Like many others, I managed to miss Gary Vaynerchuk’s keynote speach at Blog World Expo. Blame jet lag, a late night, whatever.. Nevertheless, I woke up and realized that it was almost 9am! I was pretty bummed, as I have heard the story about how Gary turned his “meager” $4Mil/yr business into a $45Mil juggernaut, thanks to the introduction of video into his site.

Thankfully, John Chow stumbled across Gary’s keynote speech that he gave at the Web 2.0 Expo, and apparently it’s pretty similiar. Check it out here:

http://www.johnchow.com/are-you-ready-to-kill-it/

While at the Cherry Hill Chamber of Commerce Expo a few weeks ago, I visited the booth for Caffe Aldo Lamberti, a high-end Italian restauarant in Cherry Hill NJ. They had a wheel you could spin, and you win whatever it stops at.

Lucky me, I spun and it landed on a $50 gift certificate! Called the wife and told her where we were headed for dinner.

The parking lot at this place is just nuts, with every luxury automobile you can imagine.. SL55s, Bentleys, BMWs as far as the eye can see. My Porsche was in good company! I have always heard good things about this place, but I never make it down this way for some reason..

The menu is pretty impressive.. After a lot of back-and-forth, I finally decided on the Filetto Gorgonzola. It’s wrapped with bacon, has jumbo lump crab meat on top, and it’s filled with gorgonzola cheese. It’s served with spinach and roasted potatoes.

Hands-down, one of the best meals I’ve ever had! At $33, it’s one of the pricier options on the menu, but it’s worth every dollar! (I would have taken a picture John Chow style, but it just wasn’t appropriate..)

If you’re in the South Jersey/Philadelphia area, you definitely should check out Caffe Also Lamberti’s!

I talked at length with one of the guys from Intense Debate on Sunday at BlogWorldExpo, and I was really psyched about implementing their system into one of my more popular blogs. So imagine my surprise when I found out that they were acquired by Automattic this morning, and that a bunch of their functionality will be added to Wordpress 2.7 (which is slated for a November release)!

This is huge news, and a real death blow for other competitors (DISQUS, etc), regardless of how they try to spin it. Ironically, DISQUS was also at Blog World Expo, but their booth gave no indication to what they did, and when I walked over there, I was greeted with a blank stare. Honestly, if you’re not going to run your booth correctly, you might as well just save your money and not exhibit at all!

In any event, congrats to ID, and here’s to a much-needed improvement to the Wordpress core!

I was looking forward to today’s keynote speech (I’m a big Linkin Park fan), but I woke up around 8:45am and realized that I’d never make it in time. Oh well, maybe someone will throw up a video on YouTube or something.

In the first session I attended, two of the speakers were no-shows. Apparently they partied a little too hard the night before, and were nowhere to be found. I’m sorry, but that’s just unprofessional! In any event, they managed to pull off the session even with the no-shows, and it was good.

After that, I went back to the exhibitors hall to hit up some of the vendors I missed the day before. I noticed that the MarketLeverage booth was pretty much empty, so I headed over there to try my hand at the Cashinator. In retrospect, I should have watched John Chow’s video beforehand, as it would have given me some good pointers. But video and the iPhone don’t mix, so I missed out. Still, I managed to grab a paltry $14, which would pay for my taxi ride back to the airport later this evening.

The “networking reception” included some finger foods, and a bunch of alcohol (who the heck is drinking at 1:30pm on a Sunday?!).. The food was better than the $9 pizza I had the day before, but it would have been nice if they mentioned it. By the time my partner made his way to the hall, all the food was gone!

And of course, I loaded up on more Jones Soda!

I talked to the exhibitors who I needed to, and then headed back to the hotel to decompress before my red-eye back home. Again, I wish I would have booked a longer stay in Vegas, but there was too much going on back home unfortunately.

Going through my free t-shirts, one thing was clear - American Apparel shirts rock, and are SOOOO much better than all the rest of the cheap crap out there. If you’re a company that’s giving out t-shirts, spend the extra $$ and get a high-quality t-shirt from AA. Otherwise, it’ll just end up in my drawer, never to be worn again.

Looking back on the show, I was pretty happy with how it turned out. I never did hook up with Tyler Cruz, but I ran into John Chow on Sunday morning (and got a free Izea t-shirt), and saw Zac Johnson and Shoemoney passing by a few times. I met some cool people, made a bunch of business connections, and got some free swag. All in all, a good trip!

Here’s hoping for a show on the East Coast in the future, as I’m getting tired of this constant cross-country traveling. (On commercial airlines, no less!)

I should have planned this trip better. But the workaholic I am, I decided to fly into Vegas late Friday night. Of course, on Friday morning I found out about the free tickets from Blog4Tix, and I was a bit ticked off.. Between that and the TechSet party that night, I felt like I was missing out.

My business partner had flown in on Thursday, and he had a great time at Blue Man Group (4th row seats!) and at the party. Saturday morning came way too early (I didn’t get into my hotel until 2am EST), and I missed the keynote speech. But 10am rolled around, and it was time to start hiting the exhibit hall before the sessions started!

There was an interesting mix of exhibitors there, and I was surprised to see so many of them giving out free t-shirts. I’m used to free pens, stress balls, and other junk.. Had I known this, I would have brought a bigger suitcase!

The problem this quickly caused was that the little plastic bag they gave us wouldn’t hold many shirts at all. In prior conferences, the main sponsor would usually give out a decent sized tote, and that would do the trick. (A few hours latern I stumbled across the BlogCritics booth, and they had the perfect tote for all my swag!)

Anyway, at 11am I headed to my first session. It seems like a few of the speakers had partied a little too hard the night before (strip clubs at 3am, etc), but they managed to pull it off nonetheless. By about 1:30pm, I was getting pretty hungry, and was surprised to find that there wasn’t any lunch provided (old literature had indicated that lunch was included).. $9 later, I’m chowing down on a mediocre pizza and some HEAVENLY Jones Soda. Jones Soda was a big sponsor of the show, and I totally fell in love with their Cola (made with pure sugar cane instead of HFCS)!

A few hours later, we went back to the hotel, got some dinner, and later headed over to the “welcome reception”, where we found a mountain of food. DOH! We weren’t the only people that had eaten prior. It would have been nice if someone would have mentioned that beforehand.

In any event, we had a decent time there, and then headed over to the Zappos.com party at Prive in Planet Hollywood. That was total chaos, and you couldn’t even move in there. After 15 minutes, we bounced and hit a few casinos, before calling it an early night.

So I had almost a month to shed some weight for BlogWorldExpo.. And just like Diddy in Making The Band 4, I failed miserably. I didn’t make it to the gym even ONCE, and as such I didn’t lose any weight.

September got REALLY hectic, and every day there was a new excuse for not going to the gym. But at the end of the day, I’m to blame. I could have woken up earlier, I could have worked out on my lunch, I could have skipped some TV, I should have eaten better.. It’s a struggle.

Back when I worked a regular 9-5 job, I would work out at the company gym on my lunch hour, and it was simple..

So if you see me at the show, please excuse the little bun in the oven.