Views from the West – A blog about public relations & social media in the Rocky Mountains

Nerd. Geek. Dork. Uber.

After more than five years at JohnstonWells, I’m used to being called all of these things…often. It’s not that people at JohnstonWells are mean (in fact, everyone here is quite friendly). But the truth is, an online-game playin’, TechCrunch readin’, Attack of the Show watchin’ guy is just not common in the PR universe.  But yes, it’s true that I can write a news release, field-strip my laptop (particularly handy after a colleague dumps coffee on it) AND take down Hogger.  All in the same day if need be.

Recently, my ascent to King of Nerd-dom at JohnstonWells was finalized after several particularly clever colleagues found the word BlizzCon blocking off all-day tomorrow on my Outlook calendar. Yes, I am taking tomorrow off and spending hard-earned cash to fly to California to go to something called BlizzCon. Nerd. Geek. Dork.  Remember?

So what is BlizzCon? And why is it relevant to this blog?

BlizzCon is an annual convention put on by Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind the wildy popular Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo gaming franchises.  Their current flagship title is World of Warcraft (WoW for short).  With more than 10 million subscribers, it’s the most popular MMO in the world.  I’ve always been a big fan of Blizzard games, so when BlizzCon tickets went on sale a few months ago, a friend and I decided to snag some and head to Cali to check it out.

In addition to spending some quality time with a few of Blizzard’s upcoming titles, I’m also looking forward to experiencing firsthand the community created by WoW. For almost a year now, JohnstonWells has been researching, analyzing and strategizing virtual worlds for Incredible Internet, a program we helped launch for Qwest back in 2003. Virtual worlds, such as WoW and Second Life, are new forms of entertainment that are changing the way people interact with each other and businesses online.

It’s relatively common for groups of real-world people to meet up in a virtual world. But for the next couple of days, I’ll have the chance to experience the somewhat uncommon event of people from a virtual world meeting up in the real world.

Assuming this strange collision of real and virtual worlds doesn’t create a black hole that destroys the Earth, check back here over the next couple of days. I’ll be blogging about my experiences at Blizzcon and hope to post a few photos as well.

Geek, out.