The BLUE Ocean Film Festival or how to loose an entire month on an awesome project.

I haven’t posted lately. That is because I have been hard at work. I had the honor of working on the social media outreach for this brilliant combination of Film, Conservation, and Outreach - The BLUE Ocean Film Festival and conservation event. I just got back from the film festival and had the urge to write each and every one of the awesome people I met an email. The amount of time that would take was staggering so I decided to put out this open letter in my blog. This here is an expansive list of awesome things that happened at the festival. 

Keep in mind I have a tendency to be long winded and have a LOT to say. There is a lot of cool stuff to see so I issue the following warning;  


WARNING - THIS WILL BE LONG, PAY ATTENTION, TOO MUCH COOL STUFF

Hey guys,

First let me say that it was amazing meeting you all. This festival meant a lot to me and it was a pleasure to work on. It was one of those amazing things you hear about. I want to keep in touch with you all and wanted to thank each and every single one of you. You all worked long, hard hours on this and deserve to be proud of pulling off something this awesome.

I mean, its not every week you get to  do the following:

• Meet Commander, er, sorry Admiral Adama actor Edward James Olmos (told you I was a big nerd) and tell him your pitch for a Kickstarter involving animated voice acting
• Strut around in a Roddenberry Dive Team Wetsuit as Captain Kirk on a catwalk

 

• Find an very thorough YouTube channel for the festival from Mission Blue.
• See James Cameron come out of making an Avatar sequel to accept an award and hang with Don Walsh and Sylvia Earle (she could be Na’vi right?)
• Meet a school of Cousteaus

• Become a voluntary citizen of an ocean country with The TerraMar Project
• Get the opportunity to go Kayaking in the Monterey Slough with the star of the Movie Otter 501 (and their cute co-Star Katie Pofahl who later rescues you from your lack of practice Kayaking)
• Find a way to pay her back by mentioning the movie’s Kickstarter campaign
• Enjoying a dip in the Portola Hotel and Spa’s awesome salt-water hot tubs.

As I am writing this out I am realizing how long this list is. Basically the message is that stories and news about all this stuff and all the stuff related to the festival is going to keep going out there so keep watching.

I do encourage you to head over to the festival’s Facebook group and share what you got so we can share it with all our friends.

• Having a hangout with Bob Ballard where he gives you a virtual tour of his Titanic exploration in the Liquid Galaxies.
• Watching the live footage on Oceanslive with the fantastic Kate Thompson
• See the fantastic presentation of Jenifer Foulkes of the Google Oceans Program with Catlin Seaview of Underwater Streetview
• and set up their first live underwater hangout.
• Scoping out Daniel Fox’s awesome red shoes and awesome photos
• Chatting art and 49ers with Jim Toomey one of the festival winner over at the Britannia Arms
• Catch some clutch footage of the Sisbro team’s 5 word acceptance speech
• Just remembering you should probably mention the winners are denoted in the finalists list.

And there is more, there is tons more.

• Have an awesome dinner with the IUCN peeps, the Mission Blue Peeps, the Google Ocean’s Program’s peeps and the Sturgeon General herself Sylvia Earle
• Be convinced by Don Walsh that anything I say is out there in the public sphere
• Have a video you gathered footage for and edited in a day (thanks to the fantastic work of Ru and the staff) with Don Walsh saying something interesting played in an amazingly prestigious theater full of people.
• Meet the winners of our YouTube contest, makers of this awesome video.

We will be sending out photos and videos of all of this stuff while it comes in. If you have some we want it.

• Get a cool glass for my room from glass is life and the Plastic Pollution Coalition.
• Learn about how I can get some money off of my upcoming taxes by donating to 501c3s

I will probably keep adding the to some sort of list or just throwing them at the hash tag #BLUEOceanFF and adding them to the Google Plus and Facebook pages. If you could do that too that would be awesome. If you have any awesome footage you want to share or cool stuff you want to talk about what happened at the festival, feel free to use those forums. I especially encourage you to watch our Facebook and Google Plus pages news will be posted.

I feel the need to remind everyone that there are a lot of 501c3s associated with it and taxes are coming up.

• Showing off my Liquid Galaxy skills to Charlotte Vick (CHARLOTTE! Can you send me some of that video I took of you and your friend in there? Thanks)

I have a lot of following up to do to get everything together and I came to the conclusion that the best way to get the basic message (and do a bit of selfless self promotion) out there was to put it up on my blog.

I haven’t been able to work on it for a while but that was because I was out there working on the awesome project and wanted to focus on it, before myself, and it was so rewarding and awesome.

I want to give you all a heads up that I am going to SXSW ECO. Wait, what? There is a SXSW “Eco Breakfast” presented by Chevrolet? For those of you familiar with SXSW, Eco is in it’s second year and I will go over that more later. For the rest of you just pay attention. I want you to know that I may be live blogging from there and will let you know where that will be. Be sure to follow my twitter @akornblatt

As I pack my bag for today's flight I look forward to the down time (ha) where I can reach out to all of you and thank you and catch up. Lets keep this ball rolling and be rock and roll stars for the Ocean!

Sincerely,
Andrew Kornblatt