I went to BlogHer. Well, that isn’t really true. I went to New York City the same weekend that a giant blogging conference was being held. My friends were going to be there and the conference organizers score an awesome hotel rate for NYC in the summer.
I had no intentions of going to any part of the conference. I bought a Party/Expo Only pass for this reason. And when Slynnro didn’t buy a party pass at all, and we made dinner reservations for every night, I knew my appearance at the actual conference hotel would be limited.
And that is why I had a really great time!
We (me, Slynnro, Regan and Rhi) spent the mornings and afternoons enjoying the City, eating brunch in SoHo, shopping on 5th Avenue, riding the subway. Before dinner, we’d head back to the hotel, Slynnro and I would nap and then we’d all reconvene in the lobby for dinner. It was a perfect vacation.
The only things I did that was related to the conference was watching the opening address, from none other than the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! Yes, Barack Obama spoke to 5,000 women. Even he laughed when a giant ballroom of women screamed and hollered excitedly for him. (Yay for election years!)
The other thing I did was go to the Expo Hall. It was OK. It was bigger than it had been, and was super spread out. There weren’t as many cool freebies, or drawings for prizes. I entered a few, but my BlogHer winning streak has come to an end. Which only pisses me off because of the hoops I went through to enter for an iPad!
But the Hot Wheels suite had a photo booth.
And that was it. Thursday night we had late dinner plans and didn’t even make it to the hotel for any parties. Friday night after dinner we went to the Sparklecorn party. It was loud and dark and there was a shit ton of people. I’m just too old (and was too sober) for that atmosphere. So we left and went back to the hotel to watch the Olympics. It was awesome. We learned so much (not really) about track cycling. Does anyone understand this sport???
On Saturday we went to the CheeseburgHer party. It also had a photo booth.
This will now be known as the weekend where I was confused by photo booths and cameras, apparently.
After the party, we went down to the lobby. My friend Erin (The EOB) lives in NYC and she was nice enough to come meet us at the hotel for a drink. Everyone else went to sleep, because they are smart, and we ended up closing down the bar. Then Heather came along and told us we were going to karaoke.
Several hours (and MANY drinks) later, I strolled into my hotel room at 5 AM. And passed out for about 3 hours until my lovely roommate reminded me I had to get up and catch a flight. (Thanks, S!)
I rode to the airport with her and her and then passed out on the flight home, got to Chicago, grabbed a burrito and then slept for 14 hours. A perfect ending to a perfect weekend.
For me, this was the only way to do BlogHer. Long gone are the days of small gatherings and walking into a room and running into at least 12 people that you know. It has gotten too big for me. I’m excited for the BlogHer founders. This is an amazing conference that Presidents and Martha Stewart and Katie Couric speak at. But it isn’t for me.
I would rather spend a weekend with my friends – laughing, eating, shopping and discovering amazing places like Uniqlo.
