Mom2.0Summit Day 2

In my last post about the Mom2.0 Summit, I shared with you my experience during my first day at the conference.  The second day was just as good as the first, if not better!  You can also view a video recap of my day.

Mom2.0Summit Day 2 – Yoga hosted by Motrin

The day began with a 45 minute yoga class at 6:45 a.m.  It was a beautiful, sunny, Florida morning with blue skies and the temperature was perfect.  There were about 50 women in the garden area where we had the class.  What a wonderful way to kick off the second day of the conference and energize ourselves before breakfast.  I went back to the room, took a quick shower, had some FaceTime with the kids as they got ready for the bus and then went down to the lawn to eat breakfast quickly before the opening session.

Opening Session

Julianna Margulies was the keynote speaker for the opening session and she was phenomenal!  Jess Weiner and Julianna spoke about the perception of women in business, doing what is right for you, social media as an actor, how to raise your children and aging.  Some of the takeaways I got from their conversation were the following:

• When you are in a transition in life, listen to yourself.  Do what is right for you, not what is right for other people.
• Listen to your body.  You don’t have to do it all.  It is ok to say no, or this not right for me.
• In regards to your social media presence – be careful how you want the world to perceive you.
• We have to be responsible in the way we raise our children in this age of social media.  We have to teach our children to think before you tweet!
• We have to stop beating up on each other.  Get dressed up for your girlfriends!  Make going out with your girlfriends and event.
• Raise our boys to be men.  It’s ok for our sons to see mommy go to work.
• There is no balance – you have to sacrifice some things for other things.  Be careful what you are sacrificing.
• When women have to raise their voice and be commanding in a position they are looked at like a bitch; but if you are a man they are thought of as good leaders.

I could have listened to Julianna and Jess talk all day.  You can watch some of the interview on my YouTube Channel.

Market Place

After the Welcome and keynote conversation there was time for a networking break at the Market Place.  This is where we had the time to visit all the sponsors and form relationships with their brands so when we returned home we could write about them and identify opportunities to become affiliates or brand ambassadors.  I had some great conversations with Munchkin, Fresh Wave, Treehouse and Flipp.

We were also surprised with a chance to win a Google home by visiting the Best Buy suite and taking a tour of their networked home.  I was very impressed by the technology that is available to make your home a connected home with the use of several Samsung products, appliances and Google home.  And I was a lucky winner to take home a Google home for my house!  The kids love it and love to play trivia with it.  I love the ability to ask it questions when the kids ask me something I don’t know, or I can set a time hands-free, set an alarm to get out to the bus stop, or just ask it to play music.

At the Market Place we were loaded up with bags and more bags with samples and swag!  I was told to pack an extra suitcase for this conference and now I knew why!  I love that I can take photos of the products that I am sampling, use them myself and then I can give my honest opinion to my readers about what I learned about each product.  Because there were so many vendors, and also so many great hands-on workshops that I wanted to attend, I had a hard time visiting every booth.  So i did the best I could to get to the most important ones on my list.

The following sponsors were at the Market Place:

• Dove
• Kia
• Amazon FreeTime
• Best Buy
• Facebook
• Prudential
• Similac
• Munchkin Grass Fed
• G.H. Cretors(R) Popped Corn
• Green Giant
• GSK
• MOTRIN
• UP TV
• Canadian Lentils
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Domain.me
• Eagle Brand
• SmartyPants Vitamins
• Fresh Wave(R)
• Mini Babybel(R)
• TarcherPerigee
• Flipboard
• Treehouse
• Toca Boca
• Olive Garden
• Flipp
• OxiClean
• TODAY Parenting Team
• BuzzFeed

Hands-On Workshops

The hands-on workshop I was most interested in attending was Live streaming 2.0 – Understanding the Platforms, the Tools and Opportunities.  When I learned about the Mom2.0Summit and saw the list of Iris Award nominees, Cat & Nat and Meredith Masony from “That’s Inappropriatete” caught my attention.  They were nominated as for Breakout of the Year.  So I needed to learn what they were all about.  They were hysterical!  Also, Kristin Hensley and Jen Smedley from “I Mom So Hard” are now on my top 3 to watch in my feeds.  I love the tell it like it is approach from these moms.  But what impressed me the most is the number of followers they have!  So I needed to learn how this whole live streaming trend was happening.  I also wanted a front row seat so I could be closer to Cat & Nat and meet them in person!

Their workshop was great.  I learned about some tools to use for simulcasting on multiple platforms, brand integration, setting up events on Facebook ahead of the broadcast to notify people when you will be going live, using your metrics to find out where your biggest audience is.  Funneling from periscope, to an email list, to a Facebook group.  All these little tidbits of information that I hadn’t considered when working live streaming into your digital strategy.  It’s a whole new chapter for me that I have on my goals radar.

After the workshop Cat & Nat were going live with Meredith so the Cat & Nat stalkers followed them over to the TODAY Parents booth where they were going to live-stream from and watched them in action.  It was fun!

Dove Self-Esteem Workshop

For lunch I attended the Dove Self-Esteem workshop with Jess Weiner.  When I arrived groups were forming to create videos to have us talk about real stories about ourselves.  I was in a group with Mona (from lunch the previous day) and Karen Hartzell.  We shared about what we were insecure about in our childhood and then how or why that doesn’t bother us now as adults.  I shared how insecure and shy I was when I was younger and I feel like I am the complete opposite of that now as an adult.  Especially in the last few years.  I think when I began running and joined a running community, I became less shy because everyone, especially my runDisney friends, had a shared common interest.

After that Jess shared with us how girls perceive themselves today.  She said that middle school girls’ self esteem drops compared to girls in the third grade.  I have a daughter in third grade and I am very careful about the way I speak about myself, other women and people in general.  I never want her to think less of herself or criticize her appearance.  I want her to be comfortable with her body all the time.  When I am not happy with something about myself, I take care of it on my own but my children see what I do as a part of my lifestyle (eating healthy, exercising and running).

RISE

The theme of the Mom2.0Summit was Rise.  The afternoon keynote speakers spoke about how to Rise Up, Rise and Shine, Rise Above and Rise Beyond.  Each speaker was incredible.  Gabrielle Bernstein, Sheinelle Jones, Mary Jennings Hegar and Tala Raasii each shared personal stories of how they used challenges in their life to Rise above and beyond them to shine in their own way.

The points I took away from each of these wonderful women were:

From Gabrielle:

• What is actually working in this moment now.
• Claim ownership over the way we want to feel.
• Your feelings form your experience.
• If you want change your experiences, you have to change the way you experience your experiences.

From Sheinelle:

• How do people feel when you walk into a room?  How do your kids act when you walk into a room?
  what energy do you give off?
• Always believe in the special abilities God has created for you.
• Two gifts to give your kids, roots and wings.
• Girls compete with one another women empower one another.

From Mary:

• Empathize with people who try to shoot you down.
• What do you when you are afraid of a challenge?
• Every time something scares you punch it in the face.

From Tala:

• Do things that you love.  If you love things so much it has a purpose from you.
• Believe in what you want to do and follow through with it.
• Overcoming the most difficult changes in life will set you on fire.
• It’s human nature to focus on the catastrophe of what if .
• It’s better to be at the bottom of the staircase of what you want to be on then to be on the top of one that you don’t want to be on.

How can you not walk away from hearing such powerful statements like these from such awesome women who are or have overcome challenges in their lives.  After the speakers, I skipped the last workshop session of the day and continued to visit the Market Place and interact with the vendors.  Then I dropped everything off at my room and hurried down to the Dove Real Beauty Suite to have my hair done for the Cabana Party.

Cabana Party

The Cabana Party was fun!  It was held on the Da Vinci Lawn and I spent the majority of my time there at the Up TV booth playing Trivia.  The women running the booth experienced some wi-fi issues so I offered my phone as a hotspot so they could run the game.  It was a lot of fun and Barry Watson, the star of the new UP show Date My Dad played along with us for a few rounds!

After Party

The Cabana party ended around 8:00 p.m. and a group of us went to the hotel lounge to spend some time together.  It was a great time!  I was with Sarah and Lori Strong, Laura Christman and Steve Jones from Tree house, and Mandy Bennett from Eagle Family Foods Group.  We enjoyed several hours of laughter, stories, drinks and appetizers.  Steve’s wife and kids even came down to hang out for a little bit.  It was a lot of fun and I loved how easy it was to hook up with people and enjoy a good time together.

This conference has been one of the best conferences I ever attended.  It had such an easy, open environment for people to get to know one another, network, and learn from one another.

Here’s my recap video of Day 2.