Now that I am home, breathing my own reality, sitting in my same ol' chair, with my same ol' computer, and my same ol' blog, I have better perspective. And in my favorite form of bullets, this is what I have come up with in the BlogHer'10 aftermath:
- Small isn't so bad. As someone said in one of my sessions, "everyone in this room knows Dooce, but in the outside world nobody knows her. She can walk the streets of NYC and not "be seen"". This got me to think, Dooce the queen of blogs, big huge fish, and our blogging celebrity, is small in the grand scheme of things, which means I am a mere pipsqueak. This doesn't me my voice doesn't have it's place in all of it, but do I really need to try to make it my job? ...because as someone else in this awesome session said, "a job sort of sucks and a pain in the ass". Blogging in for fun. A hobby. To make it big you have to make it your life. I am not willing to sacrifice my life to my blog. I am however willing to use my voice.
- Using my voice in other ways is what I am going away with. My wheels are turning and I am wondering where I can make a difference. After listening to one of the keynote speakers from Mideast Youth, I started thinking, here is someone sacrificing her life to blog and help others, and here I am talking about baby poo. I was also inspired my an exhibit in the expo by Proctor & Gamble that are doing an amazing program to provide safe drinking water in places that have none. It spoke to me, and I started to think, "what can I do?". I am still working on that answer, but for now I am posting the info so that you can read it, and send it along too. Don't all humans deserve drinkable water?
- By reading my past blog posts you may think that the conference left a bad taste in my mouth. Although many points did indeed do that, many more made me think, "gee that made it worth it". So the answer to would I go back? yes. Just with way different expectations.
- Thanks to the abundance of swag (BlogHer'10 had something like twice as many sponsors this year which led to a massive expo center filled with freebies"), I am still sorting the pile of "keep" and "donate". I plan to do free reviews of products I like out of the pile on my review blog, and plan on making connections with some of the companies to not only enhance the review blog, and do giveaways, but figure out a way to give back as well. One of which, Proctor & Gamble, who gave me and two of my friends, an exclusive tryout of their new PUR water filter. We made no promises of speaking about it, but after all the good work they are doing over in Africa, it is a must. It all wasn't rainbows and sunshine though, I was unimpressed with the people from Fisher-Price. After listening to their song and dance, and watching one friend get a free $80 toy, another a cute Thomas the train, I walked away with 1 newborn diaper. I know this is sounding selfish on my part right now, but really?, REALLY? First off all I don't have a newborn, and 2nd of all I got about 12,000 promo 1 diaper packages in the mail when Addison was born. So tell me what I can do with this diaper of yours? (not even a package of diapers that I can donate to a needy family!) I got an idea, how about take all those samples you gave out to poor souls like myself that day, and donate them to newborns who need them. Give us a card that says "thanks to your participation today you have donated a package of diapers to _____ charity". Now that is something I would BRAG about. For now fisher-price can bite me! Playskool on the other hand, warm faces, no long song and dance, post cards to send home to my kids, and toys I can donate to people that need them (because my kids sure don't need it all!). There is such a long list of awesome people I met from awesome companies, and amazing products. So much so, I might have to focus a week souly on my review blog.
- Recap: Small Blog, hoping to make a difference, you can take your diaper and shove it, and yes I might get my crap together and make it to BlogHer'11 in San Diego! And most importantly--check out Mideast Youth, and the P&G Childrens Safe Drinking Water.
The next post is totally going to be about baby poo don't you worry!
1 comment:
omg, san diego!?! i can do that! :)
that's not all i took from this, i swear. :) i love you writing and am glad you took something away from the conference that will impact you. :)
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