Mom Road Trip 2.0, The Technology Behind The Scenes

After the idea of the Silicon Valley Moms Group - Mom Road Trip was first thrown around then finalized, the details needed to be planned before the moms hit the road. My part was to arm the mom road trippers with the technology they would need to share their experiences along the way. Mommy Bloggers are tech savvy early adopters when it comes to social media - so this adventure would be a great chance to "road test" some of the latest and greatest applications and gadgets.

Our mom road trippers were sponsored with the "Green Car of The Year" that came equipped with road technology and they had video cams and MP3 players but there were many other issues that needed to be worked on:

1. Internet access on the road - I quickly ruled out asking the moms to steal Wi-Fi in cheap hotel parking lots, so I set out to find other alternatives.   One of our road trippers hooked us up with Wi-Fi hot spot coverage, but I also wanted to provide them with broadband internet access that could plug into the USB port of their laptops. I had spent a month using a Compass™ 597 by Sierra Wireless USB broadband Card with a mobile broadband service plan to liveblog, so I decided to find something similar for our mom road trippers.  Because the timing was tight, we could not get any loaners in time. So I did what any self respecting, modern social media techie would do - I went to a brick and mortar store and begged the sales manager (thanks Ernesto!) to help me find a budget friendly way to buy them, then drove over to the express mail store for overnight shipping because the road trip started the NEXT DAY.

That was the last technical issue holding us up, but many others were solved before that.

2. Setting up a dedicated blog - I quickly searched to see if a catchy URL was available - and found "momroadtrip.com". Then I set up a separate blog within the Silicon Valley Moms Group network. Even enlisted some hard code - coding help to solve some of the tougher issues. Our graphic and button designers added their artistic flair while we had our blog lawyer look into bloggy law issues. Jill and the mom road trippers gave their feedback on functionality to finalize the details.

3. Video editing/sharing - Next, I had to find a platform to load and edit the videos before they were loaded into our blog. YouTube is a great place to do a straight load for "viral" videos, but we needed a site that would allow us to load, edit and share videos quickly to keep up with our fast moving road trippers.  So I researched into a couple of video editing solutions and again did what any self respecting, modern social media techie would do - picked up the phone to call a rep from a video editing/sharing site that I had used in the past.  We talked about our requirements and found that their site would meet our needs, so they promptly helped us sign up.

We were thrilled to see the video that CBS Evening News Anchor Katie Couric put on her YouTube channel welcoming the road trip.

4. Spreading the word - Other then fresh blog posts, press releases, emails to Yahoo Groups and Silicon Valley Moms Group posts that were also listed on Alltops and Kirtsy, we also wanted to spread the word in our social networks by setting up Twitter and Facebook pages. The road trippers set up the Twitter account themselves, and it quickly rose to 400 followers. I set up a Flickr group to load the mom road trip pictures.

After all of this was set up, we were excited to see Day 1 of the Road Trip start (TODAY). Please check back for videos and blog posts about from our mom road trippers and more behind the scenes tech blogging.

SUMMARY OF THE TECHNOLOGY (used to date... who knows what else will be added along the way):

1. 2008 Chevy Tahoe (Green Car of the Year) with Hybrid and OnStar technology

2. Sony DCR-SR45 Handycam for videos

3. Zune MP3 Player for music

4. Typepad is our blogging platform, and we purchased our URL from GoDaddy

5. Sierra Wireless USB Broadband cards with Sprint Mobile Broadband service

6. Boingo for Wi-Fi hotspot coverage

5. One True Media for video editing/sharing 

6. Twitter and Facebook for messaging and social networking

7. CBS Evening News with Katie Couric for our welcome video and shoe candy

8. Yahoo for loading pictures (Flickr), our mom road trip email account, group email list and Yahoo 3.0 to go for mobile directions.

Just so we are clear - sponsorship details

Comments

[steve]

For a little more tech excitement, you could always get a CradlePoint router to turn one of your Sprint Cards into a WiFi hotspot that 4 or 5 computers can share at the same time...even while rolling down the road!

[cheap Air Jordan]

Your blog is so great, and can i buy some ad from you blog? If so, just email me and tell me the ad type and charge? Thanks so much.