Join Me in Snarkville

Just so you can understand what a true royal welcome home is all about. These are all things that have occured in the 24 hours I’ve been home.

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Do you know how I just LOVE to say that I suck? Well, it is because it is so true. I do suck. (And probably not in the good way, unless you think the good way is because it makes ME perfect blog fodder.) If I was capable, I’d list all the ways I suck and move on, but you know me, I will list them; come back to them; re-hash them; and beat myself up about them. I will be having those (not-so-silent) conversations with myself in the shower for a week. Why? Because I just spent a full week at BlogHer in two days. Yes, I crammed a week’s worth of horrible suckage into a two day women blogging love fest. Only the Queen is truly capable of doing this.

Oh, you are wanting to know the depths to which I suck. Well, let’s stick to a theme lest I be curled up in the fetal position the rest of the day because I’m overwhelmed with suckage.
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..I’m done. LiveBlogging is exhausting. LiveBlogging is hard. More power and props to anyone who does it and does it well. I however, am pooped. I may be curling up in the corner to sleep all of this off.

Yes, BlogHer is intense. It is lots of information is passed and I have yet to make it all the way through my goody bag. I
mean bags. I have no fewer than THREE goody bags from this event. I love that. I love free stuff and I’m all over getting things totally free and loved everything I got — I just don’t know what I have yet. I promise when I finally sleep again, I will take photos and tell you about everything in each of them.

I did test drive a car. And for the first time in my life, I test drove a stick shift car. It was cool to KNOW i could drive it. Those who don’t know, I learned to drive stick 3 years ago — after we bought the stick shift car. I only learned after throwing a little hissy fit about my inability to get it (the prince will tell the story making me out to be much worse than I
will — but I am a bit ashamed that he may be more correct). The car is the new Saturn Sky. It is a fun ride, EXCEPT the stick is short and high for my short self. I was uncomfortable to actually drive. It was however a converible (the first one I’ve ever driven) and I looked completely hot driving it. And the best part was that I got a goody bag because of it. Again, I loves me the free stuff.

I’ve got a few more little things to do today and I’ll pile my tired butt self into the car and scoot out of here. I am ready to go home again.

Business Blog Case Studies: Yvonne DiVita, Susan Getgood & Toby Bloomberg lead a rap session with you, the BlogHers, about what worked (and what didn’t) when implementing blogs for business.

Session Notes:

Please note that I am typing during this session. I expect a blanket forgiveness on any spelling, grammar, or nonsense mistakes. I may come back and clean this up and add any content in the “post production” of this entry. If I have anything to say that isn’t part of the
live-blogging itself (read: my personal running commentary), I will note it by the italics.

The BlogHer staff requested that today’s presentations not have powerpoints, so I will do my best to share what is going on, but I should let you know that there is a podcast of every session so if you want the details, I’d go to the powerpoint.

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Session Notes:
Please note that I am typing during this session. I expect a blanket forgiveness on any spelling, grammar, or nonsense mistakes. I may come back and clean this up and add any content in the “post production” of this entry. If I have anything to say that isn’t part of the live-blogging itself (read: my personal running commentary), I will note it by the italics.

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Oh, yes it is possible that I have spilled coffee this morning, not
once, but twice. IN.FRONT.OF.PEOPLE. I really now want to crawl into a
corner and die a little.

Here’s a list of the things I have learned at BlogHer:

1. I’m pleased to say that I can now add, “Met someone I admire and didn’t make an ass out of myself” to my list of accomplishments.  for this I’m thrilled.  I THINK that Mir may not think I’m an insane stalker, thus I have successfully licked her without drooling horribly.  My proof of this is that she walked over to me in a crowd just to be social and I didn’t ONCE gush — we talked about bargains.  It was WAY cool.  Proud of me?
2. How exactly is it possible that in a conference full of women, that I spend my time hanging out with a guy?  I’m serious, I thinking this is proof that I am not a girl.  No, I’m not growing a penis anytime soon, but I’m not like women in so many ways.
1. I am not wearing open toed shoes.  Nor am I wearing heels.
2. It is me and the lesbians here without make-up. 
3. I may have the smallest suitcase of any woman here.  And I only have one spare bag, and that is for my knitting.
4. I don’t think that muffins and coffee/juice makes a breakfast.  I need FOOD.
5. I am incapable of squealing and doing the air-hug fake kiss-kiss.  It makes me break out in hives.
3. Conversation boundaries do not exist here.  Last night I have talked to someone about religion, another about politics, several people about sex, and discussed openly the two women making out in the middle of the courtyard.  My inner prude is screaming.
4. While this hotel pretty much sucks and I hate so much of it, I want to take home the shower — the larger shower with a tiled seat in the corner and great water pressure.  It is the ONLY reason to ever come to this hotel again. 
5. It is possible to type on next to no sleep. 
6. People need to learn the vibrate function on their phones.

Ok, they are dimming the lights here, which means I’m going to lay across a few seats and nap.

Tagging, tracking & structured blogging:

What this session is supposed to be about:

Do taxonomies & folksonomies fill you with ennui? Charlene Li & Marnie Webb will help you discover why you care & how it gives you an edge.

Session Notes:
Please note that I am typing during this session. I expect a blanket forgiveness on any spelling, grammar, or nonsense mistakes. I may come back and clean this up and add any content in the “post production” of this entry. If I have anything to say that isn’t part of the live-blogging itself (read: my personal running commentary), I will note it by the italics.

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Audio/Podcasting

What this session is going to be about:

Instructors will be on hand to serve all user levels. Beginners will create & post an audio entry with Susan Kitchens. Advanced users will get hands-on instruction and interactive Q&A about advanced techniques, plus best practices in promotion and distribution from Nicole Simon and Anita Campbell.

Notes on the session:

Please note that I am typing during this session. I expect a blanket forgiveness on any spelling, grammar, or nonsense mistakes. I may come back and clean this up and add any content in the “post production” of this entry. If I have anything to say that isn’t part of the live-blogging itself (read: my personal running commentary), I will note it by the italics.

Ok, I just found out that they are going to be spliting the group up into parts, so I’m going to do my best to follow one group in each of the repeats, so here goes nothing.

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This is a live post. Forgive the lack of summary at the top of this one — call me unpreped, but we will all live, right? There are bunches of live-bloggers doing this, so I’m sure someone will do the formal summary thingie.

See: I’ve got it now:

Let’s get this whole thing started. (more…)

Ok, well maybe not. My high school days were full of pretending I was hot shit and full of spunk and life. I also wore a uniform, attended Catholic school with the appropiate level of hate, pretended very hard that I was the angst ridden average teen — when in fact, I WAS an angst ridden average teen in the body and soul of a 30 year old with goals for my life. All of that to say, it is no wonder that I keep in touch with exactly 0 of my high school classmates.

So, how does this relate to today? Well, BlogHer feels exactly the way I thought my high school reunion would feel, only I know no one here. There’s a lot of squealing and hugging and “OMG, I read your blog!” (Sidenote — you know how I love the sidenote: I’m sitting in the main room with breakfast and watching women bloggers wander in — never in my whole life have I seen this many laptops in one room. I’ve worked at a major tech company where we were all issued laptops for work and we never have this many in one room. And the weird thing is, very few of these women are quiet — they are typing, gabbing, and the low rubble of women is nearly electric.)

There are nearly 400 people here today and more tomorrow (read: over 700) and this is a little overwhelming. Everyone here blogs. Everyone reads blogs. There is an amazing chance that the people sitting at my very table will be blogging about me, good or bad. I feel a little on stage, a little pressure to be funny — but in that good way that I do get off on. Though I freely admit, exhausting.

But the other thing that is making feel like high school is that, just like when I was in high school, I feel like I’m on the outside looking in. i wonder if everyone feels this way or if it is just a lucky few that no matter what friends we have, how close our relationships are, we never feel like we fully belong to the group think. I have discovered that there is this whole part of the blogging world I know nothing about. There are “superstars” I’ve never heard of before — so I’m totally not starstruck (except for Mir — who I have to tell you is completely a normal, sane, and delightful human) — maybe that’s a good thing — unlike high school, I have no idea who the cool kids are and thus I feel more relaxed about meeting people.

And onto the main event. While I may or may not have made a complete fool of myself — I may have made a comment about her sex life; had a brief discussion about used diapers (to which I was a complete dork and one woman I was speaking to said something like — “I USED cloth diapers.” I crawled under a table and died a little.) But Mir was sweet, and chatted with me like I actually knew her and I love her a little more. And she has great shoes! But because she told me so — I need to say she isn’t famous, she is familar — but to me, she is an amazing woman and someone I’m thrilled to have met and someone I’ll dream of calling friend. (and this morning, she hugged me — and that was a hug I can totally deal with.