If you haven’t heard of the #140conf you must check it out State Of Now

Jeff Pulver (@JeffPulver) is the man to put on this amazing conference. There are other#140 conferences put on in different parts of the world that I’m sure area all equally amazing.

I meet Jeff at a BlissDom conference in October of 2011. We were sitting on a panel discussing viral videos. My You Tube channel is in the top 40 most viewed of all times in Canada. I have one video with nearly 4 million views (my YT total upload views is almost 19 million). My main point of the talk was that it doesn’t matter if you make a video that goes viral, what matters is if the video is authentic to your brand or voice and if you are able to touch people in some way with that video. I told a story of how I received an email from a mom with a non-verbal autistic child.

Hi Laura and Fireese!I wanted to let you know how much you’ve helped me with my son. He is an autistic child who was born tongue-tied, and has a hard time forming our everyday sounds. Life was extremely frustrating with a child who couldn’t speak intelligibly, it had my husband and I at our wit’s end. One day in September 2007, I was browsing the Internet, when I came across the video of Fireese at 12 months old, doing all these signs! I called him over and together we watched the video several times. He LOVED it! Within 45 minutes, my son was able to start communicating with me like never before! I could understand him when he needed a drink, or a diaper change, or his favorite toy.I realize that you may not know this but you and your beautiful daughter are angels to me! I don’t know where we’d be today if we hadn’t found your video online. Thank you so much for taking the time to put it up and share it. I will always appreciate it!

 

I sat at my computer reading this email and bawled my eyes out. I was amazed that my little video could have such a meaningful impact on someone’s life. I then changed my way of thinking about the videos I was posting online. At this same conference, after I told my story, I had a mom stand up and take the mic and share her story of how my videos helped her and her speech delayed son. She started crying, I was crying and the whole room started crying. It was a very touching moment. After that Jeff asked me to be a speaker in NYC at the #140conf. I, gladly, accepted!

I had no idea what to expect at this conference. I just knew that it was going to be amazing. I was so excited to be on stage with hundreds of other amazing speakers. Speakers like Carlos Delgado and Deepak Chopra. Little did I know the amazing love and support I would receive from all the other speakers and attendees of the conference.

I met and became friends with so many incredibly people. I want to share my experience with you. And if you ever get a chance to attend a #140conf GO!

Jessey, Kedre, Me and Steve in NYC!

Four people who touched me in an incredible way are Scott Mills (@graffitibmxcop), Steve Welton (@stephenwelton), Kedre Browne (@BubzArt) and Jessey Pacho (@ArtofPhade). I first meet Scott who is a cop that works with graffiti artists. Hearing his story and what he does is incredible. He has a huge heart and is one of the truly good guys. When you talk to him you can feel his energy and passion for what he does. I then met Kedre and Jessey at a #140 meetup and fell instantly in love with them. They are young men who are amazing graffiti artists and they could have chosen a different path but instead they chose to work with the police to better the world and help youth. These young men are amazing role models with the biggest hearts (and smiles) you’ve ever seen. And Steve is a cop from Hamilton Ontario who exudes energy and positiveness. You can’t help talk to Steve and end up with a huge smile on your face. Kedre and Jessey were speakers at the #140conf in NYC along with Anne Marie Batten (@AnneMarieBatten) an amazing woman who works with the homeless. She has a big heart and our world is lucky to have someone like her in it making it better.

I was disappointed when I saw the schedule and found out they would be speaking at 4:25 on the first day of the conference. I had booked a meeting with Penguin, my publishers, for 3pm that day and they told me the meeting would be about an hour and they were about 45 minutes away from the 92Y. I knew I wanted to be there for Kedre and Jessey in the audience. They didn’t ask me to be there, and they certainly weren’t nervous, they had spoke at the conference the year before. But it was important to me that I was there. I asked my publisher if I could move the meeting. I knew this would be hard because four people had booked me in for this meeting and we would have to get four people to quickly change their schedules just for me. I told them exactly why I want to move the meeting and I was told that they would try but there were no guarantees. At 2pm just when I was thinking I had to leave to go to my meeting my amazing publisher (Thanks Marisa!) called to tell me they’ve rescheduled the meeting for Thursday. I could stay! I was so excited!

This seemed to the theme of the conference, support. I wanted to be there, in the audience, to support my new friends. I was glad I was able to stay. The boys came across incredibly well, their message was wonderful and the work they do is inspirational. I’ll post their video here once it’s up online.

In theory none of us should have ended up as friends. I’m a baby signing mama and they are young graffiti artists and yet thanks to the #140conf I now call them friends. If they needed anything I would drop what I was doing to go and support them. My life is richer having them as friends. Check out their work and what they do. Follow them on Twitter, they are all lovely people.

The day wrapped up with a screening of the screening of the movie Twittamentary. It was an interesting movie that showed the impact Twitter has had on real lives.

On to day two… the day I give my talk… gulp!