I attended all but one of the things on the MacArthur Foundation / Global Kids "Non-Profits in Second Life" meta-track (it being a Teen Grid thing that seemed "beside the point" as adults can't access that part of S.L.), and pretty much ping-ponged between the Business and Education tracks otherwise. I learned a lot, I guess.
Given my volunteer duties (and it taking about an hour each way to come and go from the convention), I've had to make do with about 4 hours of sleep each day since getting back into town (heck, since arriving in Denver on Wednesday night), and it's started to take its toll. I did stay for the start of the "Leather & Lace Masquerade" last night, but left about 45 minutes into it ... somehow I was in no mood for full-costume Furries, folks wearing various wings (from silly little red ones to goofy hardware-store mechanical contraptions), assorted Vampire wannabes, and the usual fetish affronts to vision. I heard today that it was The Best Party Ever by those whose tastes run that way, however.
I am, perhaps, emotionally drained as well as physically fatigued. After all, this was coming immediately on the heels of a very rough trip from which I had no "recovery time" at all, and I was in a situation where I pretty much had to be "on" constantly, schmoozing and handing out cards as much as possible.
One thing I "tripped over" was a local S.L. Development company which was hiring, having signs up various places encouraging folks to come down and have a chat in the room they'd set up off of the lobby. As they were listing some plausible positions, I printed out some resumes and references lists last night, and blocked out a chunk of time (conveniently during a 2-hour stretch where there was nothing I was particularly drawn to on the program) to see what might be there. Amazingly, they were looking for a marketing guy, although did not have this listed. I had a half-hour chat with one of the partners, and although I was a bit "antique" for what they ideally wanted, he felt that I had the right mix of stuff on my resume (and I think I answered his probing questions "right") and wants me to come up to their offices sometime in the next week or so to sit down "with the whole team" to see how I might fit.
Needless to say, this could be very good ... as, were it at the higher end of the pay scale for these kinds of gigs, it could well be enough for us to not have to move, and even if it were at the moderate end, could be a situation where we could "find some way to muddle through". Still, coming after the emotional blender of the past couple of weeks, this feels like I'm just being jerked around by the universe.
One thing I'm going to have to do is to put myself through a "crash course" in figuring out the whole "doing P.R. to blogs" function. I've never had to address that "media" and I have NO IDEA of how to start. Anybody know of any directories out there of blogs in various contexts?