BlogHer Part Everything Else.

I was going to keep my BlogHer posts all neatly chronological, but I’ve screwed that up already by thinking the Room 704 party was on Friday when it was actually on Thursday, and so I’m just going to write everything else I have to say about BlogHer in one long disorganized post made up of bulletpoints so that I can at least say I finished writing about BlogHer ’09 before I registered for BlogHer ’10.

{Honestly, trying to sell a book is like dating, or more accurately, like being infatuated with someone who may feel the same way, or may think you are insupportably homely. I cannot concentrate on anything else. I don’t think I have checked my email this much since I was about 21.}

Anyway, on with the show!

• Like Alana, Stefanie was someone with whom I felt instantly comfortable, and if I lived in LA I’d probably be knocking on her door right now with a pie, or something, if I weren’t too lazy to make pie. Meeting her was easily worth the price of airfare (I think I used miles, actually. BUT IF I HADN’T).
  
  {Stefanie: artist’s rendering. I forgot to take a picture.}

• The first session I went to on Friday was on the Transformational Power of Blogging. I went with Linda and Amy, whom I’d run into at registration, and the difference between my comfort level Thursday and Friday can probably best be illustrated by the fact that I was no longer too polite to babble at length to Amy, and that I finally stopped clutching my handbag like some sort of spiffily designed life preserver. The session was amazing, though Kate made me cry within the first five minutes, damn her to hell.

• I had lunch on Friday with a clutch of infertility and loss bloggers, including Mel, who is tinier and more beautiful in person than I was led to believe—she looks like a benevolent sprite of some kind (and her Community Keynote piece made me both laugh aloud and cry, despite having read it before). Here is a picture she took (I took about five photographs the whole weekend, alas) at said lunch:
  As you can see, I continued to be the LIFE OF THE PARTY.

• The MamaPop party defied description—I’m not even going to try. The fact that one of the few pictures I took all weekend was of the cake should be enough:
  
  THAT IS AN ACTUAL CAKE, MADE OF ACTUAL FOODSTUFFS.

• The MamaPop party was also where I was accosted by two (very nice) women demanding to know whether I was from something called “Dating in the Dark.” I’m not quite sure how to take that.

• On Saturday I was interviewed, LIVE, for Blog Talk Radio. I do not do “live.” That is why I like writing. There is no “live” in writing. When I speak in front of people, I get so nervous that as soon as a sentence leaves my throat, it is forgotten. I think this is how I ended up spending half of my interview talking about bacon. You can listen to it here, if you dare.

• Saturday afternoon I had a sidecar in the lobby bar with Heather B. (though they tried to turn us away at first because of some nonsense about it being “too early”), and I can honestly say that meeting Heather was one of the best parts of the conference, and I wish she’d figure out that we have politics in Minnesota, too, and come live next door to me.
  

• The CheeseburgHer party was wonderful. It was, like everything else, crowded, but somehow it felt very casual and friendly. There were French fries there.

• I went to Stefanie’s book signing, which was located in the Expo hall, and I nearly fell over when I saw the giant Mrs. Potato Head (Ms. Potato Head?) at the entrance. It was like a clown, only worse. There has been a lot of talk about a swag problem, which I frankly know nothing about as I was too busy eating room service to attend any but a few parties, but I think the larger problem was the attendance of people in giant character suits. Mrs. Potato Head, Goofy, AND the Michelin Man. I didn’t like that sort of thing as a child, and I don’t feel any more warmly about it now.

• At first, I felt guilty about spending early evenings holed up in my room for dinner, or becoming overwhelmed late Friday night and retreating to bed with a book. I felt like there was something wrong with me, like I wasn’t cut out for BlogHer after all. But what I figured out, and what I think might be helpful to remember in the wake of posts about people annoyed about one aspect or another of the conference, is that there is no reason you can’t make your conference experience the experience YOU want. The swag bothers you? Steer clear of the Expo hall. Have zero interest in sessions about monetization, or about moms, or some other topic? Don’t go to them.

  There was a lot of talk about who’s a shill and who’s in it for the writing or the community and I think a similar principle applies. BlogHer is GIANT. The number of women writing online is huge. There is no reason that we all have to do it for the same reasons, or even like everyone else, and the idea that we would all want to discuss the same topics at our conference is naïve. I’m not interested in sponsors. Some of the sessions about the more business-y side of blogging didn’t interest me, so I skipped most of those. (Though possibly my favorite session turned out to be Women of Color and Marketing. The combined brainpower of the women in that room, and the atmosphere of humor and respect, were humbling). I like that I’m able to make enough from ads to cover my hosting and website costs and have a little left over, and I’m not saying that there is a THING wrong with making money from one’s website, just that I started writing online for a different reason: because I have no boundaries.
  (Kidding!) (Kind of).

  My favorite parts of BlogHer were the women I met, and the conversations I had, and I was much happier once I realized that there was nothing wrong with going to a few parties I was particularly excited about and blowing off the rest, or leaving early, or turning down free drinks because I didn’t want to be sick the next day (I always find it funny when I get nasty email insinuating that I am a drunk, because I have never had more than two mixed drinks in the same night due to my paranoia about throwing up—which I’ve yet to do from drinking, thanks to my CONSTANT VIGILANCE). You don’t have to participate in, or even approve of, everything that happens at a conference as big as BlogHer—I’d never been to a conference of any kind before, so I think at first I felt I had to do EVERYTHING, in order to SUCK THE BLOGGING MARROW from the experience, but there is something to be said for knowing your limits. For some reason, I have to keep reminding myself that I am, in fact, a grown up. If I want shrimp cocktail at 3am, or to sleep in and miss breakfast, I have no one to answer to but myself, and the same goes for what websites I read, or don’t, and what I do with my own.

• By the time I left Chicago, I had made actual, real life friends, and was truly sorry to go. I would imagine the first BlogHer is always the hardest, because you haven’t met anyone yet and you don’t know what to expect. I can’t WAIT for next year.