The Day the Jonas Brothers Retweeted Me

by Lori Cunningham (@wellconnectdmom)

As an Ambassador of PlayStation Family, PlayStation, invited me to attend Variety’s Power of Youth event that took place last Saturday, at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, CA.  PlayStation was one of the big sponsors of the event.  Several big name young celebrities were honored including:

• Diego Boneta – for his work with the Vannie E. Cook Jr.Children’s Cancer &Hematology Clinic
• Kat Graham  – for her work with The Water Project
• Vanessa Hudgens for her work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation
• Sarah Hyland – for her work for The Lopez Foundation
• The Jonas Brothers – for their work for the Change for the Children Foundation
• Jordin Sparks – for her work for the I’m M.A.D., Are You? for Childhelp

It was great to see Vanessa Hudgens receive her award for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, obviously a cause she feels passionate about.  It was a thrill for my daughter to see her in person, as my daughter has all three High School Musical DVD’s and has sung along with “Gabriella” for years.

And who doesn’t love Jordin Sparks?  Such a beautiful woman inside and out.  Jordin’s tireless efforts for the  I’m M.A.D., Are You? for Childhelp have helped bring visibility, help, and funding to their efforts to prevent and treat child abuse.  My husband and I first met Jordin in 2007 after coming off the set during her season on American Idol.  Jordin is a very warm and engaging person.

Diego Boneta, of Rock of Ages fame, was honored for his work with the Vannie E. Cook Jr.Children’s Cancer &Hematology Clinic.  Diego, like many Disney Channel stars, roamed the festival like atmosphere, happily posing for pictures.

And at last, the Jonas Brothers.  The Jonas Brothers received a Power of Youth award for their work with the Change for the Children Foundation.  As the Power of Youth awards event was by invite only, it was very easy for me to go to the front of the stage and snap this picture.  I then tweeted the picture to the blogosphere.  Soon after, my phone was constantly pinging me as the Jonas Brothers found my tweet and re-tweeted it.

I have to say, I am pretty impressed with the Jonas Brothers use of social media.  All of their twitter accounts were retweeting.  My simple tweet netted 35 tweets and 5 people favorited the tweet.  For those of you who write in the blogosphere, this equated to a two point bump in my Klout.com score in a single day!  It was a fun day for social media that day.

At the Power of Youth event, my daughter and her best friend learned how young people can make a difference in people’s lives…just by caring.  It’s great to see stars that our girls look up to model that it’s not all about them -they are leading the way for their fans to reach out to others.  It was also a fun day of getting autographs and pictures, my daughter got tons of them.  We met practically the entire young cast of ANT Farm and I particularly liked meeting Zachary Gordon, the star of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies.  He told us that he is not working on another Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie, but another kids’ book series that kids will enjoy. Zachary was very easy-going, down-to-earth, and enjoyed mingling with his fans.

The movie set streets were filled with festive streamers and stars.  I felt as if I were walking the streets of New York City.  All of the stars’ charities were present, so we could learn more about their great causes.

There was also a lot of kid food around like hot dogs from Pinks, great cupcakes, churros, popsicles, cotton candy, ice cream sandwiches, jars full of candy, you name it!  If you have a sweet tooth and a yearning to see the stars from your favorite shows, this is the place!

It was fun to see that PlayStation had a whole room full of PS3 consoles and TV’s.  They were showing off several different games, but I was most excited about their new upcoming Wonderbook Book of Spells game.  Book of Spells is a unique game in which you have a physical blank book in front of you and when you turn it’s pages, the TV screen shows these pages with beautiful color illustrations and words.  Your controller turns into a wand on the TV and you learn different Harry Potter spells to make things happen on your screen.  It’s a pretty fascinating game.  I first saw it at the E3 gaming conference, so it was neat to show my daughter the game.  Afterwards, my daughter and I dressed up in Harry Potter costumes. Somehow, I ended up with the Dumbledore costume and she got a cute young wizard one.  I did my best to look the part, but someone should have told me to take off my glasses!!!

All in all, a very fun day, although the temperature was over 100 degrees, we were all hot and the bottled water was the first to run out.  Our girls had fun making their own shirts and were most elated with the gift bags we received on the way out.  Like any Hollywood Star studded event, swag bags are a must upon departure!

*  PlayStation provided me with four tickets to enter the Power of Youth event.