The last week of April began what has been a month of travel, conferences, and fun. It kicked off with a bang, though, as it all started with a trip to Walt Disney World to attend Disney’s Social Media Moms Celebration!

This was our third year attending this family-inclusive conference and as always, we had a great time. It’s great to be able to take the family along and have events that are for the whole family! It definitely makes it easier when trying to balance work and life.

Speakers at this year’s Social Media Moms Celebration included Chris Brogan, Peter Shankman, Ramon De Leon, Amy Jo Martin, and Lisa Druxman. They each spoke on a variety of topics, ranging from how they use social media in their businesses, to how they balance out their lives. It’s fair to say that the overall message from the speakers was that you need to create your own success and find the fun in life.

Here are some of the snippets I shared via Twitter from the presentations we heard:

The Social Media Moms Celebration also included a day of mini-sessions, of which I attended a Doc McStuffins presentation. I was able to learn more about this new show on Disney Junior and hear from the show’s creator about the inspiration behind Doc McStuffins – she saw a need for helping children learn about doctor visits after being in and out of the hospital with her son his first year of life. It was also very interesting to find out that when she pitched the show to Disney, her son was about 8 months old and the show did not premiere until he was almost 5 years old!

Between pirate-themed family dinners, a night-time visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and a sneak peek at the new resort, Disney’s Art of Animation, my family really enjoyed themselves. Personally, I was able to reconnect with many friends from our blogging community and learn more about how Disney world provides families with many opportunities to create memories. One of the strongest statements made during the conference that resonated with the majority of attendees was that we only have eighteen summers with our children to make lasting memories before they leave our house (traditionally). Wow, right?! Eighteen years! That’s it!

What are some of the more special memories you’ve been able to create with your children so far?

I encourage you to search the #DisneySMMoms hashtag on Twitter to find links to more posts from other Disney Social Media Moms Celebration attendees. I’m sure you’ll get a variety of stories from the conference and a wealth of information about Walt Disney World!

Photo: Josh Hallett

I went to my first tweet-up on Friday night. I was hesitant to go since it was at 10:30 pm and though I’d like to think I’m still a partying, clubbing kinda girl, truth is, that being a mami makes 10:30 my bed-time. Plus you know, there’s the whole I have a daughter thing.

But, there were some big names attending. I saw a tweet late Thursday night (can’t remember from who) that there was a tweet-up scheduled and that Chris Brogan, Wendy Piersall, Brian Clark, Ted Murphy, and Jeremy Shoemaker were all going to be in Orlando. That would be @chrisbrogan, @emom, @copyblogger, @tedmurphy, and @shoemoney in twitter-speak.

Why where they all in Orlando on the same night?

After asking around a bit on Twitter, I found out they were here for an IZEA Blogger Advisory Board Meeting.

So I start thinking…

I want to meet eMom!

I’ve never really seen a tweet-up in Orlando been done.

How often would all these folks be together at the same time and ummm around the corner from me?

I put all my hesitation aside and decided to go.

The result?

Wendy, Susan, and me
Photo via Wendy

I ended up meeting Susan Payton, who was super nice and offered for us to ride together. She already knew Wendy from writing on her Sparkplugging network. Wendy greeted me with a hug, not a handshake. Great, isn’t it?

I also got a chance to talk with Chris Brogan who made me laugh when he said that Orlando is “a cultural vacuum cleaner.” I told him I am Puerto Rican, so I guess I proved his point. He later asked me on twitter if that was rude.

All in all, it was a great time and I’m glad I went. I know I could have done better in talking about ModernMami.com, but I guess I was a little nervous. But, hopefully my face/name will be remembered a bit.

Do you have any tweet-up experiences to share? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.