August 11, 2010

BlogHer Wrap-Up

I decided on Friday night that there was no way I was making it to 8 a.m. breakfast on Saturday. I needed sleep, first and foremost. After arriving back at the hotel after midnight, it just wasn't going to happen. I grabbed coffee from my room and figured I'd function on caffeine and a granola swag bar that found its way into my bag until lunch.

I spent my morning and afternoon floating in and out of sessions. They told us to "vote with our feet" so I did, often. I was really pumped about the Fitness Blogging session, but after investing 15 minutes, realized that this was a room full of a lot of women who wanted to talk about weight loss and plateaus. There's nothing wrong with that; but it wasn't what I was expecting so out I went.

I found myself in the Tragedy session where two of the speakers were Anissa and Peter Mayhew. Anissa suffered a massive stroke and her husband blogged her progress and the family's heartache in the days that followed. Listening to them speak was inspiring, especially after losing my grandmother to a massive stroke in April.

When it was over, I rushed out to the Humor Writing session. It was funny, but it was so packed and when I saw a message on twitter that the Small Blogs session was incredible, I walked again.

I walked into this room and looked around. This, the last session of the conference, was filled with women I had met and connected with during the conference. People talked about loving their small blogs, and using their blogs as writing exercise, not for ad revenue and shameless self-promotion. It was here that I had the guts to speak up (before the time was out-which had happened to me in another session). (By the way-here's a link to that post I mentioned in there.) I stood up and suggested that instead of all running off after the session was over, why not stay, exchange business/blog cards and get to know each other a little better? We may not have 50,000 followers on Twitter or write a blog that pays our mortgage, but couldn't we all help each other grow and at least expose our writing to other like-minded people?

The response was incredible. Instantly, Tricia turned around and handed me her card. I instantly saw "fighter" and knew we would hit it off. She teaches boxing of all things. With a blog called Left Hook, we were destined to be friends. Even though this looks more like a right back fist, she is legit. She's actually just showing off her new swag bracelet.

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Then other women started moving over towards me and handing me their cards as well. This was a friendly group. By the time I left the room, about 20 minutes after the session had ended, I had met at least 15 new people and found some really interesting new blogs to read. Here's my collection of cards from the weekend.

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When the final keynote of the day wrapped up, I returned to my room to get ready for the night. Armed with a cell phone full of blogger's phone numbers, I wasn't worried about arriving at parties by myself. As a crasher anyway, who didn't realize the importance of RSVPing or trying to get invites to private parties, I was relieved when Faiqa invited me to a Blogger Meet-up at The Volstead, for all the bloggers without parties to attend. Funny that I had no parties to attend, but still didn't know about the Blogger Meet-up. I sent text messages to all my new friends and they began filing in. It was one of the most relaxed environments all weekend and I had a blast while there.

Here I am with "Mrs. Smith," whom I will always think of as a great little sister. We had an absolute blast together.

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It was after The Volstead that we went to Sparklecorn, which sounds cheesy and ridiculous, but it was easily one of the best parties I had ever been to. . .EVAH. This is the cake from said party, made by Charm City Cakes. You know, the Ace of Cakes people on The Food Network. I seriously love them and couldn't wait to try the cake. Each turret, unicorn, etc. was a different flavor. The one I had was banana and it was easily the best cake I have ever had. Mrs. Smith had a peanut butter slice and I was lucky enough to snag a bite of that one as well. It tasted like a Reese's Peanut Butter cup would if it was a cloud. In a word: incredible.

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Then, standing right beside that amazing cake, I recognized one of the people I was determined to meet over the weekend. . . Amalah. One of the first blogs I ever read, I felt like I already knew her as I walked up, introduced myself and asked for a picture. The coolest part? She totally knew who I was, probably because as a newbie blogger I had tagged her in a meme just for fun. I never thought she'ddo it, but she did and the mad hits I had that day from Amalah blew this then-newbie blogger out of the water. She was gracious, warm and totally normal. What a relief.

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Before heading out, "Green" and I posed for a picture and spent some time discussing our experiences at BlogHer. If you appear on her blog, you appear as a color and she promised me "teal." You guys all know how much I like my shades of blue and green around here.

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With Sparklecorn wrapping up, Mrs. Smith and I headed over to CheeseburgHer. A so-called rite of BlogHer passage, I wasn't surprised to see so many people walking around with McDonald's bags on their heads. I had seen the pictures from last year. And then I saw Goon Squad Sarah! Buddies in my blogger fantasy football league for years, it was so nice to finally meet her.

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After getting my fill of snack wraps and burgers, we decided enough was enough. All in all, I had a great time at BlogHer. There were some awkward moments; but overall, I made some great new friends, and found inspiration and writing advice that I needed. . .

If only I had met Lisa Stone (whose blog has clearly been neglected because she's been all busy running some site called BlogHer or something). . .

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And there she was, in the gray dress right behind Mrs. Smith. If only I had known this before I downloaded my pictures after arriving at home. "Hi Lisa, wish we had met."

Finally, because you can't talk about BlogHer without talking about the swag, I'll show you this, a partial picture of all the swag because I had already loaded all the edible stuff into my pantry closet. I didn't attend the private parties with vacuum cleaners. I didn't have any clothing companies throwing free clothing at me. But I did make some nice connections with sponsors, and get some cool new stuff, my favorite being the Tempur-Pedic travel pillow that made my bumpy bus ride home a little more tolerable.

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I learned many things at BlogHer this past weekend. First, I love this blog and I should be more proud of it and promote my writing and my work more often instead of worrying that people will be offended by something I might write one day. Second, some bloggers can be downright odd. I should have expected this, but I guess not everyone has a healthy balance between their online lives and the ones they tend to write about. And finally, there are some amazing people out there; and I consider myself very lucky to have been able to attend a function where I could meet so many of them.

I would like to thank my neighbor Amy, for letting me borrow some beautiful jewelry pieces for the trip. Thank you Amy!

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