My bad. I’ve been M.I.A. from the ‘net, living real life. And it’s awesome. I was gonna wait til the new site before I started getting pictures involved, but I don’t see why I can’t just start doing that now. Sure, it won’t look as crispy and stuff, but it’ll work for the time being.

Marcel dropped me off at 5:30am for a 5:41 bus that got me into NY do or die at approximately 9. I had to be in the city by 9:45 for the Influencer 10 Conference, which was an incredibly rewarding experience. I was able to listen to conversations by some of the most influential people on the continent (in their respective fields, of course). Shout out to Sonya, my fellow Maryland representer and Rock Creek Social Club cohort. We stayed literally all day. 9:45 to 6, and soaking up more knowledge than the sponge in my sink. I can’t talk about all the panels, but I will highlight my favorite panel, which was the first joint.

The influencer vs. innovator panel, which was based around distinguishing the difference between influencers and innovators. From left to right:

Julliette Powell (Author; 33 Million People in the Room). Moderator for the discussion, very talented

Fabian Pfortmuller (Sandbox Network). Genius. Forgot what country he’s from, but his company’s entire concept was beyond brilliant. Google him and do some more research – I’m about to do the same.

Jayson Rodriquez (MTV News). He actually is the guy who helped me get interviews on the red carpet for BET’s Rip The Runway when I covered it for DrJays.com. Super cool. Good friends with my boss over at Complex, Toshi. Has had some incredible interviews – do some research and find them.

Jason Anello (Manifold). Another marketing guru guy. I wish I could speak as smoothly as this guy! Every time he spoke, he was dropping knowledge.

Vashtie Kola (Vas$htie/Violette New York).  Yep. That girl Vashtie. Used to date Pharrell, but is an incredible woman in her own right, as well. I feel like she’s the reason Theophilus London had such a good year for a unsigned artist. She also is the first female ever to design a Jordan sneaker. Think about that for a second. And she’s badder than bad. Lordamerci.

Coltrane Curtis (Team Epiphany). Perhaps the most impressive man on the panel in my eyes. He had so many good ideas, and wasn’t afraid to disagree with people’s points while still having hella respect for ‘em.

Ian Schafer (Deep Focus). Funny, well-spoken, insightful, and not too cool for school.

My man Kenji hipped me to the conference, and is the reason I came. He has no idea though. He moderated a panel on macro vs. micro marketing, and was pretty entertaining throughout. He even got all up in the live stream camera for those home viewers at one point.

Jeez. Brilliant people on that panel as well.

I wish I knew the woman’s name on the right. She was so damn professional with it. I believe she worked for Mr. Youth. Strangely enough, Marcel and I worked for a company owned by Mr. Youth during junior year while we were brand ambassadors for Current TV. We made like $3,500 in a month. I mean the $#it was, f*ckin’ ridiculous. Like “So Appalled”.

My girl Zewidi (better known as Nyne) was on The Unconventional New Trends of Fashion panel. Without cising her too much, I can say she was the flyest person on the whole panel. It’s cool when you see your friends do some big stuff like this. Her anecdotes, particularly the one about getting one of her nose chains to Erykah Badu, were well-received and applauded by people with clout in the fashion industry. She is also a spoken word poet, so she was super smooth and natural when the spotlight was on her. It’s cool to see successful people early on in their career. Oh, and shout out to my man Chris Cortez from Hilfiger in the red and the boots. He won a TV reality show to design for Hilfiger in like ’05 or ’06 (and pocketed $250,000 in the process), and hasn’t looked back. Nice dude, too.

I didn’t get a chance to hit day two because I was working on other people’s time. I wish I could have. I got more pictures and stuff, but I think I’ll just keep those in the archives for now. Shout out to everybody I met out there, especially the driven group of guys (that just so happened to all attend Howard University. Talk about a win!) that took the time to put this event together. I had a chance to chop it up with Philip McKenzie, one of the coordinators, and he’s the man. So humble that he didn’t even tell me he was behind it all; I just found out by doing all this online research.

Hopefully we’ll all run into each other in the future when we’re further in our missions to accomplishing our goals.