First Annual Conference

February 2-4, 2012
Omni Berkshire Place
New York, NY

Our first conference, which convened at the Omni Berkshire Place, underscored what parents, and some in the travel industry, have known for a long time: Family Travel is big business. Sponsors such as Walt Disney World, the Orlando Convention and Visitors BureauNorwegian Cruise Line and Omni Hotels & Resorts joined us to connect with 35 A-List writers, bloggers, social media influencers and video producers to share their family travel experiences.

Hosts

Kyle McCarthy – Editor of Family Travel Forum & author of 14 travel guides
Eileen Ogintz – Editor of TakingtheKids.com, syndicated columnist, author
Joanne Vero – Producer, Travel Media Showcase

Speakers

Paul Eisenberg

After accompanying his travel writer dad to the Peruvian Amazon, Paul Eisenberg had his first trip report published at age 13 in Junior Scholastic magazine and has been a fan of family travel and journalism ever since.

Some years later he went on to serve as editorial director at Fodor’s, where he managed a publishing program including the guidebook series Around the City with Kids and Fodor’s Family. He has also covered family travel for Fodors.com and written about parenting for Nick Jr. magazine. He serves as the family vacation blogger for ShermansTravel.com and as editor of TravelingDad.com. He lives with his wife and three children in New York City.

Kaleel Sakakeeny - CEO, New Media Travel

Kaleel began his career years ago as an NPR/Christian Science Monitor Radio reporter, concentrating on Middle East coverage. He moved on to become editor-in-chief of The Robb Report, but converted his many sound files as a reporter into an Audio PostCard series in conjunction with National Geographic. The Audio Postcards played globally on NPR stations, Radio Australia, Radio Jordan and others.

When Internet video made its strong appearance a few years ago, Kaleel jumped in first, by converting his Audio PostCards into Travel Video PostCards using the Ken Burns effect.

He and his team then developed the product until it became what it is today: a 5 million-viewed product embedded on about a million web sites and carried on high value travel sites including Travel Weekly, Familytravelforum, TripAdvisor, and part of multiple syndication programs.

As travel editor of the Boston Parents Paper, Kaleel became interested in Family Travel. He became Family Travel editor for Travel Weekly, and joined up with Kyle McCarthy, for whom he still posts content, and considers a premier partner and very good friend.

Kaleel is CEO of New Media Travel which owns Travel Video Postcard, and contracts with DMOs to provide services and video/audio/text content.

Steve Bookbinder - Co-Founder and CEO, Digital Media Training

Steve Bookbinder is co-founder and CEO of Digital Media Training. Steve has over a decade of direct sales experience in advertising, training and consulting services as well as sales process development. He has led new business sales teams at one of the largest global internet companies, founded a global search marketing company and has been a thought leader for a global sales training company.

Steve has delivered more than 2,000 workshops and keynote addresses. He has trained more than 25,000 sellers and sales managers globally. Clients include industry leaders across a wide range of verticals such as finance, banking, insurance, technology and telecommunications.

In addition, he has written and co-written more than 25 books, articles and audio training programs. Leveraging his background as an actor, athlete and swim coach, he infuses each presentation with humor, insight and a passion which is contagious.

Susan Getgood

Susan Getgood has been involved in online marketing since the early 90s, and watched the web evolve from the first browsers to the interactive communities we participate in today.

In Fall 2010, Susan joined BlogHer Inc. as VP Sales Marketing. In this role, she promotes the many unique opportunities for advertisers to engage with the BlogHer community and works with brands to develop creative and effective cross-platform marketing programs to reach the BlogHer audience.

As an independent consultant from 2004 to 2010, she helped organizations integrate social media into their marketing strategies to meet their customers online, build their brands and drive revenue. Clients included HP, Kaplan University, Kraft, Goodwill Industries and CamelBak as well as PR agencies, start-ups and small businesses nationwide.

Prior to that, Susan held a variety of corporate marketing and management roles including Senior Vice President of Marketing at Internet software company SurfControl, General Manager of Cyber Patrol and Director of Corporate Communications at The Learning Company.

Her professional marketing blog, where she writes about social media and marketing strategy, is Marketing Roadmaps (getgood.com/roadmaps). She also writes a personal blog, Snapshot Chronicles (snapshotchronicles.com). Her first book, Professional Blogging For Dummies (Wiley), was published in July 2010.

Susan speaks regularly at social media conferences like BlogHer, Mom 2.0 and New Comm Forum. She is a co-founder of ethics initiative Blog With Integrity and appeared on the Today Show in April 2010 to talk about respect and responsibility in the blogosphere.

Michael Theodore

Like many digital immigrants, Michael began his career in traditional media and worked for a variety of local television stations and networks over the course of a 15 year career in broadcast journalism. Following a stint in business school, Michael worked as a management consultant in media and entertainment before discovering the Internet in the mid-nineties. He served as General Manager for CitySearch and Kozmo.com in their early days, and for the past 10 years has held senior management positions in media and technology trade associations.

Conference Report

Sponsors

TMS Family Travel, along with the following sponsors, is proud to present “First Annual Family Travel Conference”.