jeremyvaught

I had a fantastic time at the New Media Expo this previous weekend. It was a great time connecting with old friends, fellow Seesmic employees, Seesmic users, and introducing new friends to Seesmic.

Tim and Emile Bourquin, the guys that put on this conference, are always the most professional and friendly of anyone. So it was nice to see them again and chat with them, if even for a few minutes.

I ran into a lot of old friends of course, ran into new friends from SXSW and online, and met new friends. I’ll probably forget a few, but I’m going to give it my best shot. Tim and Emile Bourquin, CC Chapman, iJustine, CJ and Dan, Jason Tucker, Natalie Gellman, Brent Spore, Brian Shaler, Victor Cajiao, Steve, LeeAnn, and Tim Webb, James Archer, Britney Mason, Documentally, Evo Terra, Sheila Dee, TheDiva Rockin, Steve Garfield, Adam Christianson, Dan Klass, Rob Walsh, Nicole and Mark Spag, Molly Berry, Tim Street, Michael Goehagen, Gary Vaynerchuk, AJ Vaynerchuk, Kelly Sutton, and more I’m sure. Sorry if I missed you!

Now that that is out of the way, I went to the NME to represent Seesmic in our first booth ever. Seesmic of course is the company that was started by Loic Le Meur that is enabling video conversation where you want it.

I think we had a good conference. There weren’t as many people at the conference as I had hoped, but of those that were there, which was plenty, all came through our booth and received Seesmic very well. An advantage we have, is that Seesmic gets a lot of buzz, so most people have heard of it, even if they have never used it, which made them curious as to what we actually do.

It was so much fun to talk to everyone about Seesmic and introduce them, or fill them in on some of the other things we do. In a nutshell, we have Seesmic.com, the embedded player, and we power video comments for most bogging platforms. It was fun to describe these three features, and different people were attracted to different aspects. For those following along, we also have Twhirl, a microblogging client, but we didn’t discuss that at the expo unless is specifically came up. I also got a lot of feedback about what current users want, and what prospective users would like to see, and the common denominator was mobile. iPhone and Nokia’s Symbian. To answer that question, I don’t know when these are coming out, but they are in the works.

At the conference, I was there representing with Thomas Knoll, the Seesmic Community Manager, Joan Lockwood, the PR Manager for Seesmic and Vinvin, the Vice President of Seesmic. I have met Thomas and Vinvin before, but Joan I met for the first time. Seesmic employees are so fantastic and I have not met any that I do not like. Joan is no different. She is awesome.

Melissa summed up pretty well what it is like to meet the people that use Seesmic. “… [Seesmicers] are nicer than really nice orphans…” People like Langley, Miss Something, Kevin Spidel, Molly Berry, Gary Vaynerchuk, iJustine, Faboomama, Mayjah, Rachel, and a few others I’m sure I’m forgetting.

Finally, a topic that was often discussed at this years NME, was the future of the NME. It was discussed that a lot of people didn’t come because of the economy. Also, Vegas was a hard place because it is expensive to put on a party, and there are no great places that were really central to the convention center. Ontario had the Marriot, which was nice, but that was it. I had a chance to talk to Tim Bourquin while he was checking out of his hotel, but he wouldn’t bite on where the next NME will be held. We should have an announcement it two weeks is the word from Tim. Speculation is San Francisco, you heard it hear first. :)

Also, check out my Flickr pics here.