Since the weekend I’ve been trying to write up what happened at #CNMAC11 – with the reception we had for The Fountain (Bedford) yesterday I feel like I’ve lost a whole evening to write so hopefully I can process the rest of the weekend and then write about yesterday without feeling like I’m losing the plot. Also this week my friend ProdigalMomma started blogging – take a look here.
Following my hi-speed visit to the girls room I headed back to the main auditorium – it was filling up so there were odd seats here and there. I ended up sitting at the end of the row where there was a spare seat next to the aisle.
I asked the chap in the next seat if it was okay to sit there – I’d have probably been better of finding somewhere with an empty seat given that I was convinced that I was dying from the heat lol. He was okay for me to sit there so I parked and got comfy.
We ended up moving along a few seats so that we could fill up the whole row.
And then it started…..(I feel there should be a dramatic noise here so *DUH DUH DUH!!*)
#CNMAC11 kicked off with a quick intro from Vicky Beeching which was awesome – especially the bit where we were encouraged to keep our phones on, tweet, blog, FB etc all the way through the day – there was even a Twitterfall being shown on the TV screens on the wall. I loved this but it was a similar problem to when I went to see Beautiful Lies – I couldn’t help but get too distracted by what was happening on the feed or on my Mentions rather than what was happening in the room. Also I love Vicky’s current hair colour – it’s like blonde on the top layer and then dark brown underneath – so pretty.
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/girltaristhan/status/125137800495509504"]
There was an opening adress from Peter Kerridge from Premier Christian Media. Premier had organised the event – it did fill like this bit was full of plugs and from the tweets I was reading off the screen during the address I wasn’t the only one who felt like that.
Next up we had what I guess would be the first Keynote. It was from Reverend Prof David Wilkinson and Reverend Dr Peter Philips. ()
As an introduction to the talk, David started with “So as Julie Andrews’s would say “Let’s start at the very beginning” or in a more modern context”:
Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait…
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool
Hang on I know this – and yes I did join in, I can’t help it – I’m a fan of The Big Bang Theory. (As you may remember from here) Well I had to tweet Becca about that because we regularly discuss TBBT and random bits from that including Soft Kitty and Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock (go here if you don’t know what it is). This was a bit of a highlight but I think I annoyed the people sat either side of me when I said “It would have been better if he’d sung it.” Then again maybe they didn’t get where it was from.
The problem I was going to have was which breakout sessions to choose – in this first slot there were at least two sessions I wanted to attend – there was An Introduction to HTML and CSS which I figured in the long run Chris could teach me that one at home so I ended up in Secrets of Successful Blogging (which I think was my first choice anyway balanced against the HTML/CSS one). This session as led by Alan Wilson who is the Bishop of Buckingham. Yes a blogging bishop 
(add that to the @DigitalNun.)
Coffee Breaks are always a funny thing given that I don’t drink tea or coffee (usually if there is another option) I joined the queue to see if there was anything else on offer but then realised how long the queue was that I got back out of the queue – I had a bottle of diet cola in my bag I could drink that and get something else at lunchtime. I then bumped into Jay from Tearfund (@jaybutcher) he’d been requesting if anyone had a HTC charger that he could borrow at some point. Well my friend Oliver (@thewebguyuk) had one and that he should be around somewhere, I had a chat with Jay for a bit and then went for a wander.
I then somehow ended up chatting to Fiona (@mrsfurmanator) about the scarf that she was knitting on the train. She asked had she been knitting in one of the sessions without realising and I pointed out that I’d seen her on the train knitting and wanted to say something. I then re-joined the queue to carry on chatting to Fiona but we then found that we were in the wrong queue (or that our queue had divided from the actual queue!) I then spotted that Oliver had arrived and Fiona had changed queues and I lost her in the queue craziness. I went and said hello to Oliver and it was like seeing an old friend. Somehow a while back we ended up chatting via Twitter and nearly ended up meeting at Grapevine in the summer (but I didn’t end up going).
I then headed for the “Getting to Grips with WordPress” breakout session – however I found a spare PC but realised that all the people in the room were pretty much newbies and I was probably a little past a newbie so I left quickly so that someone else could use the PC instead. I headed back downstairs for Bryony‘s (@vahva) seminar called “Build a Following on Twitter”.
#cnmac11 – Part One, #cnmac11 – Part Two
