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With a little over three hours sleep I got up at 3:15am on Friday morning, put myself together as best as I could and got out the door less than an hour later. Piloting my car to the driving sound of the new Disturbed album I made it down to Atlanta in a little less than five hours thanks to rush hour traffic that slowly my roll for the last twenty miles or so.
Racing (ok, walking quickly) into the Sheraton hoping to get in and registered before the opening keynote started I felt the presence of greatness. It turned out to be Superman himself, Ron Mattocks. Shortly thereafter I got to shake hands with Chris Singer and thus began my adventure at the Modern Media Man Summit.
Overall it was a great, albeit short, time. While we were going down for all the great content the conference organizers had lined up I was excited to meet a great group of men and dads.
In addition to Ron and Chris I got to meet the one and only John Cave Osborne (and his lovely bride Lovie), Chris Lewis from Dad of Divas, Kevin Metzger from TheDADvocate Project (please go take his survey if you haven’t already), the fine gentlemen of DadLabs and many others that I know I’m forgetting as I’m trying to do a massive purge of stuff from my head.
I’m pleased to report that every one of them are as nice and genuine as they appear on their blogs. My introverted nature kept me from venturing too far out of my comfort zone once the ice was initially broken with the group I did meet, so there are plenty of people that I regrettably did not speak with.
Another major thing for me was reconnecting with my fellow Bentley alum, C.C. Chapman. It had been nearly a decade since I had seen him in person last when we would meet up for lunch at great Thai place in Newton, Massachusetts.
If you’ve been reading my blog for long enough then you’ll recognize his name because it was him and his various media channels that inspired me to give this whole blogging thing a go. He’s even been kind enough to participate in things like my Any Major Dad series and be interviewed about podcasting for the music column I used to write over at Dad Blogs.
Getting involved in social media has reinvigorated me and gives me hope for my post at-home career. For that I owe a huge debt to C.C., I just hope he never actually expects a check 
Aside from meeting people whose writing is immeasurably better than mine, there were plenty of sessions that I was eager to sit in on. There was a great session by Jason Falls from Social Media Explorer and C.C.’s “State of the Dad”.
Another session from the first day that I liked was an author’s panel featuring Ron, John and Danny Evans of Dad Gone Mad. All three gentlemen were funny and informative as they shared their stories of getting their books published through both traditional and self-publishing channels.
I closed out my first day of action by terrorizing the streets of Atlanta by test driving some of the vehicles that Chevrolet brought with them to the conference. They were the M3 Summit’s headlining sponsor and really put on quite a show (I’ll touch on this a little more tomorrow).
The second day there was lots of great information about Dads and Brands in the morning keynote by Dad Central Consulting and a great session on Volunteerism before I had to hit the road home. That last one was of particular interest to me as I am determined to incorporate a social good aspect in any business venture I pursue in the future.
If there was anything that I heard over the course of the day and a half that I was able to be there that didn’t sit well with me, it was the opening keynote from Charles J. Orlando that I narrowly missed. Charles is an author and a Facebook evangelist. His claim to fame is that he took his book’s page from 50 “likes” to over 60,000 “likes”.
No doubt that is an impressive feat and he is quite focused on engagement on his page, which is very important. However, he admitted he doesn’t blog, barely updates his site and pretty much all I heard in his speech was Facebook, Facebook, Facebook.
On this point I respectfully disagree. Facebook is a great tool, but it shouldn’t be your be all end all if you are looking to develop a business or a brand. You don’t control Facebook and they quite often change the rules of the game whenever they feel like it. I am firmly of the opinion that your blog or site, something you own and control, should always be your home base.
The entire time he was speaking all I could wonder if Christoper S. Penn would be banging his head against the table if he was sitting in the room right then.
Other than that, it was an excellent time and a fun event for my very first social media conference. My sincere hope is that things went well enough for the sponsors and the organizers that this is the first of many and that it will grow with each passing year.
And if you’re wondering about the title of this post, well, that is a tip of the cap to Mr. Mattocks. You can read all about Chuck Norris and his presence at the M3 Summit by perusing Ron’s Twitter stream or searching the #M3Summit hashtag.
Photo credit: dsearls on Flickr
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