And many did.

On August 23, 2014, the Vegas Unplugged Music Festival had a lineup of bands that were just completely incredible. A great diversity of musical genres really kept the evening entertaining and your ears and feet wanting more. And, a bit of education was also involved as artists shared stories and the inspiration for their music and its origins, while gracefully performing their talent and passion for music, through their songs.

Included in this fantastic evening was the acoustic guitar donated by Washburn Guitars and the proceeds of the auction for that guitar, benefited Opportunity Village. Which also made the evening that much more special. You see, Opportunity Village also performed that evening with their own band named “Roaring Thunder”. So cool.

The line up for the evening was Las Vegas indie band Avalon Landing, the Bishr Hijazi Arab Ensemble, Roaring Thunder, blues musician PJ Barth and headliner Martin Nievera. Truly a remarkable musical night.

Oh, and we must include the food and beverages as well. Just to name a few, RJ’s 2014 Best Food Truck “The Hummus Factory” was there and so was Vegas own coffee and tea house, “Holley’s Cuppa”.

There will be many memories form this wonderful musical event. Can’t wait to see and hear Vegas Unplugged 2015!

Vegas Unplugged Music Festival has been a community based acoustic musical event, featuring world class musicians, food, and art. Having previously been a purely “Indie Festival,” funded by founders, (Stuart Carter Smith and Mundo Juillerat), Vegas Unplugged is partnering with the City of Las Vegas, and keeping the festival in Downtown Las Vegas!  We have one rule for the artists: Whatever your genre or thing is- do it! Just do it acoustically!!  The event was held in the beautiful Historic Fifth Street School

Opportunity Village is a not-for-profit organization that serves people in the Southern Nevada community with intellectual disabilities, to enhance their lives and the lives of the families who love them.

You couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the incredible playing of Bishr Hijazi. He first walks out on the stage as the crowd cheers. Then, you see he has an Oud Guitar and you go Woah! What’s that. The Oud Guitar, as you know, is an ancient fretless instrument that originates from the Middle East. But have you ever really heard it? Live?!

Accompanied by acclaimed violinist Laraine Kaizer-Viazovtsev and the remarkable percussionist Charbel Azzi, Bishr Hijazi Arab Ensemble performed some of the most fascinating classical Arabic music that you will never forget. You truly walked away after their performance, wanting to know more about Bishr Hijazi Arab Ensemble.

Vegas Unplugged Music Festival has been a community based acoustic musical event, featuring world class musicians, food, and art. Having previously been a purely “Indie Festival,” funded by founders, (Stuart Carter Smith and Mundo Juillerat), Vegas Unplugged is partnering with the City of Las Vegas, and keeping the festival in Downtown Las Vegas!  We have one rule for the artists: Whatever your genre or thing is- do it! Just do it acoustically!!  The event was held in the beautiful Historic Fifth Street School

Opportunity Village is a not-for-profit organization that serves people in the Southern Nevada community with intellectual disabilities, to enhance their lives and the lives of the families who love them.

At Vegas Unplugged Music Festival on August 23rd, 2014, many heard PJ Barth’s spirited voice sing the blues while his fingers magically drew out tones from his guitar that made your soul wanna move!

With Tony Smith on bass/vocals and Steven Grantham on drums/vocals, you’ll want to sit back and listen to these guys perform.

Vegas Unplugged Music Festival has been a community based acoustic musical event, featuring world class musicians, food, and art. Having previously been a purely “Indie Festival,” funded by founders, (Stuart Carter Smith and Mundo Juillerat), Vegas Unplugged is partnering with the City of Las Vegas, and keeping the festival in Downtown Las Vegas!  We have one rule for the artists: Whatever your genre or thing is- do it! Just do it acoustically!!  The event was held in the beautiful Historic Fifth Street School

In the spirit of giving back to the community, the Vegas Unplugged founders were excited to work with Opportunity Village Organization and donate proceeds from the events fundraiser, a fantastic acoustic guitar, donated by Washburn Guitars/US Music Corp.

Opportunity Village is a not-for-profit organization that serves people in the Southern Nevada community with intellectual disabilities, to enhance their lives and the lives of the families who love them.

Online registration is available now and tickets are $40 in advance. Tickets are also available at the door on the day of the event for $50.

And Yes!!! Wigs are Required…

Please visit our website at www.projectteddy.org for registration and donations opportunities.

Project Teddy also has Boy and Girl of the year awards.

BOY AND GIRL OF THE YEAR AWARD – Being presented with the Boy and Girl of the Year gives the opportunity to a child to be the face of Project Teddy for their year. They will be given a trip to Disneyland, an opportunity to ride in parades with Mrs. Nevada and the Nevada Princesses, and other fun exciting appearances throughout the year.

Project Teddy workshops give hospital bound children the chance to create their very own “Teddy” Bear, including inserting a wish heart, recording a message to their loved ones, and shopping for their bear’s accessories. At Project Teddy our goal is to provide a fun and enjoyable uplifting experience that will (hopefully) help children with cancer forget about some of their pain or sickness for a while.
Visit www.projectteddy.org for more information.

As you complete your digital marketing plan, which by the way should know be included in your marketing strategy, always keep in mind, not only the potential audience that you may be able to reach but after your digital campaign, you will have the analytics to measure the success, conversion rate and audience of your campaign. Nice tools to have.

Here’s a couple things to consider.

1. What’s the difference between Digital Marketing and Online Marketing?

Digital Marketing  – The easy way to think about this is to say you will be marketing your brand on any technology platform, also known as electronic media. Which, may or may not include the internet or a cloud base service that connects to the internet, for display.

An example would be a digital billboard that you see on the roadways. Or maybe even a marquee in front of a resort or property that displays advertisements. Should you so choose and if the opportunity is available,  your marketing effort may even display on a TV in a hotel room to a traveler or hotel guest in your area or in a designated demographic. Something like a DMR, Digital Marketing Region. Something that we can talk about later. None of these really use the internet or world wide web to display your ads. Simply, these are called stand alone systems.

Online Marketing – Oh I remember years ago when many thought I was crazy by saying “Look, we can reach thousands with this social media platform thing”. Well, look at it today. The internet is available to individuals at the palms of their hands, through any smart and or mobile device.  And now, there are many ways to reach that end user, the potential customer, the desired audience, the targeted market, by using a delivery mechanism that can reach them all.

That mechanism is obviously the internet and the many platforms used to possibly reach that desired base are platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google and Bing, just to name a few. Another newer term for this, is Mobile Marketing.

2.  What to consider for a digital strategy.

Building Your Plan – Don’t get lost in the digital maze. Not having a plan can be pain staking. You will bounce around different social media sites and then often forget some of the basics of reaching your potential or current customers through channels such as e-mail marketing. Yes, it still works.

You never really establish brand recognition online and you could waste your budgets on poor timing, unreliable keywords or simply not manage the analytics which can provide you much detail on what is working and what is not, in your digital marketing campaigns.

To start off, pick one platform and work your way through. Seeking advice from others who have taken the digital marketing plunge, is always fun and interesting conversation over a cup of coffee.

You’ll find the amount one spends on digital marketing to be a large variable. $10-$20 for Impressions on a social media site such as Facebook. This could get you anywhere up to 5000 looks at your ad. Not a bad branding approach. Or you could spend possibly $300-$400 a campaign to place ads on search engines to rank high in relative searches for your product or service. Therefore possibly converting those views of your ad to clicks of your ad, that lead potential customers, fans or current clients, to wherever you want to lead them to. Your website, social media site, affiliate site… wherever!

3. Measuring your digital marketing campaign.

Lastly, as your digital marketing campaign comes to an end,  consider the following.

Optimize the Experience – No matter which platform, social media or marketing plan you use, keep this in mind. Optimize your efforts as much as you can by measuring your digital marketing campaigns performance.

Through analytic tools such as Google Analytics and the platforms you choose to place your ads, you can see how your campaigns perform. You can measure items such as how many hits you get a day, how long a visitor stays on your site, the ranking of key words in your campaign or site, to even the age group or gender of your visitors.

Also, depending on your hosting service, there may be free analytic tools available for you to use. One in general is called AWStats.

So if during your campaign you’re not seeing the results you would like to see, call an audible.

Review your stats, make some adjustments and compensate to some of the analytics you have. Changing up your keywords could be an example. You have full control. Here also, patience can be a virtue.

Then, when time comes to prepare and begin another exciting campaign that you have dreamed and thought of, apply some of the basics of the analytics that you have seen in your past campaigns and work them in your new digital marketing campaign.

Spend a moment, envision the plan, layout the course and then execute. You can do it!

The Mrs. Nevada America Pageant is the premiere pageant for married women in the state of Nevada. We are the preliminary to the Mrs. America and Mrs. World Pageants. We produce a yearly pageant to crown a Mrs. Nevada-America titleholder to go on and compete on a national and possibly a worldwide level.

Their  mission is to provide an exceptional pageant experience and offer an opportunity of a lifetime for married women to challenge themselves and expand their horizons, while providing a means of giving back to their communities.

See you there…

Choosing a domain name doesn’t have to be that difficult but, can be a fun creative process representing  you, your business and your brand.

As you go through the process of selecting a domain name, here are just a few things to consider.

Brand – Think about a strategy for your domain. Is your brand you or your business. When looking to brand yourself and using a domain such as “myself.com” or “myname.com”, can make for an exciting marketing strategy when branding yourself. It’s all about you! You could even consider (if available of course) something like “princess.com” or “imcool.com” and market and strategize the domain to reflect you and your brand/image without really using your own name.

Want to see if your domain name is available? Try looking here and see if it’s available.

When considering a domain name for your business, again, be creative. You’ll want to consider how the market, your customers or search engines will find and remember you. If by chance the domain you’re looking for happens to be taken, try combining words or parts of words for an alternative domain name that may include your primary domain with your industry type keywords.

Ease – Do your best to keep it simple. Having too many characters with numbers or hyphens, can be hard to remember for some. Especially when you use your domain name for email purposes. And for marketing and branding purposes, keep it where little explanation is needed to describe or explain your product and services.

Price – There are many registrars out there and prices will vary depending on the services offered by a company or if someone is simply price gouging for domain registration. Just keep in mind, don’t put out the big bucks for this. Also, registering your domain name should be a onetime annual fee. Unless of course you register for multiple years at one time, you should never pay for a monthly or quarterly domain registration service.

More than one – This can get interesting. So, you’ve come up with a cool name or have found the domain name that you want. But, there are other domain names that can associate with your brand or your primary domain name. As part of a marketing strategy, you could also register those available domain names and have them directed to your primary domain. An example would be your primary domain name is “exampledomain.com”. Next, the secondary domain name “myotherdomain.com” could be a great association to that primary domain name. So, you get both names registered then you have “myotherdomain.com” directed to “exampledomain.com”.

What this does is anytime someone is searching for you and can’t quite remember your primary domain name or, someone searches with particular keywords fitting your brand and seo strategy, the domain “myotherdomain.com” appears in the search. When they select “myotherdomain.com”, they will automatically be directed to your primary domain name “exampledomain.com”. Just another way to help increase traffic to your primary domain and of course, your website.

Selecting a host – Finding a hosting service can also be key to the success of your website traffic. Just as with domain registrars, there are many hosting services out there. But again, do a little research first. Prices and services can and will vary. Hosting services should also provide a control panel that gives you tons of features such as email tools, analytics, backup, free website building templates, database management and much more. Another great feature you should also find is free CMS software such WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and so on. Nice tools to build your website on.

As you go through this process of registering your domain name and hopefully moving on to build a site, stay encouraged and focused. It’s an exciting time to build your brand and name and there are many tools to help you do so. Have fun!!!

This article is part of EzBrz Groups training series.
Art Vivas, owner and founder of EzBrz Group, is a professional multimedia solutions provider, consultant and executive management leader.
For questions please email info@ezbrzroup.com

What is Gypsy Djazz?

Gypsy Djazz is an acoustic style of music that combines the elements of American Swing, Flamenco and Parisien Musette. It was born out of the Paris jazz scene in the 30’s and 40’s and made popular by Django Reinhardt, Stephanie Grapelli, and Quintette du Hot Club de France. And the guitar is traditionally a Selmer-Maccaferri guitar.

The John Jorgenson Quintet features virtuoso guitarist John Jorgenson, a founding member of the Desert Rose Band, the Hellecasters, and a six-year member of EltonJohn’s band. Jorgenson portrayed Django Reinhardt in the 2005 feature film “Head in the Clouds.” Also a master clarinet player, vocalist and pianist, Jorgenson is known as a pioneer of the American gypsy jazz movement. His articles and lessons on gypsy jazz have appeared in prominent guitar magazines. Currently living in Nashville, Jorgenson tours worldwide playing gypsy jazz with The John Jorgenson Quintet. Members include Jason Anick (violin), Doug Martin (guitar), Simon Planting (bass) and Rick Reed (drums). For more information on the group, visit http://johnjorgenson.com.

Stephane Wrembel French-born guitarist/composer — who learned his craft among the gypsies at campsites in the French countryside — already has had a remarkable career; but this virtuoso, who is now Brooklyn-based, has just begun to make his mark as one of the most original guitar voices in contemporary music. Although he built his reputation as a stylist in the mode of the iconic 1930s French guitarist Django Reinhardt, Wrembel has developed superior compositional skills that leave an unmistakable Wrembel signature. For more information on Wrembel, visit www.stephanewrembel.com.

The Hot Club of Las Vegas, Gypsy jazz band, features Cuba native Noybel Gorgoy as lead singer. Hawaiian guitarist Mundo Juillerat, Christopher Davis (bass), Gabriel Santana Falcon (percussion), Marlow Valentin (guitar) and Adrianna Thurber (violin) provide the rest of the talent for this popular local band. For more information, go to www.hotclublv.com.

The Icy Hot Club is a Los Angeles-based group that plays modernized gypsy jazz music in the style of Django Reinhardt.  The core group consists of guitarists Ethan Emerson and Ray Bergstrom and bassist Geronimo LaChance.  For more information on the band, visit www.icyhotclub.com.

Miss Junior Teen Nevada 2013 – Caitlynn Cook
Miss Teen Nevada 2013 – Michelle Nicoleyson
Miss Nevada 2013 – Hilary Billings
Ms. Nevada 2013 – Katie Kelley

Pageant video highlight is here http://youtu.be/hwEYDoNPkwk

Miss Nevada, Miss Teen Nevada, Miss Jr. Teen Nevada and Ms. Nevada are the Official State Preliminaries for Miss United States!

The Miss United States system has been one of the most prestigious competitions in pageantry for nearly three decades. We are dedicated to promoting positive self-image, self-esteem, and providing an avenue for women to showcase their accomplishments. Winners from each state of the United States and the United States territories will travel to Washington, DC to compete in interview, swimsuit, and evening gown portions of the pageant to determine our next national Queens.

For more information on the Miss Nevada United States Pageant, please visit – http://missunitedstates.wix.com/nevada

Photography by Terry Wright –
http://www.terrywrightphotography.com

Videography by Art Vivas –
http://www.ezbrzgroup.com

Music written and performed by: Michaelangelo
http://michaelangeloofficialmusic.com/
Buy “Better Than Beautiful” on iTunes – http://dld.bz/cARpG