Private Parties – Cheap Sally:

This was one of the most coveted private party invites. I was excited to attend because as I mentioned previously the host venue is a fabulous club. My sister and I walked from the Softcup Party through the haze of marijuana smoke and to Stingaree. It was as fantastic as I remembered it. There were people I was dying to meet everywhere. I was very hungry and ate some delicious tacos. The phone rang. It was my mother. Cmoney had woken up from her nap and was ready to eat. My sister and I inhaled our tacos, hopped in a cab, and headed back to the hotel.

The party was very well-organized, really fun even if I was there for less than half an hour, and extremely well executed. The DJ was great too. I am extra picky because my husband is the best DJ ever and I enjoyed the few songs I heard. This party was worth the short cab ride.

Mean Girls/Sea Hags:

I stand out. I know I do. Add my mother and sister into the mix and people look. It’s fine. It isn’t everyday you see three nearly identical brown chicks in coordinating outfits hanging out at a blog conference. The dirty looks and whispering were high school. Really high school. If you attend Blogher next year and have the nerve to look your best take note that most women also take pride in their appearance and are sweet as pie but there will be a bevy of hater harpies that will attempt to deflate your self-esteem.

It didn’t bother me. I was in San Diego with my family, showered, and dressed. I do not remember the last time I was that put together. If someone wants to hate on me for actually taking the time to look my best then they are welcome to. I see you. Hi hater!

I tweeted something about the hooded man lurking between the expo and hotel and someone tweeted something to me along the lines of “You wish someone noticed you mommy moo cow”. Well, obviously the troll noticed me. I gave the troll my room number and welcomed her to come to my room to say something. No more tweets and certainly not a visit.

I was temporarily disappointed. The blogging community can be very supportive but it is like any other. There will be envy, misplaced hatred, and immaturity and it is unavoidable. I am used to it but after spending as much money as I did I had hoped that my trip would be nothing but sunshine, bear hugs, and fun. Not the case but I know better and will be prepared for next year. Next year I will look even better and make sure that my bra straps and spanx aren’t visible in 90% of my pictures.

Lessons learned: If people have preconceived notions of you, make judgements or feel threatened by you due to your outward appearance the problem is theirs not yours. Celebrate the fact that you for once looked so good that people felt the need to hate on you.

As Katt Williams said:

Live your m’fing life. Get your hustle on. Understand people are gonna hate you regardless. Get that out of your head, that fantasy world where people ain’t hating on you. You gotta be grateful. You need haters.

If there are any haters in here right now that don’t have anybody to hate on, feel free to hate on me. Sit back and say my hair ain’t luxurious when you know it is, bitch.”

*Our hair was anything but luxurious at this hour. No judging It was hot!*

Conference Content:

I attended one official Blogher session: The Freelance Writing track. Some of the speakers mentioned numerous times the difficulty of breaking into the industry and the tough competition bloggers face from real career writers. Duly noted.

Stephanie Wood, Executive Director of “Parenting” magazine stated:

…American academy of pediatrics. We work very closely with them. They contribute a lot to our magazine, including a monthly column. We support a lot of their initiatives and so somebody wants to write an anti vaccine piece, I’m not going to publish that because, you know, it’s just not something that we support editorially either.

I am a subscriber of Parenting magazine and that statement bothered me a little bit. I understand fully that magazines are restricted in terms of their content by the financial interest of their sponsors. My children are vaccinated but it doesn’t mean that I do not like to hear differing opinions or research. Ms. Wood then stated:

That said, we would be willing to do something that wasn’t necessarily offensive or polarizing, maybe, but was, you know, something you were passionate about and want to share. We don’t want our readers to ever feel guilty about any of their parenting decisions. We don’t want to make you feel bad if you didn’t continue to breast feed after two months. If you don’t want to get vaccines, that’s fine, don’t do it, if that’s the way you feel. We won’t make other people feel guilty because they did get their children vaccinated. So it’s all about, you know, not antagonizing people or creating a polarizing situation but sharing your opinion in a helpful, thoughtful way.

How is sharing an opinion that differs from the mainstream “antagonizing people or creating a polarizing situation”? I won’t be renewing my subscription to this magazine. Aside from alienating anyone that chooses to question the status quo and American Academy of Pediatrics the track did include helpful information about pitching your freelance work. I have no intentions of doing so since these days I barely have time to even hit spell check but if you are interested then you should definitely read the liveblog.

Sponsor Events:

I attended several on site sponsor workshops. My reasoning for choosing to attend the sponsor workshops versus the Blogher tracks that I was interested in was that I could always read the Liveblogs later. I am glad I attended because I learned that in the future I will most likely decline these invitations and/or not sign up.

Some were very poorly organized. One was fifteen minutes long. We were told to return for a photo and were kept waiting. I missed two tracks I really wanted to attend for this sponsor event and my daughter never had her photo shoot with a popular children’s show character. It wasn’t a huge deal but it was a massive waste of time.

Lesson Learned: Be very careful when selecting a sponsor event that is being held at the same time as a track that you very much want to attend. It may not be worth missing an official event. 

Check in tomorrow for Part III and the last installment of my Blogher series. I will tell you all about the Expo Hall, Swag, and incredible women I met and wish I had met.