BlogHer 06 - The Good, The Bad and The Famous

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:

1. Melissa from Suburban Bliss: Her blog is a vulnerable, witty mix of life as a wife, mother, and at times insecure human being.
2. Maggie from Mighty Girl: Tall and gracious and newly pregnant. She glowed, baby.
3. Alice from Finslippy: So delicate and pretty.
4. Heather from Dooce: A rockstar among mere mortal bloggers, her From Here to Autonomy session was just as funny and eloquent as her blog.
5. 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?

Technorati Tags: Blogher, Blogher06

Comments

[J. Clerkin-Whitcomb]

Love the new masthead - and I'm even MORE impressed with the new
"Glam Sheila" photo!! Wish I could
relate to all the technical blogger stuff you reference, but the closest I get to being technical is having once sat on the floor in a circle with Paul Allen drinking champagne and eating potato chips whilst discussing our favorite films when I worked for Reel.com and he was an investor. Sadly, I didn't even know who he was. Just as well as I'm sure it would have made me nervous! OH! And the guy who founded Boston Market was there as well....not that that has anything to do with techie stuff, but it's always fun to name drop (Even when you can't remember the names!) JCW

[GetSheila]

Hey! We could be links in someone's "Six Degrees of Separation" from Paul Allen. I worked on his R&D company tax returns at KPMG, I know you, you met him. ::Insert little china dolls singing "It's a Small World" here::

My new photo is courtesy of my friend Jennifer's wedding. For years I told myself tinted moisturizer was just as good as foundation. Then I put on foundation for the wedding and realized I had been deluding myself. My hair is a bit big in the photo, but I do love those 80's. (Sometimes I still wear shoulder pads, too.)

[J. Clerkin-Whitcomb]

We're so well connected amongst the rich and famous, it's a wonder we can stand ourselves!
Still say I love the photo - it's a wonder you came out looking so well considering your entire body was riddled with insect bites!
JCW

[Natalie]

i second what J is saying. very nice picture...ooh la la! uh hem.. yes, foundation is very different. oh and look at those straight choppers! yay!

[Jenn]

Hey!! cool to meet you. At least you REMEMBERED which birds of a feather thing you signed up for.

And thanks for addding me to your blogroll. I got 11 visitors referred from here. a record!

and I didn't know who Guy Kawasaki is... or most anyone else except leahpeah who is my friend.

[tish grier]

Hi Sheila! I always say the great thing about BlogHer is getting the chance to meet other women bloggers--something that rarely happens at other conferences (trust me, I've been to a whole bunch since last july)or even in our own neighborhoods (blogger meetups either don't happen, are sparsely attended or all men...)

And there's just no way to meet everyone. I've been at 3 dif. conferences with Robert Scoble, and we *still* have yet to exchange intros, so you're ahead of me there....but I know the creepy spazzy feeling too, which is why I didn't say much to Arianna Huffington when I ran into her in the ladies' room.

Meeting bigshots who blog still remains a bugaboo--but meeting people who blog has gotten alot easier with time :-)