The BlogHer conference is bigger than ever this year with 800 participants, mostly women bloggers. I’ll be there. I’m speaking in a panel discussion on “Finding and Following your Passion” with Sheila Scarborough, who was also at SOBCon07, and has a great blog called Family Travel.
I’ll also be performing during the conference. Details on that will be announced.
This is a great honor for me and so very cool to get the chance to be around so many classy and inspiring women. (As well as a few undaunted men!)
Let me know if you’re going to be there and we can have a meet-up!
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Christine – nice site!! I’m pretty new in the game of blogging but have been reading blog forever..:) and blogher is an exciting group of women.. my bests at the conference.. will be looking forward to hear all abt it!!
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For someone whose blog posts normally cheer me up this has depressed me (!) I have just been looking for cheap flights from the UK because I really wanted to come to Blogher but at £450 + hotels I cannot justify it…..I was just getting over that, when I saw that you would be performing and speaking……now do you think if I started rowing to the US now I could get there in time!!!
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Not in my budget. But I think about how our could local bloggers have an affordable event.
And I have to echo Anna’s reflection about feeling a bit depressed about the BlogHer buzz. Not so much because I can’t go but I have started to pick up on an undercurrent that “real” bloggers at least want to be seen at BlogHer even if they can’t make it.
While it is absolutely true that financially I can’t go, I am not sure I would want to even if money were no object. My personality doesn’t fare well in large chaotic assemblies of strangers. I would not be comfortable yet meeting in person the people I have started meeting online we just haven’t exchanged that much information. So while I am not going to BlogHer I still consider myself a real blogger.
And tomorrow I will not like the way this sounds, but it how I have started feeling about the conference buzz.
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hi pearl, thanks for the note!
hey anna – there are several opportunities for free admission (on the blogher site, and at wendy piersall’s site (emomsathome.com)! but i understand that coming from england involves much more then just a zip to chicago! (i’m sure we’ll meet someday though!)
hi deb – thanks so much for your honesty and vulnerability here. i completely understand how you feel. (there are music conferences that can bring that stuff up in me.) and i’d also like to let you know that the idea that “real bloggers” go to BlogHer had never entered my mind at all. (in other words, there’s no such thing as an “in crowd” – only our projections make it an “in crowd!”) i remember reading about BlogHer for the first time last year and thinking “huh, that’d be fun.” but no blog conference can decide who’s real and who isn’t! and also, i would really encourage the part of you that recognizes you wouldn’t do well in such a huge crowd to guide your decisions here. one woman blogger i know said, “gross. a big huge group of women bloggers. that’d freak me out!” it made me laugh. everyone has their own way of doing things. (i will say though, my experience at the SOBCon was just plain fun. everyone there was just so happy to connect with other bloggers they had met on line. BlogHer is a lot bigger though. So I imagine, it’ll have it’s own personality.)
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Hi, Christine. I plan to be at BlogHer, and hope to catch up with you!
For those who are considering going: I went to BlogHer in San Jose last year, and was happy to find that the group is both diverse and welcoming. I learned so much. The organizers did everything they could to make it affordable – I was lucky in my airfare, found a rideshare and a roomshare, and every time we turned around one sponsor or another was feeding us – so the money I’d brought for food stayed in my pocket.
I still have those moments which take me right back to Junior High School, where I did NOT fit in – but increasingly I discover that grown ups can be a lot nicer to each other than 14-year-olds were. As long as I have a chance to go off by myself from time to time to read or write or draw, I do o.k. with crowds and can enjoy myself. But as Christine points out, that kind of situation is not necessarily nourishing for everyone.
If you can’t get to Chicago and want to start your own gatherings – go for it! In Pittsburgh, where I live, a group of bloggers (women and men) began a blog with a central listing of local bloggers a couple of years ago. Now the group gathers every two or three months in a restaurant for drinks and conversations about blogs, blogging, and everything else as well. We’ve had blog-ins at the library, too, where we help each other with blog set-up, templates, and widgets. It’s low-cost and low-key and tons of fun.
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Hi Christine,
Thanks for the link, and I’m really looking forward to our panel. Isn’t it great that we met at one blogging conference and two months later we’re speaking at another one!
For the readers — don’t be intimidated by the idea of a big conference. Several from BlogHer spoke here in Austin at South by Southwest Interactive, plus they threw an evening social event, and a nicer bunch you can’t imagine.
Hurry, though; the hotel blocks are almost sold out and it’s hard to beat the prices they’ve arranged.
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