Monday, July 23, 2012

IRL: What Happens When Meeting Fellow Bloggers

Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend! I've been grinning ear to ear after seeing Magic Mike - I cannot believe a white boy can move like that - LOL! It was great eye candy . . .

Anyway, I'm excited today because I can officially say BlogHer '12 is NEXT WEEK! I cannot believe it's so close, and I am excited as I make my agenda and figure out who I want to see IRL (in real life). 

One of my goals this year both with blogging/professionally and personally was to step out from behind my computer screen and make face-to-face connections. Attending BlogHer and Blogalicious '12 are part of meeting this goal. 

For those of you who are regular readers, you know I'm a Type-A personality and one of my favorite quotes is, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail," and I've been busy on my action plan to get the most of the blogging conferences. 

I decided to write out a recap of who I've met IRL and create a "must-meet" list:

Here we go . . .

Who I've met:

Jenn from Baby Making Machine - I met Jenn at BlogHer '10 and it was awesome to be in the midst of the craziness of BlogHer without being fully immersed as I wasn't attending the conference. She gave me a quick scoop on what it was like to be there as well as share tips as I was overdue with Lil Love Bird at the time and she had just given birth to Lil J {someday I hope she shares the pic she took of us ;-)}

Teresha from Marlie and Me - we met at Central Park with our LOs; she was a good blogger and posted a picture of us but I never did so here's mine: 




Dani from OK Dani



Natalie from Nat the Fat Rat - I went to an awesome private concert at her home (you can read about that here)

Book signings: 

A few months ago it seemed as though a ton of bloggers from Dooce to Mayim to Kelle Hampton had books coming out. The funny thing is there was nary a brown face in sight (I shared my feelings on ignoring diversity here), but rather than get angry about it, it's spurring me to action and I have an awesome project in the works with a fellow blogger (more about that later . . .). 

Anyway, I had the opportunity to go to Scary Mommy's book signing, and this is what it looked like:


This was me trying to be nice with my crappy BlackBerry camera angle
This is Scary Mommy's own depiction of the book signing {Image Credit}
I have a lot to say about the numbers game/business-side of blogging but knowing Scary Mommy has a HUGE following (including 6-figure Twitter followers) I just knew this room would be packed but alas it wasn't. For whatever reason (perhaps I'm not the right demographic and the Toastmaster in me was alive and kicking while she spoke), but I just didn't connect with her and I ended up leaving. I flipped through her book and honestly, just wasn't interested.

I knew I had Pizzazzerie's book-signing coming up and it was amazing to see the difference in execution and response to her event. Courtney didn't do a sit-down engagement but instead held a table book signing with free treats (she was promoting her push-up pops cookbook). She was so sweet and personable!



Who I want to meet:

(This is an in-progress list)

@WeatherAnchorMama
@GlossyMimi 
@BklynActiveMama
@RosesDaughter
@OnlyLaila
@Veronicatheblog
@Cubicle Chick
@BabyDickey

Who do you want to meet at BlogHer '12? If you want to meet me don't forget to fill out my form here so we can sort out logistics!