That is Toni, Corrin and myself on the ride.

We enjoyed the Believe show with Shamu.

The Clyde & Seymour show was hysterical due to several cast mistakes and uncooperative animals!

Corrin, Dave and Laurie had a lot of fun feeding the animals through out the park.

We all had a great time enjoying all of the attractions at SeaWorld Florida.

The post SeaWorld Orlando appeared first on The Mom Maven.

@MomMaven @ItsToni @CorrinRenee @Laurie_Pooh @DecipherYou

alone well. This was going to stretch me and kick me out of my comfort zone right off the bat. But, I left Izeafest on Sunday knowing I made 5 new good friends and a lot of acquaintences.

I’ve already told you about the trials of my Thursday getting to Orlando and checking into the hotel. As a follow up to that post I will tell you that today they finally charged me for my room and they put it on the wrong card so I was doing some creative financial moves this morning!

I can’t go into detail about the sessions because I am still digesting all the meat we were fed by the amazing line up of speakers, and trying to figure out what it all means for The Mom Maven. I will say Ted Murphy encouraged us to define our personal brand and solidify our identity. Brian Clark gave us a 3 step blog traffic strategy. The screen gems were, ahem, “hot” and entertaining. Rae Hoffman and Michael Gray are amazing at SEO but I didn’t understand a thing they were talking about! Sarah Evans is an amazing, passionate speaker. Lucretia Pruitt can keep a strong panel in order and share about Social Media Promotion. That was all day 1!!

Friday night brought to a VIP party at IceBar Orlando. I don’t normally do the bar scene but this was a networking opportunity and I had to experience the ice room. We had a lot of fun and relaxed as we networked and listened to some interesting karaoke.

Saturday was again filled with great learning opportunities. The day’s keynote was given by Aaron Brazell who inspired us to be better people and better bloggers. Brett Bumeter moderated a panel on “What Advertisers Want” and I think the key is authenticity. Chris Brogan spoke on “Go Deep or Go Home” and being self-aware not self-involved. Then the entire conference was taken over by a 14 year old boy who, while walking into SeaWorld with his family, saw the Izeafest banner and asked to spend the day at the conference instead of in the park! That eloquent teen entrepreneur is Tommy Fishback. Pay attention to that name. He will be famous someday soon. Ted Murphy and Dan Rua closed out the conference with the introduction of Izea’s latest offering, Sponzai-sponsored guest posts.

Saturday night found us at Howl at the Moon. I must admit, this party was a let down. Our VIP party was about 100 Izeafest attenders all dressed up, sitting outside in rickety folding chairs in the hot Florida night, listening to 2 pianists and a drummer bang out requests. The night wasn’t a total loss though, I got to speak with our MC for the weekend-the amazing Bob Kodzis and “The Crocs Guy” George Smith. We left the party early so we could pack and get ready to hit SeaWorld Orlando Sunday morning. I’ll share more about SeaWorld in another post though.

I am thankful that Izea Insider Corrin chose me as one of her ticket winners so that I could attend Izeafest-but I am more thankful that after last weekend I can call her “friend”. I am also thankful to Hotels Combined for sponsoring my hotel stay. It was a wonderful weekend that I won’t soon forget.

The post Izeafest Wrap-Up appeared first on The Mom Maven.

My room is nice though I was surprised that for an upscale hotel there is no refrigerator in the room, only a cooler. The in-room internet is $14.95 a day but it is free in the lobby so…I am in the lobby. Also, in my opinion it is crazy to charge $12 a day to park your car at the hotel!! Anyway, I checked my Paypal stuff while I was in the lobby and there is plenty of money in the account, thanks to my sponsor Hotels Combined. The problem is they were adding $150 more to the bill than it is supposed to be! I went to the check-in desk and I was informed that it is standard policy at high-end hotels to put an extra $50 a night in the hold they put on your credit card, to cover any incidentals you charge to your room. Hmmm, I guess I stay in the affordable, family friendly hotels because I have never had this happen before. I explained that I wasn’t going to charge anything to the room and I didn’t have the $150 in either account to cover this. After a lot of the desk clerk insisting and me offering to go pack my bags and find another hotel to stay in, he said he would see if he could omit the $150 from the hold. He said he would talk to his superior and there would be a message on my phone later telling me the outcome. Fun!

I haven’t hooked up with any of my friends because most of them went to Howl-O-Scream tonight. I went to Friendly’s for dinner and now I am sitting near a waterfall in the hotel lobby writing.

The event kicks off tomorrow morning over at Ports of Call at SeaWorld. I’ll be updating here when I can but I will definitely be updating my Whrrl Story so keep checking in there!

The post Izeafest Thursday appeared first on The Mom Maven.

I thought I’d give you a few hints into how you will be able to recognize me.

I have 4 of these shirts so I'll be wearing them each day.

I won this when @shamu was @realshamu on Twitter.

This goes with my dress for Friday night's party at Ice Bar Orlando.

I’m just about packed and I’ll be hitting the road around lunch time. This is my first blogging conference and I can’t wait to get started. I’m not going to the kick off at Howl-O-Scream so if you are hanging out at the Renaissance Hotel and want to network, tweet me @MomMaven. I will be tweeting, blogging, whrrling and Facebooking the event so stay tuned and make sure you check out hashtag #izeafest on Twitter.

Friday and Saturday are the conference days and there are tons of the top bloggers who will be speaking. I know I have so much to learn so that I can take this blog to the next level. Sunday is Bloggers Invade SeaWorld Day. I will be riding Manta at some point in the day, yikes! I am not a roller coaster lover but, I promised I would ride it so I will.

I hope you have a great weekend! I’m sure I will.

The post IZEAFest Here I Come! appeared first on The Mom Maven.

We are becoming a great team! I love to travel and www.hotelscombined.com is the most complete accomodation meta-search engine in the world. It combines over 900,000 hotel deals worldwide. So what does that mean? It means, instead of searching multiple hotel and travel sites around the web for your next busines trip or family vacation, you just need to go to www.hotelscombined.com and type in where you want to go and when you want to be there. Then www.hotelscombined.com does the search for you and brings you back the best matches for your query.

I am also tweeting for www.hotelscombined.com please follow @hotelscombined2 on Twitter. I tweet about vacation ideas and hotel deals, no spam I promise.

Thank you www.hotelscombined.com for partnering with me.

If you are going to Izeafest, please come say “Hi!” I’ll be wearing the blue Hotels Combined t-shirts each day.

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I have been a fan of IZEA for a while now, I believe in what they do to promote sponsored conversations on blogs and other social media forums. I feel that with the FTC looking at regulating bloggers and the compensation they receive for blogging about products, sponsored conversations are going to become the norm and IZEA is the cutting edge.

Izeafest will take place October 1-4 at SeaWorld Orlando. The list of speakers at this event is a who’s who of blogging and social media:

• Ted Murphy CEO of IZEA
• Aaron Braazell of technosailor.com
• Chris Brogan of ChrisBrogan.com
• Darren Rowse of Problogger.com
• George Smith of Crocs.com
• Sarah Evans of PRSarahEvans.com
• Wendy Piersall of Sparkplugging.com…….and many more

The IZEAFest website describes the event as,

“An interactive event designed to educate, inform and connect social media enthusiasts. Meet the world’s foremost social media experts in a collaborative, fun and open setting. Learn how to grow your traffic, build your brand and make more money online.”

The only thing that has me concerned is…on Sunday 10/4/09 the IZEAFest bloggers are invading SeaWorld Orlando. Ok, I love SeaWorld-Shamu, Clyde, Seymore and all of their friends. What has me concerened is…to enter the contest I had to agree to ride Manta, SeaWorld Florida‘s newest roller coaster and the only flying coaster in Florida! I am not a roller coaster lover but I will ride Manta. (Yikes!)

I have 16 weeks until IZEAFest and I need to reach a few personal and business goals before then. I need you, my loyal readers to hold me accountable and help me towards these goals.

1. I would like to lose at least 20 lbs before I go.
2. I need to earn enough additional money monthly so that I can upgrade to a smartphone & pay for the plan- so I can blog and tweet from the event. (It just isn’t practical to lug my laptop through SeaWorld-and my battery only lasts 15 minutes anyway.)
3. I need to find a sponsor to cover the cost of my lodging and dinners during the conference. If you know of a business, company or benefactor who may want to sponsor me, please share this link with them http://themommaven.com/sponsorship-opp/

If you would like to come to IZEAFest there are still tickets available, just click the IZEAFest link. October is a beautiful time to visit central Florida and I’d love to get to meet you.

The post I’m Going to IZEAFest! appeared first on The Mom Maven.