THE GOOD
BlogHer gets top marks for freebies. The tote bag was excellent all by itself:
I am not sure what the two offspring totes are all about but hey, they're cute. As is the purple notepad with attached pen I used all weekend, mainly for jotting down the blog addresses of all my new friends. The bag was filled with other freebies including a baby bib (for the mommybloggers), condoms (for those who don't wish to become mommybloggers?), and a flash drive (for the geek in all of us).
Aside from the groovy gift bag and mostly-female crowd, it was a pretty standard conference. Sessions ran long. Cell phones interrupted speakers. You had to stand in line for the bathroom. The difference was that nobody cared about all that. Joie de vivre was rampant. Maybe it was the soothing background noise of live blogger keyboard strokes that lulled us all into submission. Or that 'kumbaya' thing Blogher.org co-founder Lisa Stone mentions in this article on BlogHer 06.
THE BAD
Gosh, where do I start? Either I'm in a really crappy mood right now or the Hyatt San Jose was truly a crap location. Perhaps a list will help sort it out:
- Internet access problems all day, both days...at a conference that's all about the Internet. Hello!?
- No wireless Internet access in the hotel rooms, only ethernet cable connections (for which my laptop is not equipped).
- Unfriendly front desk man. When I started to ask what he needed from me, my confirmation number or my credit card, he interrupted with a snotty, "Well I don't know. Why are you here? Are you checking in?" In retrospect, that isn't just unfriendly. It's downright rude.
- No elevator to the second floor where, of course, my room was located. I had to lug my giant suitcase and computer bag up the STAIRS. It was barbaric.
- Trying to sleep in a room that faced the freeway. The really loud freeway.
- A room air conditioner with only two settings: 1) gale force winds, and 2) off.
The conference content was a disappointment. I expected to learn so much more on Day One, which held all the nuts and bolts sessions. Trouble was, I missed out on half the workshops because they were all offered at the same time and I forgot to bring my Hermione Granger Time Tuner. The ones I did attend ran long, had technical difficulties, and rarely got through all of the planned material. And where is all the box.net content? They gave each attendee a free box.net account, where they said they would post the session materials. So far, mine is full of sponsor propaganda and not much else.
Day Two was set up kind of weird. Day One registration closed at 400 people, but Day Two added 350 more. To accommodate them, there was a Day Two Welcome Session followed by an hour long discussion, "How are your blogs changing your world?" I skipped them both because 1) I already sat through a Welcome Session and frankly I'd rather sleep in, and 2) I don't care how blogs are changing everyone else's world, just my own, and I'd rather sleep in.
It turns out my truancy was a good thing because everyone else had to endure an excruciating skit involving bouncy twenty-something girls making inane comments about home improvement and how cool it is being a girl. Too bad the sponsor didn't think to include a few hot twenty-something boys in the skit, then at least the heteros could have enjoyed the eye candy. I wonder if the lesbians enjoyed the nubile girls or if they just thought they were foolish like the heteros did.
The downside to sleeping in is that I never did find the ten o'clock Birds of a Feather (BOF) group I wanted to attend because there were no signs. Apparently they had each BOF group leader stand up during the opening session so you could see what they look like and find your group that way. How quaint. After approaching three wrong groups, I finally gave up and had coffee with this nice person instead.
THE FAMOUS
I met these famous bloggers:
- Melissa from Suburban Bliss: Her blog is a vulnerable, witty mix of life as a wife, mother, and at times insecure human being.
- Maggie from Mighty Girl: Tall and gracious and newly pregnant. She glowed, baby.
- Alice from Finslippy: So delicate and pretty.
- Heather from Dooce: A rockstar among mere mortal bloggers, her From Here to Autonomy session was just as funny and eloquent as her blog.
- Grace from State of Grace: My favorite person hands down, famous or not, and not just because she recognized my blog name when I introduced myself (I link to her blog on my blog) but because she gave me air kissies and said hello to me every time I saw her after that.
I would love to say they all became my new best friends but, alas, after my initial "I just love your blog!" all I could do was stand there looking vapid before I finally said, "It was great meeting you" and scuttled away in humiliation. Except for meeting Heather in the drink line, where I said, "Death to Ed!" (Read her blog for Ed info.) She gave a frightened smile and hurried away with Alice at her earliest opportunity.
I do so hate it when I turn into Creepy Spaz Girl. I bet I'm on Stalker-Watch lists everywhere now.
Oh, I also met Robert Scoble, a guy who used to work at Microsoft, and his son Patrick. We chatted about absolutely nothing significant in the drink line. I was apparently the only person there who had no idea who he was. Nice guy. He walked around looking perpetually delighted with everything he saw and everyone he met. It was both endearing and alarming. I got the weird sensation that his amused smile masked dark thoughts like, "I can vaporize them all with one push of this tiny button. BWAHAHAHAHA!" I'm sure it was nothing.
WAS IT WORTH IT?
All bitching aside, I am glad I attended BlogHer 06. In addition to learning a lot about blogging in general and where blog tech is headed, I also have a buttload of new blogs to check out and a spate of new friends to get to know.
If you aren't blogging yet, why aren't you?
