Tag Archives: BlogHer

I was lucky enough to be asked to speak at the first annual BlogHer Food. For those of you who remember my BlogHer ’09 posts from July, you might be surprised I so willingly attended. I was surprised myself, but curiosity got the better of me, and I’m glad it did.

Continuing the motif, I was also surprised that I enjoyed myself so thoroughly. I had intended on staying through my session, which was before lunch, and then heading out to explore San Francisco. I ended up remaining at the conference for the entire day. I found the sessions, while geared towards recipe-oriented food bloggers, were still relevant for review and wine blogs as well. The whole attitude of the day was different from what I expected, and I was thrilled. It was the perfect size (I believe it was around 300 people) and the programming struck just the right note.

My panel focused on blogging best practices. Not only was I on a panel with an impressive group of women, we actually talked about blogging. It was refreshing. I also attended a session on photography basics, as well as a fantastic session on protecting your work and copyright. I learned something in every session I attended. I’m a terrible conference attendee, and often my attention easily wanders, so BlogHer Food’s programming impressed me.

In fact, the only complaint I heard from anyone (myself included) was about the lunch. It was a hyper Rocco diSpirito and Bertolli. Yep, they served a bunch of food bloggers thawed Bertolli. This isn’t a food blog, but when the people at the table are complaining that the ravioli alfredo was more reminiscent of biscuits and gravy, you know there’s a problem.

Perhaps it was because we were all coalescing around a common topic – the love of food and wine – but I found the entire environment to be a lot more friendly than my previous BlogHer experiences. I hunted down folks I knew, people I hadn’t seen in a long time, and even met several impressive authors who were more than friendly. I gladly attended a party in the evening, looking forward to seeing some people again. I discovered that food bloggers are food bloggers, no matter their genre. Recipe bloggers were interested in hearing from review bloggers (and wine bloggers!) and I was interested to talk to the recipe folks. It was just such a different experience – for me – than the larger BlogHer conference I attended in July.

Finally, while there was swag, it was both excellent and controlled. I believe there were only five sponsors in the expo/demo area (Healthy Choice, Campbell’s, Pur, Cuisinart, and Pillsbury) as well as the Bertolli lunch and the California Milk-sponsored breakfast. I have no complaints with the goodies with which I came home. The organization even set up an easy and obvious area to donate unwanted foodstuffs from the goodie bags to a local shelter.

Even if I don’t speak next year, I’ll gladly return to BlogHer Food. Among other things, it was just great to be in a room with other people who all whip out their cameras to take a photo of their food. Camaraderie wins every time.

Update: Live blogs from the sessions are now available.

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

BlogHer, in my mind, was going to be a blogging conference – a conference about blogging. Because we were all bloggers, and therefore not tech newbies, I expected a little more emphasis on the technology that makes it all work. A little more social media, a little more blogging, and a little less recipe sharing and parenting.

I attended several sessions and I spoke on a panel and well, BlogHer was chock full of surprises for me.

I was really interested in some of the Geek Lab sessions, and sad to find they were only 30 minutes each. Not only that, there were multiple GeekLab sessions running at the same time, in the same room, which was divided into giant cubicles. I had the experience of attending sessions led by one sweet girl who had no projection to her voice at all. That means that although I was in GeekLab session A, I was hearing GeekLab session B in the next cubicle, taught by someone with no fear of projecting her voice. For a blogging conference, I was sort baffled that this is how the tech would be treated.

The one exception to this was a good panel on Advanced SEO & Stats. Why this one session was led in a full conference room and the others were not, well, I don’t know.

The Tech vendors, such as Microsoft Bing, Intel, Best Buy, and Nokia were not on the expo floor. In fact, they were in a tiny created hallway at folding tables on the way into the Geek Labs. I don’t know if this was their idea or BlogHer’s idea, but I would have liked to talk more with these folks  – Nokia, in particular – without talking over or under the labs in the next cubicle. (Microsoft, at least, managed to score a suite they called the MicroSpa in a different area.)

There are some brilliant women out there who speak on social media and technology in general that weren’t a part of BlogHer. I was thrilled to see Corvida on a panel, which was also supposed to include Laura Fitton (who had to cancel at the last moment). Outside of those two, I didn’t notice names I’d have liked to see represented. Where was Kathy Sierra? How about Kara Swisher or Gina Tripani? There are a lot of great ladies in tech and social media right now (just look at any of Brian’s photo posts). I would have loved the opportunity to learn from them.

By saying that, I’m also sort of dissing myself. I was on the Food Blogging in the Recession panel (with my Wine Blog). It was eye-opening for me. I always thought of food blogging (and wine blogging is a subcategory) as people who ate food and wrote about it, whether it was in their own kitchen or in Thomas Keller’s restaurant. I always considered (and still do) restaurant bloggers to be legitimate food bloggers. This was a room of folks who wanted, for the most part, recipe tips. We talked about leftovers, freezing things, spices, but very rarely did we touch on actual blogging or other types of food blogging beyond cooking (live blog). I had really wanted my panel to discuss how we’re handling blogging itself in the recession, with an emphasis on food & wine. I did not expect it to get into coupons and leftovers. Obviously, I wasn’t accurately prepared for my audience and that is my own fault.

I’ve seen some tweets rudely stating that if you didn’t like BlogHer, then you should stay home. Other tweets and posts have implied that if you want tech, you should go to technology conferences. But here’s the thing – BLOG is in the title and even the New York Times called it a technology conference. Next year I hope they add a Technology Track. Not just a Business Track, but a full-fledged tech track that happens inside larger conference rooms and not cubicles.

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Cheers!

Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

There was this perhaps unintentional (maybe?) conference at BlogHer this year. It didn’t have a name or a set location, but believe me, it existed.

I call it SwagHer.

My biggest suggestion for improving BlogHer is to remove it of swag. Some of the best conferences I attend (and I attend a lot each year) actually have better vendor conversations because the Swag has been removed. In fact, one of the best conferences I attend has eliminated the Expo floor all together and there are just tiny tiny booths (more like poster areas) for each vendor around the edges of the keynote hall.

You see, there was weird swag craziness this year. Each conference bag includes swag, which is fine. The expo hall was enlightening for me. Even at JavaOne, which provides a heck of a lot of swag, I have never experienced anything like this expo hall.

First off, the expo hall had vendors that were geared towards Mommy Bloggers and I have to tell you, we were not all Mommy Bloggers. The types of swag in the expo hall included Bounce dryer bars, All Laundry detergent, baby food, and so on. You get the picture. It was only really irritating when this would happen:

Vacuuming vendor: So how old are your kids?

Me: I don’t have kids.

Vacuuming vendor: Um, uh, I don’t know if we can help you.

Me: I have floors to vacuum too, you know.

Right. So that was fun. It’s not like it only happened once.

Beyond that, there were the parties. I witnessed women fighting over bags of sponges. Sponges people!  Is it worth it? And those were just the public parties. Many of the alumna bloggers were invited to special, invite-only parties and collected amazing swag. It got to be so that in many ways, Swag became the focus of the conference.

There was one party I can think of that was open to the public where they hyped the Swag Bags all day on Twitter. So much so that we changed our plans to go, convinced that with all that hype (and only the first 100 people receiving the bags), that they had to contain Netbooks or Printers or something equally amazing (based on the sponsor). They got people to the party with the enticement of the Swag Bags. Turns out, the bags contained coupons and some people (not all) also had scarves. Yep, that’s it – over-hyped and driven by swag.

Now I say all this as the recipient of some awesome swag. In one bag, I got an adorable little Kodak video camera (that’s the same bag from which I acquired a pair of Crocs flip-flops, no threats needed). But I also returned/recycled/trashed a lot of what I received.  You would see people wandering around the conference with 3 or 4 bags just filled to the brim with swag. This dovetails nicely, by the way, with yesterday’s post on Blogging with Integrity. So many people wanted to know how to get the free stuff, either in swag or by blogging, or both.

This behavior was encouraged by the marketers, but really, could you blame them? They had a willing audience. Not only that, many bloggers were apparently sponsored to go to BlogHer by different brands. In return, they were supposed to promote said brands, which several did in a classy way. But many of these sponsored bloggers were akin to used car salesmen, shoving their swag into your hands and forcing you to listen. It wasn’t uncommon to be accosted in the lobby of the hotel, given free stuff and then being forced to listen to an entire spiel. There’s got to be a better way.

Swag, and free stuff, is not what BlogHer should have been about, but that’s where some of the focus seemed to go. It was my first BlogHer and I was a bit taken aback by all of this. However, I suspect we’ve reached the tipping point, and with a fair amount of backlash I’ve read, it may be downplayed next year, or more controlled by the conference organizers. But some of it was out of their control and very much in the hands of the bloggers and marketers.

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

I’m a big fan of BlogHer and I’m speaking on a panel at their Chicago conference this summer. So I was thrilled to hear that the organization “for women who blog” has grabbed a third round of funding for $7 Million. The new round is financed by two current investors, Venrock and the Peacock Equity, and new investor Azure Capital.

BlogHer CEO Lisa Stone told Boomtown that

“This is a true grassroots effort that is shows that growing influence women in social media,” said Stone. “We want to focus on taking advantage of that growth and momentum with this new funding…We have been trying to create a place for women to participate in social media with civil respect and also to engage readers.

BlogHer was founded in 2005 by Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page, and Jory Des Jardins. They run their popular conferences, including the large bi-coastal BlogHer and the traveling BlogHer Business events, as well as an advertising network and the social networking site.

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

I try to keep the overly personal stuff out of bub.blicio.us, but these are social media related.

First off, I always get to announce when Brian is speaking somewhere, but this time – it’s me! I’m thrilled to have been asked to speak on a BlogHer ’09 panel: Food Blogging in Time of Recession. I know, I’m not a food blogger. But what’s food without wine? I’ll be speaking, I think, on both finding Recession Wines as well as how to be a wine (and food) blogger during a recession. It sort of cuts back on fancy dinners and such – unless you’re a bit creative. BlogHer is happening in Chicago this year on July 24-25.

Next, my wine blog is up for a local award, although I fully admit there’s a popularity contest element here. In fact, I sort of feel like I’m campaigning for Prom Queen. That said, I’d love if you’d vote for me in the City Beat Best of Cincinnati Awards. My wine blog, among others, is listed as potential Best Blog. (I really wish they’d broken it out into categories, but they didn’t.) All you need to vote is an email address – no worries about whether or not you actually live in Cincinnati.

Once you get to the survey, you can vote on just about everything in the city. (Again, I wonder why they only have one category for blogs.) It’s a fun survey. You can fill out as much or as little as you wish. The BLOG category is listed under PUBLIC EYE. Select the drop-down list and scroll for MY WINE EDUCATION (http://www.wine-girl.net). Do I think I’ll win? Well, my fingers are crossed, but all my favorite local blogs  – and closest friends – are nominated too. The competition is stiff. But at least I’m in the mix, yes? You have until March 1 to vote, so vote soon!

Right. So, we’ll now return to our regularly scheduled programming here on bub.blicio.us.

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel, Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

Nominee for City Beat’s Best of the City: Vote for My Wine Education under Public Eye > Blog:
http://www.bestofcincinnati.com/