Posts Tagged ‘blogher conference’

  • BlogHer 09- What I Did, Who I Met, Part One

    Friday, July 31st, 2009

    My previous post was something of a diatribe on the swag situation at BlogHer 09, but a comment left by Grace on the Facebook page for that post reminded me that now I want to focus on the positive and tell you why BlogHer 09 was an incredible experience that I feel fortunate to have had.

    WHAT I DID AT BLOGHER 09

    On the first day I was at BlogHer, Thursday, I:

    1. had a great time driving down with Deb and Diana,
    2. toured the office of t-shirt company Threadless,
    3. said hello to my Mom Central pals at their cocktail reception,
    4. made new acquaintances at the GM reception for the Carpoolers,
    5. ate an incredible dinner at Phil Stefani’s 437 Rush with  Child’s Play PR/Team Mom, learned that I do NOT like Calamari, and met some of the terrific Team Mom bloggers.
    6. was stunned to discover that President Obama was in the very same hotel as the SocialLuxe party, where I met very nice representatives for Swiffer (there’s a new Wet Jet coming out and yes that makes me happy), Land’s End, and Moms Like Me.  I want to tell Swiffer and Land’s End that having people fill out a card to have a product sent to them (free Wet Jet, free striped cotton cardigan!) was GENIUS.
    7. Hugged dozens of people, shamelessly asked them to post for photos with me, passed out business cards, gazed out the window at Chicago which I think is a beautiful city, wished I had brought tennis shoes instead of strappy sandals (OW my FEET), and felt that happy glow of being surrounded by over a THOUSAND people who all BLOG just like ME.

    On the first official day of the conference, Friday, I:

    1. Spent about an hour after breakfast walking through the exhibition area, jaw dropping as the “booths” got more and more elaborate. The lounges set up by PepsiCo and Wal-Mart could have slept 50 people!
    2. Found the bookstore booth, location of my official conference volunteer position, and finally met Selena of BreakPoint Books, who did an incredible job of setting up the bookstore. She and I had been emailing and g-chatting for over a month so it was nice to meet her in person.
    3. Hugged something like 50 women, men, and babies-ohhh, the babies at BlogHer this year! Year old, 9 months old, 6 months old, 1 month old, two WEEKS old.  With the parent’s permission, I touched a fingertip to impossibly soft baby toes and arms, stroked velvety cheeks and did my best “who’s a cute baby? YOU are!” routines to elicit gummy, drooly smiles.
    4. Had my picture taken with the Michelin Man, with Rick from Tiny Prints, with Mrs. Potato Head, with celebrity hairstylist Luke O’Connor from the Suave booth.  Gave business cards to any blogger I met who didn’t already have one from previous years and to the PR reps at the booths.
    5. Did a recording for Tropicana’s “The Juice” that involved a very polite young man explaining that I needed to tape a microphone to “um…your cleavage…inside your shirt”. Poor guy :P   lol
    6. Was interviewed on BlogTalkRadio by the woman who trained me for two weeks at her apartment for my previous job with BlogTalkRadio. Did not even recognize her because she wasn’t wearing a messy ponytail and SpongeBob jammies. Congrats on the promotion, Shannon!
    7. Got a kick-ass blowout from Luke O’Connor himself at the Suave booth. He called my hair “beautiful” (such a compliment!) and when I pointed out that he had given me Farrah Fawcett flips, said “I styled Farrah”. And then told me how lovely she was and what rat bastards all the men in her life were to her.  Now I just need him to move to Lansing because I swear I’m following all of his hairstyling tips but I STILL can’t recreate the look he gave me.
    8. Went to the EA Summer in the City event after my roommate got me an invite, stood in a loooong line at the House of Blues watching some very interestingly dressed people come through the door-apparently you CAN still buy skin tight black leather pants, who knew? Turned out that the live entertainment that night was none other than RATT. And EXTREME.  And those have what to do with blues, exactly?
    9. Went to the Nikon party, learned from Carson Kressley that when I pose for a photo I should sweep my hair back so my neck looks longer, and wished I could have sat down and chatted with him for a minute. He seemed like just a regular guy who likes helping people look their best, not like a “celebrity”, you know?   On our way out we discovered the CHOCOLATE FONDUE BUFFET.  I resisted the urge to tip my head upside down and drink directly from the chocolate fountain.
    10. Came back to the hotel with my throat sore and feeling extremely dehydrated even though I had only been drinking water and diet coke all night. Ordered French Onion soup and ice water from room service, watched half an hour of “Con Air” on TV and passed out cold.
    11. Somewhere in all of that I actually FOUND two people I was dying to meet- Sheena from Mommy Daddy blog and Wendy from Sparkplugging. You can find people at BlogHer, you just have to walk until your feet are bleeding!

    I was going to keep going and recap Saturday, but the word count on this post is already insane enough. To see photos, visit my Flickr page.  I have to get Nathan ready for a weekend Up North, and my husband said we can go out for dinner and a movie tomorrow IF I get all the product review boxes unpacked and the stuff put away, so I need to get off the computer.

    Have a great weekend everybody!!!

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  • BlogHer 2009-The Good and the Bad

    Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

    First, I want to say how bad I feel that I couldn’t post anything about the conference while I was there, for those of you who were stopping by.  Although we had a room with a wireless network and there was free wi-fi in the lobby and other areas of the hotel,  and although I could get my computer to connect to the BlogHer network, I couldn’t get any pages to load. Not once. And it was weird because people all around me were online everywhere. My roommate had no problem logging on in our room. Me, nothing.

    Secondly, I have been trying to write this post for almost 3 hours. I just don’t know how to condense my thoughts.  The whole idea behind a conference about blogging is for bloggers to meet each other and exchange ideas and information. Or so it would seem.  I wanted to sit in on sessions where bloggers I admire talked about how I could make this blog better. I wanted to see the bloggers whose blogs I read and whose tweets I follow and hug them in person. I wanted to bask in the warm embrace of 1400 people who know exactly what I mean when I’m asked “what do you do?” and I say “I’m a blogger”.

    The BlogHer staff works for an entire year on each conference.  That’s how long it takes to line up sponsors for the event. Why does the conference need sponsors? Because they enable the conference ticket to cost $200 instead of $1,000 and the hotel room to cost $200 a night instead of $400.  BlogHer finds a hotel that can accomodate 1400 registered attendees plus any additional family they might want to bring, and it’s an extra bonus if the conference rooms are right there as well. They put the BlogHer name on an event that people talk about for months before and after.

    So here’s an idea- let’s repay BlogHer for all their hard work by behaving like responsible adults when we go to their conference.  Let’s remember that we are attending a professional conference where people like Tina Brown and Ariana Huffington are asked to speak to us.  We want to be taken seriously. We want what we do to be recognized as something of value.  Many of us want to be seen as writers with journalistic standards and a high sense of ethics.

    So why were we (and I’m saying we even though I was not personally involved because BlogHer is a community and what even one person does can affect everyone), why were GROWN ASS WOMEN pushing and shoving and elbowing and complaining and THREATENING other people over…I’m shaking my head now…over FREE STUFF?  Please, someone explain this to me.

    When I read that someone elbowed Amy’s baby in his face to get to a table of free stuff at an evening reception (NOT hosted by BlogHer), when I read that a person representing Crocs shoes was threatened in the lobby by a woman who claimed she could embarrass him with her blog if he didn’t find her a pair of the free shoes given away during a different reception, when I saw that one of the (Non-BlogHer sanctioned) parties had a gift bag that contained lube and a vibrator, I wondered where the heck everyone thought they were last weekend?

    To their credit, I thought that the companies who set up exhibition booths during the conference all did a magnificent job. I wish I had walked down each aisle and taken a photo of the booths because they were amazing. Zappos and Bill Me Later had a photo booth, Wal-Mart created lounge areas with comfy chairs, Mary Kay brought in a makeup counter. One company that sells Kiwi Fruit brought in bushels full of fruit and these cool plastic serrated knife/spoons for instant eating. Springpad had great little notebooks and were taking business cards for a drawing of one of four prizes (I won a really cool car seat!). McDonalds had cooking demos by Paula Deen and Rick Bayless and gave away complete sets of Teenie Beanie Babies (I won one of those too!).  Pepsico was giving away pop and flavored water and all the little bags of chips and granola bars you wanted. GM put a Camaro right in the room with another one outside for test driving.

    Suave brought in two celebrity hairstylists to give free blowouts, styling tips, and Suave hair care products. Degree had their new body sprays. Playskool gave out these adorable little toy vehicles shaped like bugs, All Laundry Detergent dressed up two people in pink clothes (they were the laundry fairies) and gave out chocolate star-shaped lollipop wands and travel size bottles of detergent.  And that’s just a few of them!

    Now, these exhibitors, who were staffed by people from the companies and often a PR rep as well, were being extremely generous with their samples. By Saturday afternoon, you could pretty much take as much as you wanted because they didn’t want to pack up and ship home any more than they had to.  There was very little restriction on what you could take and how much.

    Which makes it all the more baffling to hear about people scrambling for swag bags at the parties. How much stuff do people really need?  And one party, that asked people to RSVP ahead of time and the first 100 people would get a special (very expensive) gift bag, somehow ran out of bags before those 100 people got there. Who were they giving them too? Why have “rules” if you aren’t going to follow them?

    Every year, I come home from BlogHer and there’s some kind of controversy. This year, it’s the Great Swag Debacle. I hope this post helped clarify that BlogHer themselves and the companies in the exhibition hall were not the guilty party.  Please don’t blame BlogHer for the actions and behaviors of others, and please don’t let it stop you from signing up for BlogHer 2010 if you are interested in attending. There was so much more value in this conference than just the stuff.

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