Conferences

Getting ready for BlogHer 2011? Then listen up!

by Angel Amy on July 29, 2011

Are you heading to BlogHer 2011 in San Diego? Or is it just too freakin’ far? (Yes, we Blogging Angels are east coasters, but we’re all trekking out there – in fact, Angel Heidi is on her way there right now as this is being published!) We’re covering what to bring, what to wear, what to do before you leave, and how to get the most out of BlogHer while you’re there.

Is there a minimum level of presentability for any conference, or is BlogHer a big Anything Goes fest? Will you have Wi-Fi at the hotel and in the conference rooms? (At least one of the Angels will be packing one of these.) Should you bring your laptop? (Angel Amy will make fun of you if you use pencil and paper, but that’s just because she can’t read her own handwriting.)

Want a little man between your beds, for you and your roommate to share? Order this little guy, from Bed Bath & Beyond.

HTC StatusAngel Heidi pulled out a borrowed review unit of the very Blackberry-looking HTC Status during the podcast, which set her and Rebecca off on a long argument about who exactly are millennials (turns out they’re Gen Y – sorry, Rebecca!).

Decide where you want to be at BlogHer before you get there – peruse the BlogHer agenda here.

Angel Rebecca gave horns to a post by Patrick Evans (as shared by Alli Worthington) about marketing (or not) to Gen Y.

For reasons not entirely clear, the Angels were talking about Faith Popcorn and S&H Greenstamps. Sometimes we can’t even follow our own tangents. Plus, we’re old.

Angel Heidi gave her golden halos to apps that help you focus: Rescue Time, Keep Me Out, and Anti-Social.

Angel Amy gave her halo to PacSafe’s laptop bags, which she loves.

Angel Nancy gave hers to a post on MomSpark about how to prepare for BlogHer.

See you in San Diego!

You can listen to the podcast below, or subscribe on iTunes. Don’t forget to give us a great rating!

To download this episode to your computer directly: right click, then click “save link as”

We’d love for you to weigh in! Leave a comment, we’ll talk back.

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Inside blogger trips: what do you share with readers?

by Angel Amy on April 7, 2011

Conferences, junkets, trade shows…what do they all mean? And when you go to one, which parts do you share with your readers? Is it OK to blog about swag? Tweet about the awesome food you’re being served? The special treatment you’re receiving? What do your hosts expect of you? And what happens when twitter gets jealous and accuses you of bragging?

This week the Blogging Angels tackle this confusing area, using the recent Disney Social Media Moms Celebration as a jumping off point.

This week’s links:

Chris Brogan

Rene Syler

Georgia Stitt and Susan Egan

Mom Central’s list of blogging conferences

Chrysler’s twitter debacle

Let’s Panic About Babies, by Eden Kennedy and Alice Bradley

Catch A Fire

Anna Quindlen & Lisa Belkin’s post on The Motherlode, The Best Part of Parenting

Camels and Chocolate

You can listen to the podcast below, or subscribe on iTunes. Don’t forget to give us a great rating!

To download this episode to your computer directly: right click, then click “save link as”

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Conference takeaways

by Angel Amy on February 22, 2011

With Blissdom behind us, the Blogging Angels are discussing conference take-aways: what do you hope to get out of a conference, and just how does a blogger decide which conferences to go to? Amy got some very solid takeaways from Blissdom and has already started making changes to her blog. But do all conferences provide that kind of concrete, take-action info, and should they? Or is the social aspect just as important?

This week three of the Angels had Golden Halos to give out, and one had Devil Horns:

Amy gave her Golden Halo to Busy Dad Blog’s excellent post about growing up different.

Nancy gave horns (boo!) to auto DMs on twitter.

Rebecca gave her Golden Halo to her favorite dad blog, Blirred Reality.

And Heidi gave her Halo to C. Mom’s post about what it means to have a gifted child.

Here’s what else we talked about this week:

Amy made several changes to her blog because of the SEO workshop at Blissdom (put on by Shelly Kramer, Ang England and Melanie Nelson), but changed one of them back already.

Heidi thought twice about tagging the photo in this post “red dress” since she didn’t want “that” kind of traffic.

Rebecca’s site gets a lot of traffic for a picture tagged “Mona Lisa cat.” Weird.

Nancy gets crazy traffic from pictures of David Hasselhoff and Elmo.

Rebecca has a love/hate relationship with the WordPress Popular Posts plugin.

Rebecca talked about how someone figured out how to get a random story to the top of the New York Times’ most emailed articles list.

Once again, we talk about the usefulness – or not – of the BlogHer conference.

Many people we know are skipping the next BlogHer conference in favor of Mom 2.0 instead.

We discuss how a great list of speakers can convince us to attend a conference, but a speaker we don’t like can be a complete turn-off for the conference as a whole, like with She-Con.

And we were all shocked by the huge range of fees we heard about during previous guest Kim Moldofsky‘s panel about how much bloggers make, based on a survey she did.

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From Blissdom, with love – and special guest Kim Moldofsky

by Angel Amy on February 2, 2011

The Blogging Angels – or at least three-quarters of us – were in Nashville, TN last week for the Blissdom Conference, an annual gathering of (mostly) women who blog. With incredibly informative sessions, dynamic speakers, and great sponsors, Blissdom is three days of learning, fun, and inspiration.

The road to Blissdom was not easy, however. After an incredibly bump-free trip to Las Vegas for CES, the weather did not cooperate last week, getting Rebecca and Nancy into Nashville two days late. Heidi wasn’t able to make it due to prior commitments, and we missed her so much! We also missed the Yeti Pro omnidirectional microphone we recorded with at CES. At Blissdom, we were huddled around a microphone from my XBox RockBand game.

We were thrilled, however, to have Kim Moldofsky as our very special guest. Kim blogs at Hormone Colored Days (including the hilarious house-hunting video series Property Sluts) and Mom Impact, which specializes in connecting bloggers with brands. She tweets as @KimMoldofsky.

Some of the things we talked about in this episode:

Kim’s prior speaking credits include Blogalicious, Blissdom, and Type A Mom. She also spoke at the Sweets and Snacks Expo in Chicago, and got to hang with Nancy Pelosi at a press conference.

Rebecca wrote a great post about the importance of conferences for women. That post of Rebecca’s definitely influenced Amy’s comment on a post written by DadaRocks.

Mom Impact hosted a Blog World Expo webinar about how to develop a great speaker proposal, and luckily for us it was transcribed!

Kim was sponsored at Blissdom by ConAgra Foods, and Amy was sponsored by Kleenex.

The survey that Kim put on Mom Impact about getting paid is still there – chime in!

Amy was happy to wear an eBay Classifieds t-shirt at BlogHer last summer, and all of the Angels were very enthusiastic about promoting new Windows phones as part of our sponsorship to CES last month.

And if we all agree on one thing, it’s that you should never, ever, tape a sign to your shirt with info about your conference sponsor.

Golden Halos

Amy gave her Golden Halo to the concept of “owning it.” Granted, there’s no website to point to for that concept, so she’s just going to link to Blissdom for really hammering home the point.

Rebecca’s Golden Halo went to Hallmark’s personalized paper plates, with pictures in the middle of the plate uploaded by you.

Nancy’s Golden Halo gets split between Alli Worthington, Barbara Jones, Paula Bruno, and Megan Jordan for creating such an amazing event as Blissdom.

And that’s it for this week! See you next week, when we’re be back in familiar territory – Nancy’s dining room – with our good microphones.

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When Social Networkers Socialize: Conferences

by Blogging Angels on October 7, 2010

Blogalicious, Mom 2.0, Blissdom. If you wanted to, you could practically go to a blogging conference every week. Which, come to think of it, would be fun, since blogging conferences tend to be as much social events as learning opportunities.
But most of us have lives outside of blogging.  We have houses to run, and kids to think about. Bills to pay. We can’t just be running off to every conference on the planet. We can’t afford to go to every conference.

So which conferences are worth attending? What makes a good conference? What works, what doesn’t, and what drives us absolutely bonkers when we go to them?

What are conferences for, anyway?

This week, the Blogging Angels are talking conferences: the good, the bad, and the annoying.

Listen in, then join in the conversation: What do you expect out of a conference? What makes them worthwhile? And what makes them a waste of your mighty minimal free time? Blogging Angels want to know.

This week’s Golden Halos go to the week’s most click-worthy sites.

Amy, after a half-hour of talking conferences, decided to give a Golden Halo to the one she loves most: Blissdom, where, she says “the trains always run on time!”

Heidi gave her halo to LaunchHer.com. Launch Her is all about helping women launch small businesses, or take their small businesses to the next level.

At Web 2.0, Rebecca heard Nick Bilton, NY Times lead technical writer and author of “I Live in the Future and Here’s How it Works,” and kinda fell in (totally professional and non-stalkery) love. Her Golden Halo goes out to Bilton for his funny, charming, and smart take on tech.

This week, Nancy discovered tungle.me, an online scheduler that really does what it says it will: it makes your life easier. How? It lets everybody see when everybody else is available, and makes scheduling group meetings (or Blogging Angel Podcasts) a breeze.

Here are links to some of the other topics and sites we talked about this week:
Parallel Path offered some great SEO advice at Web 2.0
BlogWorld is the biggest Social Media Conference in the world.
CES is a gadget geek’s dream event!
Rebecca and Nancy met a NYC based blogger they’d never met before!! Nice to meet you NYC Girl at Heart!

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BlogHer Post-Mortem

by Blogging Angels on August 16, 2010

The swag has been unloaded, the business cards gone through.  Your feet are finally not sore, but your head is still spinning. Yes, BlogHer 2010, held August 6-7 in New York City, is over.

BlogHer, for those of you who don’t know (or who do, but couldn’t make it), is an annual conference of women bloggers.  This year, 2400 women (and a few men) showed up for a whirlwind weekend of informative sessions, inspiring speeches, wild parties, big brand events, new friendships, minor controversies, major swag, and a healthy dose of community.

In our inaugural podcast, The Blogging Angels talk about it all: The Best and Worst of BlogHer 2010.

We are big name droppers.  Here are some links from the podcast so you can see what all the fuss is about:

The mother of all blogging conferences : BlogHer

Don’t tell us you don’t give a tweet.  Try out  Twitter for yourself (and follow us while you’re there)

Wanna do some good?  Check out Bloganthropy

Think you can’t run for office?  Think again and read all about The White House Project

Who had the best product giveaways at BlogHer? SocialLuxe Lounge and Getting Gorgeous

And who showed women how to use tech in new and interesting ways? Microsoft Suite and Firefox Suite

And a shout out to a fab blogger we all adore and who stood up to Padma’s intense judging: Melissa Chapman

BlogHer Post-Mortem Download

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