Dragon*Con is coming up on us very quickly! So if you’re planning to head to Atlanta, GA from September 3-6 (16 days away!) make sure you check out some of the panels that I’ll be on. Plus, there will be a pretty big TWiT / Sword and Laser crossover meetup that’s in the works for Saturday the 4th, from 6pm-8pm, at the Westin’s Sun Dial Bar.

My schedule:

Title: Podcasting Track Kick Off
Description: Join some of your favorite podcasters as we launch our fifth year as part of Dragon*Con.
Time: Fri 01:00 pm Location: 204 – Hilton (Length: 1 Hour)

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Title: It’s All In the Game
Description: This panel will discuss how to break into and be successful in the burgeoning gaming market.
Time: Fri 05:30 pm Location: Manila / Singapore / Hong Kong (Ed – huh??) – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

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Title: Podcasts and Marketing to the Masses
Description: The trailblazers of podcast marketing discuss what has worked, what hasn’t, and what’s next.
Time: Sat 02:30 pm Location: 204 – Hilton (Length: 1 Hour)

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Title: The Sword and Laser – Live!
Description: Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt bring their podcast about all things Sci-Fi and Fantasy back to Dragon*Con with a special guest.
Time: Sun 04:00 pm Location: Crystal Ballroom – Hilton (Length: 1 Hour)
Moderator / MC for panel

*photo by Roger Chang, L-R: Len Peralta, Tom Merritt, me, Felicia Day @ Dragon*Con 2009

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As I mentioned a few weekends ago, I was invited by Sony Ericsson and the WTA Tour to spend the morning hitting a few tennis balls around and chatting gadgets with Maria Sharapova. This is the highlight reel of that day, and I have to admit; my high school coach would not be amused with how my tennis form has deteriorated over the last 10 years!

Maria was great, and we talked all about how hard it is to stay in touch with your friends in family when you’re on the road (something I can definitely relate to as well). Now that I’ve got some new outfits to wear, I’m more inclined to get back out on the court and practice some more too!

All in all, it was a really fun day, although my thighs and shoulders were pretty sore for about a week afterwards. That girl is in shape!! Check out some more photos from the day below (including some pictures from my interview with Ana Ivanovic), and make sure you visit Maria on Facebook too!

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RIFFTRAX LIVE!

Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett (RiffTrax.com, Mystery Science Theater 3000) return to Comic-Con to perform another live, hilarious riff to a classic short! The panel is hosted by Veronica Belmont (host of Tekzilla on Revision3 and Qore on the PlayStation Network). Join the riffers for fun, laughs, and the latest news from RiffTrax.com, the site where MST3K-style humor meets mainstream movies, TV shows and vintage shorts. At RiffTrax.com they don’t make movies, they make them funny!

In case you missed it, I actually performed with the guys on a short last year, which is available up on their website here. Can’t wait to see everyone at the Con!!

UPDATE:

I’m also speaking on the Geek Girls Exist! panel:

The panel consists of women who represent different aspects of the geek culture and who have embraced their geekiness in their personal and/or professional lives. I will moderate the panel to discuss topics such as “when did you realize you were a geek,” “when did you decide to embrace it,” “what would you offer aspiring young females in your profession/interest,” as well as encourage anecdotes about embarrassing moments when their “geek got in the way.”

DETAILS:

The panel will be held Thursday July 22 from 5:30pm-6:30pm in Room 8.

Check out the amazing list of panelists (so far):

Morgan Romine founder of Ubisoft’s all-girl gaming team The Frag Dolls
Bonnie Burton author of You Can Draw Star Wars and Girls Against Girls
Marian Call musician inspired by Firefly/Serenity and Battlestar Galactica with her album “Got to Fly”
Sarah Kuhn author of One Con Glory
Jill Pantozzi writer for MTV Splash Page, Newsarama, Has Boobs Reads Comics blog, and Heartless Doll
Veronica Belmont technology and gaming-centric video host of Qore and Tekzilla
Kiala Kazebee writer for io9, the SFWeekly, GeekWeek, and featured extra in Felicia Day’s The Guild

Related posts:

1. RiffTrax LIVE: Plan 9 from Outer Space
2. Guest Riffing on American Thrift!

Whew, that was a big trip! I went with the Qore team to Japan for two weeks for shoots, and we travelled from Osaka to Kyoto to Tokyo on a whirlwind tour of the country. This was my fourth time in Japan, but it definitely the most comprehensive (and exhausting!) trip I’ve probably ever taken!

I can’t tell you too much about the developer interviews that we did, but I’ve posted TONS of photos from the culture piece that we shot. From snow monkeys to toilets, we covered some really random and awesome stuff.

I can’t believe how much news I missed around here, too. I didn’t even know HP bought Palm until yesterday. /facepalm.

Anyhow, happy to be home! Keep your eyes open for Japan content on Qore in upcoming months, and in the meantime check out the trailer for the new episode, out today!

Related posts:

1. Introducing Qore!
2. Questions and Qomments (see what I did there?)

Doesn’t this totally remind you of the rap battle from 8 Mile? No?

The amazing beatboxer Kid Beyond (who I first heard at w00tstock back in the fall) did a damn good job going up against Jonathan Coulton and his ZenDrum, but in the end I’ve gotta give it to JoCo. I’m a sucker for Beyoncé.

The rest of the show, by the way, was also great. Although, Paul and Storm let me down a little, with only a 12 minute long version of The Captain’s Wife’s Lament. DEJECTED ARRR!!!

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I loved doing the voice-acting for a character, hopefully I can work with them again sometime. The Gloomers are also on Facebook, so if you like what you see become a fan.

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Daniel Delaney from VendrTV was kind enough to invite me on the show, and I was thrilled to be able to try Spencer On The Go, a French food truck that patrols the SoMa district of San Francisco.

Now, I’ve become somewhat more adventurous in my eating habits in the past few years, but I’ve never tried escargot before. It did not go well. However, everything else we sampled was delicious, albeit guilt-inducing.

VendrTV is great, and they’ve found a nice niche by focusing on the very-trendy food carts and trucks that are showing up in major cities all over the country. Also check out his episodes with Gary Vaynerchuk and Dave Morin, who visited my favorite coffee spot in San Francisco, Blue Bottle!

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In case you didn’t hear the news from Comic-Con, I’m going to be hosting the RiffTrax LIVE event on August 20th! Now, this is way bigger than just the typical internet streaming event: it’s going to be broadcast to over 400 movie theaters across the country! The guys will be riffing on the classic Ed Wood film Plan 9 from Outer Space (thought by many people to be one of the worst films ever made). In addition, the wonderful Jonathan Coulton will be performing, along with a special segment by Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka of Something Awful.

We’re going to be recording the show in Nashville, TN, but unfortunately that theater has already sold out. So make sure you get tickets while you can from the website!

In other news, the RiffTrax panel at Comic-Con was a blast. Not only did the guys do a live riff of a video short called “Shake Hands with Danger,” but we also had the crowd plead their case for the next full-length RiffTrax feature! The selection was for one of my favorite bad movies, Dragon Wars.

By the way, here are all my pictures from Comic-Con. I got to meet so many awesome people (like Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy), that was probably the most fun I’ve ever had a convention. Although, Tom and I are heading to Dragon*Con in September, so that might come close… more on that one coming soon.

Related posts:

1. RiffTrax Live Online
2. Comic-Con 2010
3. Guest Riffing on American Thrift!

With the help of Team FISCH, a group of ghost hunters and paranormal experts, we went into the house in small groups (there were probably 30 of us all together). While I wasn’t on his team, Sean Bonner definitely had the best ghost hunting kit. My group was only equipped with video cameras and the gizmos that FISCH allowed us to hold. Here’s the video I took of my team’s trip inside:

June Gloom Ghost Hunt from Veronica Belmont on Vimeo.

And here are some photos:

You can also listen to some of the EVPs recorded on our run on Team FISCH’s Ning page, using the audio player at the bottom left of the page, and see all the tweets we posted during the evening. Now, while we didn’t see anything, there were points where I definitely felt the room get colder, and the hair on my arms stood straight up! I guess you can call me “ghost agnostic.” No matter what you believe, it was a lot of fun!

Thanks to Sasha Friedenberg for editing together my totally spooky video.

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Ben Harper & RELENTLESS7 – Under Pressure cover from Veronica Belmont on Vimeo.

The show was really great – as previously mentioned I’m not a big concert-goer these days, but I had a blast. Although, today my head feels like a blast went off inside of it (lightweight).

Anyhow, thanks to Jordan for the invite to the show! Their new album White Lies for Dark Times came out this month, so check it out.

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For the Girls in Tech meetup, I went down to Santa Cruz (you’ll hear the tale of my harrowing journey) to NextSpace, a great co-working location in town (also home to the 12seconds.tv team). I had a glass of wine pre-interview, so I probably said more than I should on some topics…

Veronica Belmont as guest in Girls in Tech from Allan and Sun Lundell of Awake Media at NextSpace on Vimeo.

Saroj Yadav is the interviewer in the clip below, which was shot in my living room. The full blog post about it is here.

Yesterday I participated in the Upgrade Your Life program at Intel in Santa Clara. The company invited a group of female bloggers down to learn more about Intel and discuss mobility, clean tech, education, and women working in technology. The best part was meeting other women whose work I’ve admired from afar for so long:

Sarah Anderson, Beth Blecherman, Natali Del Conte, Gina Hughes, Erin Kane, Mia Kim,
Sarah Lane, Victoria Pericon, Helena Stone, Christina Tynan-Wood, and Maria Webster.

Disclaimer: Intel did house and feed us for the trip, but we’re obviously not required to write about the event. I just had a really great time meeting and networking with like-minded women and getting to hear their perspectives on the industry. So thanks to Intel and Emily Goligoski for setting everything up!

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Tuesday:
We’ll be at the (Jobs-less) Keynote, and then roaming the show floor at Macworld trying to find the coolest stuff to put on the show. There’s a Macrumors party that evening that I’d like to attend, depending on my exhaustion levels. For live coverage, make sure you watch Ryan’s liveblogging at gdgt!

Wednesday:
CES baby! We’re all flying down to Vegas in the afternoon. Digital Experience is that night, which always has something interesting to see.

Thursday/Friday/Saturday:
Live Tekzilla at 4pm at the NBC/Revision3 booth (Central Hall #12133). Come see me and Patrick record the show, which should last about 30 minutes or so. We’ll have a ton of new products to show off, most of which I can’t talk about yet. :/
I’m also hoping I might be able to pop into Buzz Out Loud for a little reunion show, but we’ll see!

Saturday night:
We’re having a Tekzilla party at the Double Down Saloon! We’re probably going to get things rolling around 8pm, but I’ll send updates to Twitter if anything changes. I’ll be the one drinking the bacon martinis.

If you’re at any of these events, stop and say hello! Post any predictions for Macworld/CES that you have in the comments, and we’ll see who has the best intel. BTW, we have a winner for the shuffle contest! It was Mirko from Croatia (#433). Congrats! I’ll get that out to you as soon as I get back from CES.

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Wow, an Austin Powers reference? Really? And I thought I was above that…

Anyhow, next week I’ll be at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas, primarily to give a workshop with my esteemed colleague Tom Merritt (of Buzz Out Loud, Real Deal, East Meets West, The Sword and Laser, and CNET TV fame). Holy crap, Tom, you’re on a lot of stuff! Our workshop is entitled “Developing an Engaged Community (a.k.a. Don’t Feed the Trolls)”:

You want an engaged community. You want your audience to interact with your show and help spread the word. Then you get flamed. Then your feedback is filled with trolls. What do you do? Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt have dealt with the best and worst of the online community and share their experiences and specific tips and tricks for dealing with a passionate audience. They’ll tell you how to reward the good convert the bad and avoid the purely evil. You’ll come away from this workshop armed with knowledge on how to make your community a better place for you and your listeners to grow your show.

If you’re going to be there, the workshop is at 10:30AM on Thursday. But that’s not the only reason I’m heading to Vegas! There are a few great parties on Friday night that you should check out, like the Revision3 Meet-Up at the Double Down Saloon from 6-8PM (with me, Zadi Diaz and other Rev3 peeps), and then the Coverville 500 party at Bally’s at 7PM (presumably until whenever we feel like it).

I’m really excited to meet some of the podcasters that I’ve always admired, like Brian Ibbot from Coverville and Scott Johnson from The Instance and Extralife Radio (is Randy Deluxe going to be there? I don’t even know!). Should be a great time, hope to see some of you there!

Related posts:

1. iTunes Best of 2008 Awards!
2. Culture of the Apps

In case you missed the story tonight, Mahalo Daily be doing video for the Engadget folks this week at CES. Starting this weekend, in fact! So you can catch the videos either on our site, or using the video tag over at Engadget. This is my third year covering CES, and I’m looking forward to seeing what new and shiny toys will be unveiled this time around.

There’s already crazy news with HD DVD canceling their entire freakin’ press conference (basically because Warner Brothers went with Blu-ray), so I have a feeling that this is going to be an interesting CES.

Keep your eyes open for the videos, and rest assured that I’ll be twittering my fool head off about every gadget I come across. Heck, you can even follow CES2008 on Twitter nowadays! Here’s hoping my flight to Las Vegas won’t be delayed or canceled because of rain. Seriously!

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And then on Thursday I’m giving a talk at UC Berkeley! For those of you on Facebook, here’s the event listing. For everyone else:

Date: Thursday, October 11, 2007
Time: 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Location: 156 Dwinelle
City/Town: Berkeley, CA

I’ll be talking about podcasting, new media and how I became involved in the industry. It’s open to anyone, and it’s free. Hope to see everyone out!

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Here are my photos, and Ryan wrote up a good rundown of the trip on his blog too. Everything started off a little hectic with Tokyo Game Show, plus the obvious language barrier. I tried to cram using JapanesePod101 (a fantastic podcast, btw, along with Japancast) which would have worked wonders had I not started listening to it on the plane ride over there. Also, sitting in the middle of a five-person row for a 10-hour flight? No fun.

Overall, my favorite parts of the trip included drinking spring water from a waterfall at Kiyomizu, eating okonomiyaki, being chased by hungry deer in Nara, and shopping in Shibuya.

But a lot went down while I was away, obviously! I’m proud to report that my first (paper) magazine article has been published in this month’s PC Gamer Magazine! It’s a gaming preview for the next World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I’m super excited about it, so check it out! Here’s a preview below, it’s on page 43:

Sorry, had to blur the text — don’t want to get sued before they pay me! And finally, I did a photo shoot with my friend Lan Bui while I was in Santa Monica, and he’s posted them on his Flickr page. I was really nervous, but we had a lot of fun and I’m psyched about how the pictures came out. OK, I have a ton of crap to catch up on before I pass out from exhaustion. Back to the grind!

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Some of you may be asking: “Mahalo Daily? Way to get that out on time, Veronica!” Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s actually the Japan trip that’s causing most of the delay! We wanted to have a good amount of episodes under our belts before I went away, so look for it soon.

Off to bed now, thanks again to everyone who gave me great travel advice! Arigato!

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I’m going to Japan with Ryan at the end of September for Tokyo Game Show (as well as vacation) and I’m lucky to have been briefed on the nefarious Butt Biting Bug. Who knew this was such a problem in the streets of Japan?

Anyhow, what I’d really like are some recommendations on fun things do in in Tokyo, or places to visit in nearby areas. I’m going to be there for 10 days, so a bit of traveling isn’t out of the question, but I need to start making plans for places to stay. I’ve watched enough episodes of No Reservations to know that all the best places to visit are off the beaten path, but at the same time I don’t know any Japanese (time to start studying).

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Friday: Gym in the A.M. but got totally bored on the elliptical after 20 minutes. Found the weight room both overwhelming and intimidating, so I briskly walked home. Went to the climbing gym in the afternoon with folks and had an awesome time.

Saturday: Walked around town with Naomi in the morning, and then tennis in the afternoon. It’s been almost 7 years since I played regularly, so I need to brush up my skills a bit.

Sunday: Geek bike day! Rode to Golden Gate Park, and then the beach where we played frisbee for a while. A quick lunch break, followed by a ride back into town to Dolores Park, and finally home. Total time riding? Almost 4 hours!

I’m totally pooped, but it feels good to be active. Time to go take some ibuprofen… What’s your favorite way to get exercise?

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Now playing: Death Cab for Cutie – Soul Meets Body
via FoxyTunes

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I’m happy to report that two of my favorite people around were married yesterday! Peter Rojas and Jill Fehrenbacher (he of Engadget and RCRD LBL fame, she’s the creator of Inhabitat) tied the knot during a ceremony in the Presidio. It was a beautiful wedding, and they couldn’t be more perfect for one another. Congratulations! Ryan has pictures of the wedding on his Flickr page.

Photo credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

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