry is in no fear of collapse, but why take chances?" Francis was also quoted as saying. His appearance at the AEE was his latest publicity ploy in a campaign to expand the GGW brand to themed restaurants and clubs.

Here are a few more juicy photos from the exhibit floor of the Adult Entertainment Expo….. 

   
  
 
 

Saturday night, after another day filled with miles and miles of walking and gawking, everyone got together for yet more parties (which will be covered in our next blog post).

On Sunday, with everyone starting to show signs of wear, there was still one major event to participate in, that being AFFILIATE SUMMIT WEST conference, which took place at the Rio Hotel Convention Center. Interestingly, this event was the most positive and promising of all the week’s shows. We’ll cover our experiences at this very vibrant conference within the next few days.

Now for some pretty cool photo highlights of CES 2009…..

 
CONVENTION CENTER CENTRAL FOYER DURING THE CES

SAMSUNG BOOTH	SONY BOOTH

STEVE BALLMER DELIVERING CES KEYNOTE ADDDRESS	TOM HANKS AND HOWARD STRINGER AT THE SONY DEMO

HOWARD STRINGER AND REGGIE JACKSON	USHER PERFORMING AT THE SONY DEMO

INTEL CEO CRAIG BARRETT AND ADAM LEVINE AT CES KEYNOTE	CRAIG BARETT AND ADAM DURITZ AT CES KEYNOTE

ALEX TREBECK AND CONTESTANTS	CES CELEBRITY JEOPARDY SHOW

JIMMY FALLON WITH VIDEO RIG	JIMMY FALLON AND VERONICA BELMONT

REVISION 3 TEKZILLA CREW IN NBC BOOTH	JIM LOUDERBACK

PATRICK NORTON OF REVISION 3	CNET CES BROADCAST BOOTH

MIXED MARTIAL ARTS FIGHTERS ON THE CES EXHIBIT FLOOR	MARK CUBAN AND UFC SUPERSTAR RANDY COUTURE

MICHAEL BUTLER AND JOE IN FRONT OF THE CHEAP TRICK TRUCK	JOE AND A COOL HOT ROD LINCOLN

As usual, it’s not our intent to try and offer comprehensive coverage of this massive industry event. However, there is some great coverage and post-show wrap ups provided by REVISION 3 (in partnership with NBC Universal). Of course, there is lots more CES coverage, including videos, podcasts and photo galleries at CNET, ZDNET, the TECHCRUNCH BLOGS and ENGADGET BLOGS.

It sure was a wild and crazy couple of weeks traveling, not to mention the ten days of nonstop business and madness San Francisco and Vegas—two cities that definitely are not lacking in “action” of any and every kind!

Check back here soon. Coming next, posts about Vegas partying and networking at the AFFILATE SUMMIT WEST conference….