blogging

1. Wine from wine bottles, poured straight into mouths and plastic bottles and never wine glasses, with too many ladies to count, packed in a sun filled, love filled, laughter and hug filled room. What the room did not have was an easy to use corkscrew, so it took 50(?) of us to get it open. There is a video. You may not laugh at it as much as we did. It may be one of those “you had to be there moments.” But there is a video.

Mae is very classy. She is also resourceful, like a Girl Scout… with wine.

2. Sitting on a beach (at the MOST chill, awesome #NintendoEnthused party), gathered around a fire pit, listening to some guy play and sing James Taylor songs on a guitar, discovering that the woman (a very notable one) to my left not only was familiar with the super small town I grew up in in Texas (3k people in the whole wide town,y’all), but her father graduated high school there in the 60s. The world, it is small.

3. Dance off at the Clever Girls party, Wii style. There were Smurfs involved. There was also alcohol and a little social anxiety masked as extreme excitement involved. The picture says it all. My teammates Mae, BethAnne and Suzanne were all very dancy and smurfy. Fun was had by all. I won a plush Papa Smurf for my awesome score. I knew those cheerleading dance skills would pay off someday.

Chihuahua on Redbull: The most accurate description of me at conferences.

4. Flopping into an outdoor chair after a long last day of sessions, sucking down a massive margarita, then calling Andy from the How To Be A Dad duo an asshole for taking the seat next to one of my internet besties who I hadn’t seen, like, the entire f-ing conference. Who cares that it was his seat all day? I don’t think he got my joke. It’s possible my sense of humor didn’t carry through my tone at that point since I was all tired and cranky and lacking REAL (not expo hall) food in my belly and my feet were covered in blisters. I explained to him that I’m not really a bitch. I’m not sure he believed me.

5. Hearing a woman mention “I’m a faculty member at the University of Missouri and work at KOMU…” I believe I spun around and the eloquent words that flew out of my mouth were, “SHUT. UP.” We bonded right then and there over the j-school and social media and OMG-journalism-and-social-media. And then? She asked me to come back and speak to j-school students at homecoming about what “other” things one can do with a journalism degree.

(Soo…. I can tell them you can start a blog and have really poor grammar and write in run-on sentences… and people will read you! And you can also drink wine and divulge way too much information about really personal things, and you can whine about how HORRIBLE potty training is… and people will read you! But, you won’t really get paid in cash monies. I’m sure it will all sound super appealing to them.)

6. Closing keynote, Ricki Lake, listening to her talk about producing The Business of Being Born and how it was the most important, fulfilling work she’s ever done, how she never even broke even, how it started a birthing revolution (that I like to think I’m a part of).

7. That moment at lunch on Pathfinder Day when I listened to Jess Weiner speak about women and empowerment and change and all the things you might expect to hear a motivational speaker talk about at a thing called Blogher, and I suddenly caught my breath, and I teared up just a bit, and I soaked in the moment… and I was grateful. I was grateful to be a part of all of this, this movement, this time when women DO have so. much. power.

8. Winning the Lowes competition after my team (consisting of Jen, Jenny, Linz and a couple more who I would link to, but it might take a week to locate their business cards in my luggage) created a back-to-school organization center out of a bunch of random supplies handed to us. Jen noted that I have good team management skills and that she was, strangely, okay with me bossing her around.

(Here’s the secret, y’all: Address people as “y’all,” and boss them in a southern accent. It gives me the advantage every time. You should try it… unless you’re from Brooklyn… but that might be funny.)

We each won $100 gift cards, which means that hideous ceiling fan in our living room is about to meet it’s demise.

9. The Romy Raves wine party at McCormick & Schmicks. It was so nice and intimate. I got to hang with Linz and Morgan, and I finally got to meet Jean! The wine was delicious (it was all from Cameron Hughes and affordable), and the little appetizers were the best thing I ate all week. The swag bag was out of this world, too. I got one of these Soiree things and it made my $8 bottle of wine taste… well, like more than $8 last night.

10. Waking twice in one night, rolling out of bed, my feet hitting the floor before I realized that baby that’s crying in the next room that I was going to go feed was not mine.

11. Dropping off over 70 bags of donated breastmilk to a very grateful mother from several of us who pumped at the conference. Yay breastmilk donation! Makes me warm and fuzzy every time. Kim and Jen were awesome for organizing that.

There were many more memories and many more pictures, but I will keep those close to my heart for now. Tomorrow I share my tips for Blogher12, which, in case you haven’t heard, will be back in NYC. Hope to meet more of you there! (And if you didn’t see, I shared some of the things I learned at the conference sessions yesterday.)

Don’t forget to enter to win a $500+ prize package from my Blogher sponsor BornFree. Open to US and Canada residents, even those of you who didn’t go to Blogher. Click here to fill out a quick form. They’re drawing a winner August 22nd.

I’ve reduced my Blogher experience to lists because that’s the only way I can process it right now, and to save you all from something like the 3 part series of epically boring proportions I wrote last year. This, again, is a 3 part series, BUT in list form, which helps… I hope?

Note: These  lists are in no particular order. That’s way too much for my brain to take on right now.

Top 5 6, No Wait, Make That 7 Things I Learned From Blogher Sessions

1. “Everyone here wants to be noticed, and YOU have the power to notice them.” One of the panelists (can’t remember which one, probably Liz Strauss) in the Peer Networking session said this, and I loved it. It’s not only true for the conference, but life in general. I quit worrying about who would and wouldn’t recognize me, and focused on recognizing, acknowledging, and just plain ol’ noticing others. It brought a lot of awesome new connections my way.

2. “The quickest way to make a connection is to ask a question.” That was Liz Strauss (I am now stalking her) at the same Peer Networking session. Really want to get to know someone? Don’t wait and wish for them to reach out to you. Engage them!

3. Find out what makes you standout from the crowd (ask others!), accept that & enhance it, focus it to your audience, then redefine and refresh yourself and/or your blog every 2-3 years. (Pathfinder Day Breakfast with personal brand expert Sandra Miley)

3. Come up with a mission statement or an elevator pitch about who you are and what you’re about. As opportunities come to you, see if they match your mission statement. Say no to things that don’t.- Implementing this now! I spread myself too thin all the time. (Also from Sandra Miley)

4. Melissa Ford from Stirrup-Queens.com was one of the Pathfinder Day: My Blog as Book Proposal panelists. I took away so much from this session, but I’m not sure much of it is of interest to the majority of you. That said, if you’re interested in how to get a book published, she has a How To Get A Book Published series of posts, linked in her right sidebar.

5. Blog regularly! (So, so, so guilty of this. You all know that.) In the Your Blog Can Make You A Social Media Marketer session, Melissa Lion made a great point that blogging every day shows a prospective employer that you can and do meet deadlines. Ree Drummond (you may have heard of her little blog The Pioneer Woman) spoke in the My Blog As Media Company Pathfinder session about how important it is to tend to your blog like a garden, to nourish and water it regularly. She also has some other amazing tips in this post here.

6. You are the boss of your blog. This was a note that several touched on. Do what you want! Don’t like an old post? Delete it. Want to blog about different topics? Go for it. I think you want to try to go about these things with a little thought so you don’t leave people confused, unless you want to confuse people. Then confuse them because it’s your blog and you can do what you want. You are the boss of it.

I’ll post my other 2 lists (memories, and notes for next year) tomorrow and Friday. (I was going to post them all here, today, in this one post, and then I remembered the whole “trying to keep things from being epically long and boring” goal. Lookie there! I’m learning.)

BUT WAIT! Don’t forget that BornFree (my awesome Blogher Sponsor) is giving away over $500 of super cool baby gear to ANYONE who enters (from the US or Canada), not just those who went to Blogher. There’s still time to enter if you haven’t yet. Just click here and fill out the info. They draw a winner August 22nd.