I’m not afraid to say that Blogs with Balls is my favorite conference — and I’m sure you can guess why. The founders are amazing, the panelists always blow me away, and the conferences are held in the coolest locations with the best after parties. This year it will be back in New York at one of the most spectacular corporate offices in the country — Bloomberg Global Headquarters.

Blogs with Balls (BWB) is the leading sports new media event series in the country and is attended by the premiere sports media experts. I have presented at the BWB conference before, but this year I am particularly excited because Bloomberg Sports is hosting and the conference is being held at their headquarters. Of course, the best part (as usual) is the line-up of other panelists who I’ll be presenting with. There are 35 in all, including advertising, sports blogs, and sports entertainment. Basically, you’ll learn something if you just walk by the building. However, you’re guaranteed to learn something if you actually come to the event (and the pre- and post- parties on Friday and Saturday). If you’re wondering what you can you expect to learn from me, have no fear. We’re not just fanboys over here at Carrot. We have worked with some of the largest sports brands around: MLB.com, NASCAR, the NFL and most recently Burton Snowboards. Let’s just say we know what we’re talking about.

Panels will be covering a wide range of topics, but they will fall into one of the three objectives of BWB:

1. Facilitate best practice discussions for the online sports media community
2. Educate companies and advertisers on how to best utilize online sports opinion influencers and how to best interact with their audiences
3. Provide insight and strategy for athletes, teams, leagues and their representatives who are looking to tap into emerging mediums

Pre-sale tickets for the event are available now, but probably not for much longer. The conference is coming up fast, it’s already only a month away on Saturday, September 24th! You can purchase your tickets here.

This article is copyright © 2012 

It was very enlightening and very inspiring, same as last year. I was blown away by the sheer beauty of Doyald Young’s work from his new book Dangerous Curves. Big ornate loopy swashes: not my thing, but still amazing. Highlight of the conference however, was rushing to finish dinner before Spiekermann’s entertaining talk at the Albright-Knox Gallery (and sitting down just in time).

Bonus was that I finally got to spend some time with my friend Nicole, who I studied with in Germany. I saw her parent’s house, her mom babied me because I was sick and her dad and I talked baseball. Which is what it should be like every time you meet someone’s parents for the first time. Mmm, italian hospitality.

It was a good time, and you know what, I’ll probably make it three in a row with Atlanta next year.

This article is copyright © 2012 

If anyone else is going to be at the workshop, please let me know so we can meet up!

This article is copyright © 2012