Somewhere I heard a rumor that a Walmart might be opening up in Midtown. I did not believe it and so made no effort to check into this statement. This morning I saw it mentioned in my Twitter feed along with a petition to sign. Without hesitation I signed the petition and hope you will too.

Here are a few links you can check out in regards to the Walmart in Midtown Debate:

Grant Stern wrote an opinion piece published in Miami Herald

Follow Grant Stern on Twitter @grantstern

Follow the conversation on Twitter #nowalmartinmidtown

Click here to read and sign the online petition

“Walmart Coming to Midtown Miami” on Miami Herald “…Preliminary plans call for a 155,000-square-foot store with a full-service grocery store, which would be just slightly larger than the center’s existing Target; it would be located on undeveloped property at the south end of Midtown Miami on North Miami Avenue. The store would likely open in late 2013 or early 2014.”

“Walmart’s Midtown Miami Plan Sparks Anger, Confusion —  and Surprise Support” on Miami New Times by Tim Elfrink

“Walmart Collapses U.S. Cities and Towns”

“Walmart Collapses on Civil War Battlefield” on Huffington Post by Al Norman

Trailer for “Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price”

HeartCamp brings together speakers and participants from different walks of life to discuss all matters of the heart — the physical, emotional, spiritual and creative heart.

DATE: Saturday, February 4, 2012
LOCATION: Hyatt Pier 66
TIME: 8:00AM to 8:00PM
FEE: $30 (voluteers and speakers complimentary)
PARKING: $3 All day
Click here for more detailed information about the event.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/heartcamp  Twitter: @heartcamp  Hashtag: #heartcamp

Foursquare: Hyatt Pier 66 and HeartCampSoFla … check in on the day of the event!

Flickr Pool: HeartCampSoFla

If you’re not familiar with the camp format, here’s a brief primer. To put it simply, it’s an open event in which participants provide content. This user-generated unconference is modeled after BarCamp, a technology-focused, international network of events successfully operating around the world since 2005. Camps are a great way of building community without the hassle of formal conference arrangements.

At HeartCamp, we treat the heart as the central core of what it means to be human.  We create dialogue about everything that affects the heart, with emphasis on relationships of all kinds, including, but not limited to:

•    Love and sex as well as one’s relationship with self
•    Relationship to family, children, parents, pets, country and culture
•    Professional relationships, heart connections to career and to money
•    Relationship to the physical and spiritual heart, heart health and heart break
•    Relationship to body, self-esteem, anxiety, addictions, grief
•    Relationship to technology, love in the age of the internet, the heart exposed

Topics relating to heart are only bound by the limits of your imagination.  Have an idea you’d like to share?  Visit our Speaker Instructions and Speaker Sign-Up pages.

For those who don’t wish to speak, you are still a participant and as important as any speaker. This unconference is for YOU –  simply observe or share in discussion, Q & A sessions and networking time.  Register and enjoy!

Dig deeper into HeartCamp at our What To Expect page.

This is a quickie video taken at Refresh Miami on Richard’s new IPhone 3G. I feel a little silly about how many times I said goLIVEmiami.com. The first time I said it I meant to say RefreshMiami.org but I drew a blank and so saved the moment as best I could. You could hear me stutter a little. Gary Vaynerchuk gave me his professional opinion that I should keep the flubs in because it makes the moment more real. The perfectionist in me would of course prefer a do-over. I have been letting go of my control tendencies through this journey of video blogging.

I had way more fun than I anticipated. They tossed into the crowd t-shirts and stickers. It started out with a Twitter contest to see who could type the fastest on Twitter. Brian Breslin asked the crowd to send @bs #RefreshMiami loves you. There was a delay in the messages showing up in the Twitter stream and so the contest was abandoned and they resorted to tossing out the t-shirts randomly in the crowd. I won a t-shirt with the Twitter logo on it which I posted to Pikchur. @JewGoneWild won the t-shirt that said “In space noone can hear you Tweet”. There was another t-shirt that said “140 is the new 420″ which @PeterCN got through a trade.  There were tons of stickers tossed over the railing and I have no idea who won them.

I’m excited about the next Refresh Miami.

Last night we went to the #HeraldTweetup at Tobacco Road. Richard arrived in style on his BMW motorcycle. I was saved from mistakingly parking my car in front of a fire hydrant and getting my car towed. The girl that saved me the $200+ tow fee had just suffered the consequence of an improperly displayed parking sign. Ok, back to the tweetup….

I had the chance to hang out with @TheRealEdwin who I had not talked to since Barcamp Miami in February when he made an appearance in our Barcamp Miami video. He did a good write up about last night’s Tweetup and included the Twitter names of many attendees. He also mentioned us in his blog post!

Here is an excerpt from Holy Crap My Hair is on Fire Blog:

Too many memories to recount so here are a few rapid fire ones. Some of the fun stuff was getting photography tips from Carlos Miller. Meeting Brad from the Fiesta Movement Project and talking about his massive sombrero while jumping like fools to the camera. Remembering everything from Hurricane Andrew, like how Rick Sanchez was balling on an overpass, or Brian Norcross‘ legendary radio broadcast warning people when to brace themselves, while talking with Lori and Yvette. The sadness of the night was forgetting to get my PALO! CD autographed and also forgetting to see if I fit in the Fiesta. Next time I swear! Getting to meet Steph Rose, and Lori Todd finally, the writer of Brickell Life, and again with the wonderful people behind GoLiveMiami.com. The epic talks of story telling, narration, tech, videography, photography, and everyone’s personal story was the highlight of the night. Also keep an eye out for a collaborative project between a few of the bloggers here in South Florida. I think it’ll be a fun read.Miami Herald Tweetup Round-up! #heraldtweetup

You should read the whole article and there is also a Flickr Pool Link.
I had a great time meeting @GoPalo and hope to see them play at Jazid on Friday. @AgustinaP and I talked about her appearance and disappearance from the Fuerza Bruta video. @Mricio gave me compelling reasons to attend the @SunSentinel Tweetup Thursday night. @TheDonz reminded me that he should win the free tickets to the Transformers Revenge of the Fallen screening coming up June 22nd. @TheRealEdwin reminded me that people read my blog through RSS feeds and don’t get to see all the new changes we have made to the Go Live Miami site in the last month. Definitely a good Tweetup with many more interesting conversations that I need to keep on the DL. heehee!

Today is a glorious day. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. Facebook finally launched it’s custom links for the profile pages. Finally we’re able to do the same thing MySpace, Twitter, and other platforms have allowed us to do–easily direct our friends to our page. The debate was what to make the handle??

On Twitter I’m @JMarieDirect. I chose this because my AIM was also this handle. I thought it might serve me to be a little bit more discreet since my name is very unique and easily searchable. On several other sites I go by JeileMarie. Facebook did have Jeile available. Simple, short, and sweet. After having a strategy meeting with my brother over the phone, we decided I should stick with JeileMarie. I did suggest HotBlond but he thought this was a cheesy suggestion.



Another milestone for today is that I hit 1,001 friends on Facebook. I had hoped to break 1,000 by the end of June. For no particular reason except it seemed cool to have a nice round number. Now it’s time to get the Go Live Miami Facebook Page to hit 1,000 fans. If only I could invoke the magical powers of South Beach promoters that seem to get their accounts deleted on a regular basis and just as quickly get back online with their 3,000+ friends.