2018 Dad 2.0 Summit: Day 1 Recap.

Day 1 of the Dad 2.0 Summit is already in the books, and it was overall a pretty fantastic day.

As readers of this blog might know, I've been to every one of the now 7 Dad 2.0 Summits, so I have some pretty good experience in what makes a great Summit.

Here are the high points (and low points) of what I experienced on Day 1.

And if you are looking for my recap of Day 2, it's here.

HIGH POINTS OF DAD 2.0 SUMMIT:

OPENING KEYNOTE:

Josh Levs, Ryan Nece, and Ronnie Lott discuss fatherhood.

I was a little worried when I heard that 3 of the keynote speakers were going to be football players.  I'm not a huge football fan, and I thought that was probably two too many.  Well, I was wrong (it was only one too many, but I'll get to that below)  The first two speakers were NFL father/son duo Ronnie Lott and Ryan Nece. They were provided by Dove Men+ Care, the title sponsor. 

I didn't know much about them when they started, except that Ronnie Lott was pretty famous and I'd never heard of Ryan Nece.  They were a delightful pair, talking with honesty and genuineness about their relationship, about their work ethic, about the role of the father and the son.  They had a wide ranging conversation, ably hosted by Josh Levs, and it was a very enjoyable and far-reaching conversation.  I especially loved one of the slogans/catchphrase/ potential hash tags of Ronnie Lotts #exhausteverymoment.  I was very pleased that I saw them.

BLOGGER SPOTLIGHTS:
At every Dad 2.0 Summit, guys get up and read some of their best blog posts of the year.  There were 3 today and all of them were great.  I was especially appreciative of Doug Ziegler's Spotlight, where he talked with amazing tenderness and vulnerability about his struggle to tell his children about his past as a gambling addict and prison convict.   He's put that behind him now, but he still feels the need to share the truth with them, but he's afraid that they will think less of him.  It was wonderful writing, and as I've said before, it feels like the seeds of Brenae Brown (who was an early speaker at Dad 2.0 and talked about masculine vulnerability) have come home to blossom.  Other speakers so far included James Estrada and Aaron Yavelberg, who both gave heartfelt talks as well.

WORKSHOPS

Laura Fuentes of Momables.

I attended an amazing email list workshop by Laura Fuentes of Momables.  She was organized, together, and completely masterful of her subject matter.  She was also super transparent about how she did stuff, and gave a great plan of how to create an email drip.  The thing that she said that impressed me most was that for at least one sponsored post for a client, of 49000 engagements, 47000 came from her email list!   She also stressed consistency in getting your newsletter out, of embedding videos on your website rather in your email or on your social media, and her insistence that creating a newsletter is like going out on a date.  You can't move too fast, and you have to get to know the other person.  Her drip email letter schedule is something I will definitely imitate.

I also attended a session on how to make effective freelance pitches with Amy Joyce of the Washington Post's On Parenting Team.  This was great, and I plan on using those tips as well. (to hopefully get some freelance gigs)

I also attended four Roundtable Sessions, all of which were pretty good.  I thought that Eric Bennion's podcasting seminar was particularly good, and gave lots of helpful advice on the how -to and the basics.   I didn't attend it, but I heard that Christopher Lewis's Building Your Twitterverse was also quite good.  The other ones I attended were one by Thom Hofman on writing, Joe Saladino on Photography, and Tech products by the tech director of Safety First, one of the sponsors.

DAD VOICES

Whit Honea (L) and Glen Henry (R) add their voices to the Dad Slam

I also attended a good amount of the Dad Voices after party, which was kind of a Dad Slam.  Dad's got up and talked and read stuff both funny or emotional.  I didn't read, although I was tempted. But I arrived late, and wanted to take it in first. (I had missed the last two years) All of them were pretty good.  But more important than the quality of the writing was the bonhomie and sense of community in the room.

LOWPOINTS OF DAD 2.0 SUMMIT:

This was my least favorite interview/part of the day.

I'm sad to say that for me, the lowpoint so far was Von Miller. The Broncos Superstar linebacker. was interviewed by (sponsor) Best Buy's Nate Bauer, the public face of the Geek Squad.

While I'm appreciative of the effort, the interview came off more as kind of a vapid talk show thing then something worthy of being on the Dad 2.0 stage, especially considering the heartfelt genuineness of Ronnie Lott and son a few hours before.

Nate and Von had kind of a false repartee that was ill-scripted and obvious, as they talked about the number of TV's in his house (20) or the piece of technology he uses most often (of course, sponsored gadget Microsoft Surface (even though he's wearing a smart watch!)  Von has charisma, and he's done some interesting things (Von's Vision, which gets free eye exams and eyewear to low income kids in the Denver community)  He's also a chicken farmer who owns an organic chicken farm and a philanthropist who gave a squad car to the law enforcement people of Houston, his hometown.

 But all of that was glossed over for the talk show format and comedy stylings, much of which didn't go over very well and seemed non-genuine. It turns out that neither Nate or Von have kids, and they didn't talk about the role of fatherhood, or their relationships with their fathers, which leads to me to ask the question Why were they there?  How did they add to the conversation?  I'd have to say not much.  This was a rare miss for the Dad 2.0 Summit content team, and was disappointing

On the plus side, today's a whole new day!