BlogHer DC ‘08 Follow Up

Came home Monday night and after giving Michael the recap I fell asleep on the sofa, utterly spent. I had talked until I couldn’t talk any more because there were so many great bloggers to meet and many friends to catch up with. I had a great time working with Liz Henry, Veronica Noone, and Kristen King on the Blogging Basics panel and hope that the information discussed was useful for everyone who attended. You can find live notes from the panel and Liz’s presentation in the BlogHer DC Liveblogs post and you can also download a copy of my presentation. [Update: Kristen posted notes about promoting a blog, and Veronica posted a fun video follow up.]

The closing keynote was a panel with Carol Jenkins, Lesley Stahl, Liz Mair, and Mary Ann Akers discussing social media and the political process. Make sure you check out the liveblog notes for this keynote, as the discussion was fascinating.

The sessions are always good, but for me the highlight is meeting and talking with other bloggers. This time I had a chance to meet Fabulous Miss S, Beth Bilus, Lindsay Maines, Judy, De, Julia, Sarah Dopp in the Geek Lab, Rachel and her nice husband (yes, a few men attended), Fishy Girl, Foodie Tots, Sue, Gloria, Dr. Val, and Matt and Katin. (Aside: I didn’t get cards from all the women in my small group at the Blogging Basics panel, so please drop me a line so I can find you.) And of course it was great to catch up with friends from DC Metro Moms Blog: Linda, Jodifur, Nicole, Jessica, Mama Bird, Devra, Joanne.

I found the small conference to be very worthwhile. While I enjoyed the big conference in San Francisco in July, the DC conference had a less-is-more aura. The themes of blogging basics and community-building seemed to work well, particularly in the national capitol region where advocacy is a part of life. I have hope that BlogHer can continue to offer these smaller conferences in various parts of the country, giving local and traveling bloggers a chance to connect and discuss the topics that are important to us. Thanks to the BlogHer team for coming to DC!

I Do…

Eight years ago today, we said our vows on the lawn of the Bar Harbor Tides overlooking Frenchman’s Bay in Bar Harbor, Maine. We had planned to elope, but just two weeks before decided to invite our parents to our nuptials.

It was a simple ceremony, no cake or reception, though the wonderful owners of the inn gave a champagne toast. Afterward we drove around Acadia National Park for our wedding photos.

Happy Anniversary to my wonderful husband, Michael. Thank you for being a loving and supportive husband and caring, involved father. May we have many more years together.

Photos

Top: by Bob Noonan, who passed away a few years ago, taken at the Bar Harbor Tides

Bottom: by our parents, taken at the Jordan Pond Carriage House

My Omnivore’s 100

Andrew of Very Good Taste created a fun meme asking which items we have eaten out of his personal list of 100 things every omnivore should eat at least once. I decided to play along, so here is my Omnivore’s 100 based on Andrew’s original list.

At the end of the post, you’ll see I added some things that I would have put on the list had I been smart or creative enough to have come up with the idea myself.

The Rules

1. Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2. Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4. Optional extra: Post a comment here (the original post) linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred

My score = 61 (not bad)

1. Venison (My dad comes from a family of hunters, and I grew up eating wild game.)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (While on vacation in Australia. It tastes a lot like chicken. Also had kangaroo, but that’s not on the list.) Read more

BlogHer ‘08, Thanks and Thoughts

My mind is finally processing everything from the BlogHer conference in San Francisco. I had a great time meeting and hanging out with some fun food bloggers: Claire, Lydia, Kalyn, Kathy, Sean, Shuna, Susan, Sara, Genie, Gudrun, Elise (thanks for the mug!), Amy, Jennifer. Then there was the all the fun catching up with my friends from DC Metro Moms Blog: Tech Savvy Mama, Jessica, Stimey, WhyMommy, Mama Bird, Sandie, Vickie, KC, Lawyer Mama, Pundit Mom, Kristin, Kimberly. Meeting the rest of the SV Moms at the party on Thursday was wonderful, and it was great to finally put a face to all the names I read on the blogs: Jill, Beth, Tekla, Linsey, Alix, Canape (I understand where you are coming from), Myrna, and many others.

There were about 1000 bloggers at the conference and many opportunities to meet people, and I have to say this shy woman started feeling a little overwhelmed, but I tried to step out of my normal wall-flower persona and enjoy all the hubbub, though for some strange reason I suddenly found myself very nervous when it came time to introduce my blog at the food bloggers meetup! So I must say a big thanks to all of you who came to me and introduced yourselves because you helped me come out of my shell. (Of course there’s a potential downside to that because I think I talked some people’s ears off once I got to know them, so if I did talk your ear off, thank you for being so gracious about it.)

The conference presented many learning opportunities, and I felt pulled in multiple directions. My favorite presentations were Elise’s session on building traffic (she is so honest and down-to-earth), Me Ra Koh’s session on photography (very inspiring), and the business of blogging session.  Often there were concurrent presentations I was interested in, but I had to choose. The Business of Blogging session was very informative, but I had to exit in the middle of Tax Girl’s awesome presentation to go to the Birds of a Feather Meetup so I could join my fellow food bloggers. I appreciated Kalyn’s idea of introducing ourselves with just 10 words about our blogs (think really really short elevator speech), though some of the corporate reps in the room tried to do an end-run around that rule. Kalyn showed off her classroom management skills and kept everyone on track! My only complaint with the meetups is the lack of time and space. We had a lot of food bloggers or people interested in food blogging and such a short amount of time for even a 10-word introduction. We did set aside some tables for Saturday lunch so we could all sit together and have some more talking time, and the food bloggers all tried to get together for lunch on Sunday, but I had to miss that one to catch my flight home.

One interesting thing that came out of our discussions during and after BlogHer ‘08 is the need for a food bloggers conference. This isn’t new; it has been discussed off and on for the last few years, and to those who had attended before as well as all of us newbies, the need for sessions specific to food bloggers was readily apparent. A bunch of us started Twittering and emailing and then putting our ideas together in the hope that next summer we can have a conference dedicated to food blogging. We think it’s something to get excited about! Maybe next year?

The Birthday, The Race for the Cure

Yes, we did it! On Saturday morning Team DC Metro Moms Blog joined thousands of others running/walking/strolling for the Cure in downtown DC. The company was fantastic and we had a wonderful time while raising money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. The day was a scorcher with high humidity, but the misting tents were up and we made sure to hit every one of them, sometimes twice. It was great to catch up with moms I already knew and meet new ones! This is a cool bunch of gals to hang with. Hopefully we can get together again soon Robin, Jean, Linda, Devra, Jess, Mama Bird, Jessica, Nancy, Sandie, Leticia, Jodifur, Julie, and Sarah! And I missed seeing Susan, Suzie, and Mary, but I’m sure we’ll catch up!

After all our racing and brunch festivities were done, I went home and drank gallons of Gatorade, then started getting ready for Top Gun’s birthday party which was yesterday. Michael and I tag team making the birthday cakes, so I did my part baking and mixing up three batches of frosting Saturday night (aside: I kept nodding off and it took me till 3:30 am to finish it all) then Michael put his aerospace engineering skills to use and designed an airplane cake on Sunday morning! Top Gun was thrilled with his cake, and I’ll have a post up about it sometime soon.