This is the blogging conference I attended in Kansas City last weekend. Let me preface all of the blabber to follow by saying that I won a ticket to the conference. Yea!
Remember last summer when I went to BlogHer in Chicago? Well, this conference was almost the complete opposite. While BlogHer had thousands of women attending, GBS had more like 200. While BlogHer had several different sessions going in one hour to choose from, GBS had just one speaker. And while BlogHer left me feeling more frustrated, GBS gave me some answers.
Blogging conferences can be a little like high school. Who are the “it” girls? Who are the weirdos? Who are the freshmen? I personally tried to give up high school after high school and take people for their face value. If I like you, I’m going to like you no matter what you look like or what circles you run in. So there’s always a little bit of that.
There were a few speakers I really enjoyed (take a peek at How Sweet Eats by Jessica). She was my favorite speaker. She seems real and fun and not at all pretentious. And her philosophies about blogging made sense to me and my world. And she likes James Taylor and quite possibly country music. Or at least the AMCs. Good enough for me.
And then there were other speakers that I didn’t relate to well. But you can’t have everything.
I also did not have a roommate since this was my first year attending, so I met a girl through the Facebook group and we had a great time together. Much to my mother’s relief, she wasn’t a mass murderer.
I think my favorite part of the activities was getting my picture taken in the Photo Bus. It’s a traveling photo booth complete with props!
They might have my dream job. Can I get one in mint? Adorbs!
A few things I would recommend for next year:
1) Separate out bloggers by categories and have lunches together, such as style, food, etc. Hit a restaurant for a meal so they can network and chat about their favorite things.
2) Have a work session that’s separated out by blogging platforms- WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc. so bloggers can ask questions and learn from each other. This was something that was very helpful at BlogHer for me.
3) Move the location annually so we can experience other cities!
Overall, I enjoyed my Go Blog Social experience. And I might even go again….