Disney Social Media Moms – On the Road Phoenix

I can’t believe this summer has come and gone.  It has been a whirlwind of activity, vacations, entertaining, etc.  But one of my personal highlights was being invited and attending the Disney Social Media Moms, On the Road event in Phoenix.

Disney Social Media Moms – On the Road Phoenix

To say I was excited to get an invitation to this event would be the understatement of the century.  I was thrilled!  And since my husband had been working in Phoenix for several months, we were able to make it into a family trip and my boys got to stay with their dad while I attended the conference.

The Disney Social Media Moms On the Road events give mom business owners the chance to get together, interact with others who are in our shoes, learn from amazing speakers who understand our unique life-style demands, learn all about the latest news coming out of the Disney parks and of course show our Disney-side.

We were greeted with a yummy breakfast and plenty of time to mingle and meet the others who were in attendance.

When they told us breakfast would be provided, I was expecting the typical conference breakfast selections of bagels and fruit but I was pleasantly surprised.  Of course, it’s Disney so I should known better.  Breakfast was delicious!

I was so excited to hear from Michelle Himmelberg who is the PR Director for Disneyland parks.  She shared with us some of the latest news coming out of Disneyland, including the fact that next year is the 60th anniversary of Disneyland.  Between now and next year several exciting things will be announced as they prepare for the big celebration.  They have already announced the opportunity to win free Disneyland tickets by submitting your Disneyland pictures through the decades.  You can find more information about the contest on the Disneyland blog but this week is the last week!  So hurry and send in your pictures!

We also learned that It’s a Small World is now 50 years old and the song is the most played song in music history being played approximately 50 million times!  “It’s a small, small world.” (Bet it’s stuck in your head now. 😉 )

Also, Walt Disney World just opened the new 7 Dwarfs Mine Train ride that takes you into the mine with the 7 dwarfs as they mine for Diamonds.  They did a fun competition where someone could become the 8th miner and win a trip to WDW for their family.  You can check out all of the winners at Bethe8thMiner.com

One thing that really stuck out to me that Michelle said is that play really matters and we should never get too busy to play with our kids. We need to spend quality time with our children every single day.   That’s my favorite part of going to Disneyland with my kids.  The memories we make are unforgettable.

The remainder of the conference we heard from some really great speakers about ways to grow our business as mom-entrepreneurs.

(I’m sad to announce that my 2-year-old got a hold of my phone when we got home before I had backed it up  and deleted a lot of my pictures from the event.  It was a very sad day!  But here is a recap of the speakers without their smiling faces)

Erin Glover from the DisneyParksBlog talked about how they run the Disney parks blog and keep things running smoothly with their team.  She talked about finding our personal voice and also telling stories from our kids’ point of view.   Also, how we can use video to take our readers to places they haven’t been or can’t go.  This is something that I really want to start doing.  Video has always scared me!

Also, that to increase our inspiration as business owners we should keep a journal of the inspirations we find around us.  You never know when something will inspire you.  Also, that we need to be flexible in our ideas because what you end up with, isn’t always what you had planned.  But, that’s when the magic happens.

We then heard all about the new HP printers and how they are creating products to help moms with the problems we face every day.  I was so happy to come home from the conference and find that my printer had some of the new capabilities like being able to print directly to it from anywhere outside my home and how I can print out a huge variety of printable games and coloring pages directly from my printer.  I can also set it up to print something new every day at a specific time!  Talk about amazing!  Now when I am in a frantic rush to get dinner done, I can set up my printer to print out games and activities to entertain my boys.  Love it!  You can also print out gift cards directly from the printer making last-minute gifts a piece-of-cake.

We learned Photography tips from Tracey Clark and all about the  Huggies Mominspired Grant Program.  The program awards $15,000 grants to help moms develop their parenthood inspired products.   So if you have a product you are thinking about developing, check it out at Huggies.com.

We ended the day with Nadine Bubeck from Expecting Perfect talking about tips to becoming a successful business owner.

Here are her top 10 tips:

1. Have a Plan – Know what you want to accomplish each day.
2. Manifest and write things down
3. Never burn bridges
4. Don’t say no to publicity whether big or small
5. Take pride in yourself
6. Learn to love public speaking and the camera
7. Have tough skin and don’t take rejection personally
8. Don’t be afraid to promote yourself
9. Take risks – If you are not a little afraid each day then you are not doing anything big.
10. Be proud of who you are and what you are working towards

And the last take away of the day was that Disney wants children to grow up believing in magic and I can’t wait for our next Disneyland trip to share that magic with my kids!  Thank you Disney Social Media Moms for an amazing day!