Jared W. Smith

The video didn’t catch it, but there were snowflakes, too. :)

This promises to be an exciting week — I’ll be going to my first-ever ConvergeSouth conference in Greensboro, NC on Thursday. I’ll be with a ton of my fellow bloggers as well as my good friend Patrick O’Keefe, who I will finally get to meet “in real life” after I’ve worked with him and chatted with him over the Internets for several years. I haven’t yet pinpointed what I’m going to do from the schedule yet — one of the many trip preparation things I need to be doing.

Saturday was supposed to be BlogHer Greensboro, which Patrick and I were also going to attend, but they pulled out. Thanks to the power of FriendFeed, a couple folks named Kelby Carr and Dave Slusher, and Converge’s organizer Sue Polinsky, the lost Saturday was reclaimed with some fresh new independent sessions.

I’m extremely stoked for the Saturday sessions, as I’ll be talking about what I do to make Charleston Weather, my streamed severe weather show, tick. I’m also excited to be able to talk about the broader implications for something like Charleston Weather as it relates to hyperlocalism in media, which is a topic that’s getting more and more attention as news outlets race to become more specialized and serve a narrower segment extremely well. That afternoon, I’ll be leading a hands-on session to show just how easy it is to put together a reasonably professional-looking live presentation using mostly free software and Ustream.tv (not necessarily just a weather show). It’s going to be quite a bit of fun.

Patrick will also be leading some talks, so be sure to check those out. He’s on at 10:30am, and I’m on at 11:15am.

I absolutely cannot wait — this is going to be quite a good time. I’m planning on filing some video updates throughout on Serious Business, as well — keep an eye out for those.