Do It Myself Blog – Glenda Watson Hyatt

I’m sitting in my hotel room at Westin Alexandria in Virginia, after spending a rather hot day wheeling around Washington, DC. I had a fantastic day seeing lots in a short time! I’ll post pictures once I get home and can download them from my camera.

My iPad battery is about to die and my Internet access is about end unless I pay another $9.95 for 24 hours, so I will keep this short. I just wanted to see what it’s like to write a post on my iPad and to see what it looks like after hitting publish.

I received this email from Jason Teitelman at BlogCatalog about an exciting upcoming event:

Hello Friend,

I just wanted to take a second and let you know about an upcoming BloggersUnite event, People First: Empowering People with Disabilities. It is taking place on July 24, 2010 and the goal of this event is to raise awareness about the challenges that face people with disabilities every day and how we can help eliminate these challenges.

By sharing stories of how you, a friend, a colleague, or maybe a family member have dealt with the challenges of living with a disability, we can raise awareness about this issue and bring down some of the barriers to equal accessibility and participation that exist today for people with disabilities.

If you don’t have a personal story to share, you can still help! Write about an organization that provides support to people with disabilities or that is helping to provide equal access. Let you readers know some facts about the number of people living with disabilities, the challenges they face, and how each of us can work towards creating a society that provides equal access to everyone regardless of our physical or mental abilities.

Whatever you choose to write about, we’d be thrilled to have you write a post as part of this event. Read more information about the event.

Thanks for reading and have a great day,

Jason Teitelman

I hope you can join me and fellow bloggers on July 24th to empower people with disabilities. Together we can raise awareness and make changes happen!

Thanks,
Glenda

After a year in the making and too many late nights these past couple of weeks, I am excited to announce that Blog Accessibility Mastermind is being launched today!

Blog Accessibility Mastermind is an innovative online course and mastermind experience, introducing bloggers to the concepts of web accessibility and providing them with easy-to-implement techniques for increasing their blogs’ accessibility to include individuals with disabilities — a whopping 18% of the population.

Without further ado, twelve mentors, peers and friends – Chris Garrett, Liz Strauss, Grant Griffiths, Des Walsh, Mary-Lynn Foster, Terry Starbucker, Tris Hussey, Todd Jordan, John Haydon, Jennison Asuncion, Deb Brown and Duane Storey – have been invited to cut the ribbon via Twitter to officially launch Blog Accessibility Mastermind.

Join with me for Blog Accessibility Mastermind to increase your readership and to pioneer a blogosphere for all!

Late last Thursday night I finally made it home after a good yet long week away in Chicago and then Fort Wayne, Indiana. Since getting home, things have been crazy; four trips to Toronto and one to Virginia are in my near future.

Here are a few random highlights while I finish unpacking my brain (before I need to repack it):

I did manage to score an iPad while in Chicago! A full review is coming soon. For now, I will say that, for me, the iPad works great as a communication device! In fact, it is life changing. The butterfly emerges a little bit further from her cocoon of silence.

Karen Putz, Amy Derby and I braved Chicago’s winds and rode the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier. With the seats enclosed like a gondola, being 150 feet in the air was not an issue. Being that high was a great vantage point for my first glimpse of one of the Great Lakes. My brand new iPad definitely aided in communicating with this duo, one of which is Deaf and the other is hearing impaired. Despite our three barriers in communicating, we had no shortage of topics to talk about!

Unfortunately, the anticipated karoke duet with Chris Brogan did not happen due to an accessibility issue. That story will be forthcoming. Nothing bad happens to bloggers; it’s all material!

I also attended this small event called SOBCon! I will share my takeaway lessons in yet another post. However, for me, SOBCon is more about interacting with the fellow attendees and friends rather than about the presentations, and having the iPad further deepened that interaction.

Sunday, after the last SOBCon session and a quick trip to Batman’s bathroom (without incident this year!), my electric scooter was wrestled into the trunk of car. Oftentimes, what counts as accessible transportation is solely determined by the strength of the desire to get from Point A to Point B. Whatever works!

Deb Brown, Becky McCray and I were off to Fort Wayne, Indiana, for a private retreat kindly hosted by Jon Swanson at his church. Paul Merrill also joined us.

(Photo credit: from Jon Swanson’s Flickr photostream)

The retreat was a time for brainstorming, sharing, asking questions and regaining focus – intense, amazing focus! And great friendships – all a result of blogging and Twitter. There was also time for teaching Glenda-ish, learning lemur calls and sipping first margaritas – critical skills when running a small business! And, of course, chocolate was also involved. A big thanks to Becky, Deb, Paul, Jon and Nancy Swanson.

That’s my week in a nutshell. How was your week?

If everything has gone as planned, I’m now sitting on the plane, ready to take off. Chicago, here I come!

I’m off to Chicago for SOBCon2010: a conference for Successful and Outstanding Bloggers. Among other things, expected highlights will likely include a quick trip to the Apple store, a meeting with my friends Amy and Karen atop the ferris wheel at Navy Pier, plus, quite possibly, a karoke duet with Chris Brogan, which, hopefully, will not be YouTube’d!

I will share my adventures next weekend (I’ll be home late next Thursday night ). Until then, here’s a recap of last year’s trip to Chicago:

• How POUR is Your Blog
• SOBCon Recap
• Close Encounter with Oprah
• Stuck in Batman’s Bathroom

Make it an awesome week! 🙂