My experience at my first Dad 2.0

The main stage for Dad 2.0

Before I begin my recap of my experience at Dad 2.0, I will say that this will not be a play-by-play account.  I will not bore you with the minutiae of every second that I was there. Instead, I will tell you a tale that includes, friendship, magicians, robots and dust in the eyes.  Let's continue on, shall we?

If you remember from my previous post, even though I won a scholarship, I was still on the fence if I was going to attend Dad 2.0.  Fortunately, I was lucky to procure the money for a plane ticket and I had found a room to share with two other dadbloggers, so I made up my mind and I decided to go.

You read what?
Have you ever met someone for the first time and it did not feel like the first time meeting this person?  That's how it was at the summit.  A lot of the dads that I was meeting, I either knew them or they knew me from my blog.  Imagine that, I found people that actually read the blog and wanted to talk about it with me.  That was mindblowing.

Room Drops
This was a new experience for me.  I leave my room to get some food or hang out with other dads and come back to a few bags of swag waiting for me on my bed.  One of the cool things that I got that came in handy was a portable phone charger from Kiddie.  Earlier that day I went on a photowalk with PicMonkey and my phone died about 4 pictures in.  A fellow dadblogger, daddy's grounded, told me to invest in a portable phone charger and low and behold, there was one waiting in my room. The universe works in strange ways sometimes.

Below are a few pictures of some of the stuff in the bags of swag.  We'll get back to those Transformers in a while.

How did they know Spider-Man is my guy?

A few items from my swag bag.

Every Transformer?

Hasbro was at the summit to show the new Transformers: Robots in Disguise line and app.  They were having a contest that involved scanning three figures into the app and showing the reps the app after scanning the figures. Did I lose you? By doing this, you would be entered in a drawing to win every Transformer toy that is released in 2015.  Every figure, including the San Diego Comic Con exclusives and Masterpiece Editions.

By some strange stroke of luck, maybe involvement from witches or extraterrestrial beings,  I won.  Yes, I could not believe it either, but I WON EVERY TRANSFORMER THAT WILL BE RELEASED IN 2015!!!! It's looks like I'm going to become all of my nephews favorite uncle.


They perform magic in there

I heard tales about the Dove Men Lounge from Dad 2.0 alumni. The hot towel treatments, the straight razor shaves and hair cuts are an experience....well, to experience. So, being that I have not shaved or gotten my haircut in a while, I decided to get pampered there.

As soon as I walked in I saw the pop-up lounge decorated with pictures and quotes from some of the dadbloggers that were in attendance.  I looked up to the right and saw a picture of me with my kids screaming at the top of our lungs.  It felt good to see it and it also made me sad for a minute, since I could not really share that moment with my family.

Hey, who's that on the wall?

Did I tell you there were magicians there? Well, there were.  When I was sitting on the plane ready to take off, I sent my wife a picture because my little girl wanted to see me on the plane.  Little did I know that that picture would end up as a "before" picture after I had my appointment with the barber...I mean magician.

It's all an illusion (Thanks ILM)

Look at that transformation!  I went from shaggy-lack-of-sleep-father to clean-shaven-lack-of-sleep-father.  My transformation became a joke with some of the other dadbloggers.  They would double check if it was really me or ask me "what happened to Victor?"  One of the advantages of getting this great cut by the barber was that I looked presentable when I was interviewed by Jason Kravits for the Esquire Live Lounge.  

Yes, Virginia, I did go running in San Francisco

The mask made a running appearance in San Francisco

I do not know if I will ever get another chance to run in San Francisco. Be it a 5K, half or full marathon, I do not know if I will ever get this chance again.  After talking to other bloggers that were going to attend and were avid runners, we decided to take a run on Saturday morning and see the town.  It was the first time I have run in a few months, due to the snowy and icy sidewalks in Chicago, but it felt good running a few miles and just checking the sites as I ran throughout the city.

I want to see every movie in this theater for the rest of my life!

Saturday night we we all treated to a special event thanks to the people from Lego and Lucasfilm. When went to the Letterman Digital Arts Center which is home of Lucasfilm and ILM.  At the famous Yoda fountain, he used a Jedi mind trick on all of us to keep secret what we saw in the theater.  There were also Stormtroopers on site to shoot us down if we mentioned anything.  The one good thing was we all know that a Stormtrooper's aim is not that great, so we might have a good chance of getting out alive.

Sitting in the Lucasfilm Theater. 

One awesome moment that I will not forget is facetiming my little girl from the dining area at Lucasfilm and having her talk to R2-D2.  I told her, "Hey someone wants to say hello," and flipped the camera over to R2 and he started beeping to her and she got so excited.  Yeah, that was a great moment in our lives.  Just seeing the excitement in her eyes and also hearing my little guy laugh and scream at R2.

Talking to R2-D2.

It worked my friend

During the summit it was announced that the scholarship given to a few dadbloggers will now be know as the Oren Miller Dad 2.0 Scholarship Fund.  I am proud to say that I was one of the first six bloggers that received this scholarship and I will always be thankful for the experience.

Let's see the pictures already

Okay, enough with the chit chat. Here is a slideshow from my trip.  There are some cool shots and some great men in these pictures.  A big thank you goes to my friends The Opus for letting me use their song "Caterpillar Poison" as the background music.

            

Thank you, Oren Miller

I'm going to end this piece with this short video from our friend Oren Miller.  I have shared with you about how Oren started the Dadblogger group on Facebook and gave a lot of us new opportunities that we might not have gotten if it wasn't for this group.  This man has, in my opinion, started a movement that continues to pick up steam and is changing the perceptions that people have about fathers and fatherhood.  I owe a lot to this man, he helped us get our first giveaway which opened up many doors, and we will miss him immensely.

Ladies and gentleman, this is Oren Miller explaining what he loves about being a father.

              

Thank you for reading.