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Lesley

Grey Matter

Wake Up Now!
UFO/Paranormal Conference

Albuquerque, NM: April 29, 30 & May 1

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5.11.11

Three Days of Waking Up

I had a fantastic 3 days "working" at the Wake Up Now! Conference. As I said on my blog, it was like having the coolest job on earth. Well, at least what I think would be the coolest job.

Obviously, it was cool to meet the speakers that I hadn't met before, like Colin Andrews. What was also awesome was that I got to meet several Facebook friends that live in different parts of the state that I had never met in person before. The only bad part about that was that I didn't get to spend enough time with them, not like if we got to meet for an afternoon coffee or something, but it was still really cool. One of those friends was Jen Klarfeld, daughter of Marshall Klarfeld. Jen lives in Santa Fe and is Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist & Artist.

It's things like the conference that remind me what a great state I live in. New Mexico has so many weird and wonderful new agey and "paranormal" thinking people. I don't think I have ever been around that many people and knew that I could totally be myself because they were all just as weird as I am. No, not even in Roswell. Roswell has a great festival, but a lot of the people there (probably at least 60%) are just curiosity seekers and tourists that want to say they were there for the festival. It isn't part of their daily lives and what they think about the rest of the time.

I am not going to say that we couldn't have had more people there. However, none of us had ever put on a conference before and I think we learned a lot (especially about the need for sponsors to help pay for advertising) and the next one should be more crowded. I am not going to say it could have been better because other than the fact that we would have liked to have more people attend, the conference ran smoothly and was really fantastic. Of course, I don't want you to think that only a dozen people turned out or something, it was a fairly good turn out, especially on Saturday. Really, for our first conference, I think we did a fantastic job. Much of that fantasticness was Nancy Wallace, not only because it was really her conference to help support her school, but because she believed in it and stuck to it even when things looked bleak and many people would have just given up.

The biggest surprise for me was Bill Murphy from SyFy's Fact or Faked. SyFy (or their marketing company) sends me promos for this to post on my blogs and although I have watched clips and sometimes caught parts of the show, I had never watched an entire show. I kept meaning to, but never got around to it. For some reason, it was in my head that this is a show that tries to debunk the paranormal, but Bill Murphy wasn't at all a debunker. Not only are he and his wife Anita totally wonderful, but he gave a really great presentation which included Frank's box, Coast to Coast and other esoteric weirdness. He also offered to emcee for us since he was going to be there throughout the conference anyhow. He did a great job at that too!

There conference was packed with great speakers like Greg Bishop and Richard Dolan. Don't feel bad about it if you missed it, because DVDs are available and you can purchase the entire conference (over 30 hours) or just your favorite speaker. So pop on over to the Wake Up Now! Conference website and check it out!

  • Check out Lesley's Blog HERE

    As well as her Beyond the Dial blog

  • Lesley is also a columnist for UFO Magazine. Check it out !