Wow! What a night!!!!

The Spinning Gold Team gathered at Fifis studio...all a bit nervous...we had tested and tweaked and tested everything to make sure it all worked. We gathered around the computer....

Fifi put up the link five minutes early because we were so nervous and we couldn't wait any more....

I put up the live spreadsheet that recorded the registrations and we waited,

NOT FOR LONG.

The first registration came in 30 seconds! and it was all go from then on....

By 10:30 when I left the studio there was only 6 spaces left...

I didn't sleep much...I was going over and over the numbers making sure I hadn't missed any double registrations and there were a few of those....people were so keen....

This morning at 8 am there were only 3 spaces left....

By 9:30 am it was over. We were full.....and now we are dealing with the waiting list.....

Fifi and I have spent the morning replying to emails....

At some point today or in the next few days we have to send Congratulations emails to everybody who made it.

But we (The Fabulous Spinning Gold Team) are so pleased and proud to have such support for our conference.

Tomorrow it the turn of the finalists in the NZ Post Book Awards!

Three members of our team will be at the awards. Quite a few of our conference presenters will be there too.

Good Luck Everybody!

Maureen- head spinning......Spinning.....GOLD

Twittering....

No I have not joined the tweeting throngs...I’m too busy for that...that’s why I like Jane Friedmans Friday posts called ‘I watch twitter so you don’t have to”

There are some interesting links...here’s one that will be of interest to a few people who are planning on attending the Spinning Gold conference. (programme up on Friday hopefully)
Mark Coker of Smashwords has a great interview up with Sramana Mitra, an indie author on 'How authors can build their personal franchise.'

This interview shows what can happen when the author embraces the new digital age....here is a little taster of the interview...but go and read the rest...

[Sramana Mitra] - Entrepreneurs often bootstrap their way to proving their concepts, and then follow up with additional financing from investors. Authors can think of it the same way. Develop your concept. Bootstrap. Build a blog. Write books. eBooks. Columns. Build a platform. Build a franchise. Build a following for your work. Then, if you like, you can also get to work with regular publishers and get additional leverage. This is how I operate.

And for all the geeks out there...

Astro Mike is twittering from space. He is on the mission updating the Hubble Telescope...the last of the shuttle missions to do this. The shuttle fleet is retiring in 2010...what will they do then, I wonder.... (and so do many thousands more)

Right back to work on the conference.....

maureen

Pic is from www.drawingcoach.com