Techlicious Moms recap: sharing what's new and shiny from NYC!

Well, I'm back from a visit to NYC and the Techlicious Moms bloggers conference (part of CE Week), thanks to the generous support of Cohn and Wolfe.  I was so thrilled to go to this event with amazing bloggers Cindy Meltzer (The Social Craft) and Robin Chiacchieri Ruehrwein (aka Masshole Mommy) and get to know them a bit better to on the ride down. Check out their blogs for recaps and their own spin on the consumer electronics they liked down at the show!

Here are just a few of the key learnings... more in the Cinch audio box to the right. New and shiny insights and discoveries:


-- Acela is pretty awesome - when it runs on time and not delayed by downed powerlines. Yeesh.
-- Cohn and Wolfe - I'm now a fangirl of this PR firm and their digital practice. Hope I can work with them again; their work for clients like Panasonic, Walmart, and many consumer products is innovative.

AOC's Multitouch E2239 - sharp, plug
and play, great with a laptop

-- Blogger panels - pretty interesting to hear from smart, engaged, experienced bloggers about their tips for brand folks on how to work with bloggers.  The three panelists (check out their podcast Blogging Angels here) had pretty much this to say to brand managers and marketers: read our darn blogs, especially the "about me" page. Don't call us all "mom bloggers" or (worse) "mommy bloggers".  Do read our blogs and garner information about us before you pitch us (just like traditional media pitches). You get the idea.
-- Techlicious gave a great workshop on tech tools, including how to take better photos and videos. I learned more about Adobe Photoshop Elements 9, including how to watermark and otherwise "mark" a photofile to avoid someone stealing my property on another blog.  I'm powering up Photoshop 9 this week to give it another try... that workshop was great motivation to keep checking out the "201" level functions.
-- To learn more about Adobe, check out this video here from Adobe TV. Great instructional video, kinda odd voice though. Guess you only have to watch it once. Take notes.

Amazing handheld scanner - great for travel, paperwork, cards and photos.

-- New and shiny companies I visited from the CE Week showroom floor: Mimobot flashdrives, McAfee security products, Multitouch USB-plug in touch monitors by Envision Peripherals, scanners and photo printers by VuPoint Solutions, and the way-cool Cell Handle (my fave) you attach to the back of your iPhone so you don't drop it.

-- We then had a great lunch with Chad Latz and Amanda from Cohn and Wolfe and talked about their digital practice and experience with global bloggers on behalf of global brands. [Did you know there are over 2 million "mammebloggers" in Italy?]


I'll write about this separately, but I also enjoyed learning more about internet safety from the good folks at McAfee and met the very dedicated Stanley Holditch, a product evangelist for consumers. He turned us on to some tips and tools that I'll go into detail about later this week.  (Pace yourself, monkey.)


A great time at CE Week was had by this shiny monkey... keep swinging by to see more new and shiny things discovered in the jungles of CE Week.  Thanks again Techlicious and Cohn and Wolfe... you are terrific hosts.


Disclosure: My Shiny Monkey attended CE Week as a guest of Cohn & Wolfe.  Gift bags were received at the end of the conference as a thank you for attending, but all opinions are my own.