Last weekend I attended the Women Get Social conference here in San Diego. This regional conference is held by The SITS Girls and was formerly named Bloggy Boot Camp. It was my third conference and the focus was very different this time around.
Sessions
This year the focus seems to be on building your blog into a business. That’s not my objective right now (or else I would give up those workout Wednesday posts 🙂 ) but there was plenty of content that did resonate. There was so much of it that this formerly one day conference has an additional half day so it started Friday afternoon.
My favorite session was Google+ Unwrapped by Lynnette Young. Even though it’s been around for 3 years, as Lynette pointed out, it’s still mystifying to me even though I’ve been posting over there. She took most of the mystery away and I have already started to apply what I’ve learned.
Other favorite sessions:
- Worth a Thousand Words (photography)
- Finding Your Facebook Groove (so glad to know I’m not the only blogger frustrated by it)
- Making Pinterest Work for You
I did want to note that the conference offered a break out session for Latina bloggers and there was a pre-conference session for bloggers with babies. You might read vastly different sessions and wonder if I was in an alternate reality.
Connections
One of the traditions of the conference is that you are assigned to tables for the first few sessions. This forces attendees to get out of their comfort zone and meet a variety of other bloggers. There are so many interesting people out there and I only wish we had actual time to chat with them instead of just passing out cards.
The best connections I made were with people who also attended Fitbloggin’ 13 but our paths never crossed. Denise from Do You Have That In My Size and I roomed together and she introduced me to Tamara from Fitnitchick and Carla Birnberg (formerly known as MizFit).
They were all already in my reader but these warm, inspirational women were a pleasure to get to know. I look forward to the next time our paths cross. Special thanks to Denise for letting me use the photo of the four of us above.
It wasn’t necessary for me to attend every second of the conference or find value in each presentation for it to be a worthwhile experience. There’s a lot of value in chatting about life, blogging and next steps over a hotel luncheon.
Let me know if there’s anything you want to know and I didn’t cover. What do you value most from conferences?
I had a fabulous weekend as well. Loved spending time with you and Carla and Denise and particularly appreciate the conversation you and I had about the future of my online women’s fitness group (I decided to go ahead and run it one more time as is, then change it up and dream big for the fall re-launch).
I was surprised to have enjoyed the Pinterest session the most. I’ve been using Pinterest primarily as a place to dump things I want to remember, not thinking at all about how it really is a reflection of my brand. I’ve already implemented the idea of creating a secret board to curate the content I want to share on my other social media channels!
Looking forward to seeing you again! xo
Tamara, thank you so much for stopping by. I can’t wait to see how you grow your online fitness group and am definitely interested in your April session. I’m waiting for the blog post announcing it’s available for sign-up.
After Fitbloggin’ I’ll be attending BlogHer. Hope we run into each other somewhere!