Advice for attending a blog conference.

I'm super excited to go to the Problogger Event next week. It's a four day weekend for me - a holiday in the sunshine state and a catch up with good friends, plus visiting the breakfast buffet more than once. But it's also worky - I'm going to drink all the bloggy advice (and the wine) and feel a sense of rejuvenation and leave filled to the brim with ideas.

There are a few awesome posts offering advice for attending blog conferences - check out Kiki and Tea, Talking Frankly, Kidspot and Impactiv8.

So I will just give three tips. I've been to a few conferences now, and here's what I've learnt.

What to take:

Your tablet or smart phone - for live tweeting and note taking, and for photo taking. A spare one if you have one. Usually you can connect to wifi there.

Your charger, or portable charging devices and a power board. Because lots of tweeting and photo taking drains batteries. There are never enough powerpoints at these events - a power board means you can buddy up charging with your blog buddy. I have a cool portable charger - I bought it from a vending machine at the train station. It's by PowerPod. I cannot believe I got it from a vending machine!! The charger can be recharged by plugging it in to a USB wall charger or computer.

A notepad and paper - for old-school note taking.

Comfortable shoes - you will be dashing between rooms for different sessions, standing up for lunch and dancing the night away.

Business cards. I get mine made by Vistaprint.

Use social media during the conference:

I like to live tweet. I see it as a double service - making notes for yourself and sharing the conference with the outside world (or those in other sessions). Taking notes this way is a great way to save your ideas via tweets and to make blog posts from them afterward.

Announce to your social media followers that you'll be live tweeting (some may be unimpressed by voracious tweeting but for many not attending, the live tweets are gold). If you can't be there, follow along #pbevent - I'm on twitter @carlyfindlay.

Here are my tips for live tweeting.

Being social:

Please say hello. Not just to me but to other bloggers you're connected with in cyberspace over time. We don't bite. I'm always so disappointed when someone says they saw me from afar but were too scared to say hello to me.

Don't place anyone on a pedestal and feel intimidated to speak to them. The blogger you think is a rock star is just like you. We all started without a blog. I once sat next to journalist Jacinta Tynan at a blogging session and struck up a convo with her via twitter before she turned to me with a friendly smile and a hello.

Blogging conferences can be a great change to meet up with friends, but the information overload, big crowds and hyper-catch ups can be tiring.Take some time out if things are overwhelming. I went to the pool and sat in the sunshine last year instead of going to a session.

I hope this is useful for you.

I've got another post coming up before Problogger - it's a prelude to my panel talk on blogging for social good - look out for that next week. And no doubt I will write lots of Problogger-inspired posts after the conference, like I did last year.

See you on the Gold Coast, or see you online!

 

Tavi Gevinson at Melbourne Writers Festival 2013: a wondrous conversation.

"Meaning lies in the magic of the coincidence that you should come across work at just the right time."

~ Tavi Gevinson at Melbourne Writers Festival 2013

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I have spent the weekend soaking up inspiring conversations at the Melbourne Writers Festival. The weekend started with Tavi Gevinson's keynote and interview with Estelle Tang at the Athenaeum (view part of Tavi's keynote and audience interviews on the Melbourne Writers Festival blog, and view a picture of Tavi and Estelle on Tavi's Instagram). This was Tavi's second major keynote in Australia - she spoke at the Sydney Opera House the previous week, and was present at a number of events, including afternoon tea at Wesley College, inspiring girls who look up to her in adoration. That quote above sums up my thoughts about everything I've heard at the Melbourne Writers Festival so far. I've come across these conversations at just the right time. I feel inspired and motivated, and have a head full of thoughts. Like Tavi, I have much wonder for what's to come. I took notes furiously, and here's what I took away.

Lady Gaga called Tavi Gevinson "the future of journalism". After seeing her on Friday night, I'd say she's the future of the world - definitely a positive role model. She's 17, edits and art-directs online magazine Rookie Mag (with 80 paid staff on the books), maintains her own blog The Style Rookie, has written for magazines including Harpers Bazaar, Garage and Lula, is a stylist, and moves between being a fangirl and BFF to her idol Taylor Swift ("Taylor Swift was a good girl to consult on the breakup [with her boyfriend] front", Tavi quipped).

She spoke intelligently and maturely - far beyond her years. She was funny and self deprecating, yet maintained that teenageness - smatterings of "whatevs" used throughout her talk. And she's so busy! She said that she goes to school, goes home to do work for two hours, fits in some homework, and manages to spend time with friends (as long as she can respond to important emails on her phone). She gets stuff done by not procrastinating on Facebook. Wouldn't we all?

Tavi has grown up on the Internet. She said if it wasn't for the Internet, she wouldn't have been taken on this career path. Because she has grown up online, and that's where her career is, she tries to maintain some privacy by keeping special moments to herself.

She started her blog age 11 - launching a career as a stylist, and being invited to fashion shows such as New York Fashion Week, much to the disdain of some experienced editors in the fashion industry. To this Tavi said she can't believe that adults can be so childish. She gave some great advice about criticism: "you don't have to seek out criticism [by reading comments]." "I think, would Beyonce be doing this? NO! She'd close the computer and go and be awesome." Love that!

(Source)

Tavi spoke a lot about her work on the Internet being a blocker to authenticity and originality: "it was intimidating to write when I feel that everything has been said", she said. A year ago she was diagnosed with depression - she thought that it may spur on some creativity, like so many of the troubled artists that have been members of The 27 Club, but she still felt overwhelmed, saying she felt "nothing I wrote was good." I listened to an interview with Tavi on a podcast where she said that she worries about no longer being good at what she does, but then said that overall she just wants happiness - that work doesn't have to have public acclaim for the creator to be proud of it. Tavi's candidness and introspection shows that while she is intelligent, driven and successful, she is also fragile.

Still just a teenager, still at high school, Tavi said "being a teenager is just like being a caricature of a real [adult] person." She said that teenagers' feelings are heightened because they are experiencing everything for the first time. I can't get over her level of analytical thinking, intelligence, introspection and comfort in being herself at such a young age.

She seeks solace in fangirlism - something I can relate to so much. She calls herself a "professional fangirl", and said "being a fangirl is one of the most happying things anyone can do." Fangirlism is both an expression of individuality and something that brings people together. Tavi said "you might look uncool for expressing enthusiam" - I identified with that a lot. Tavi said that it's ok not to like high-brow everything - she juxtapositions her fandom of One Direction alongside Fleetwood Mac. She also spoke about how fans of one idol can tend to look down on fans of other idols - "let others like stuff", she said. And lastly on fangirlism, for now: "stop worshipping idols, humanise them, and realise you've got a place next to them", she said. My heart skipped a beat hearing this. I have so much more to write about fangirlism after seeing Tavi - I thank her for the inspiration!

While Tavi spoke of fangirlism, many of the audience members were fangirls toward Tavi, cheering and laughing, and also spoke of their fandom for their own idols. An audience member asked her if she'd like to return to Australia to attend a Beyonce themed party later in the year. Tavi said while that sounds awesome and she'd love to, it doesn't sound like a realistic venture for her.

Her keynote showed how well read she is, referencing JD Salinger, Chris Kraus (she showed a quote from I Love Dick that I cannot stop thinking about and need to find now! - something like "there's one of you and a million of us". Does anyone know?) and Rashida Jones. Tavi finds a way to make everything she's inspired by relate to her experience - song lyrics, light in film and quotes from literature. She spoke of cataloguing and journaling - almost to the point of obsession. She said that with every journal she starts, she reinvents herself to match the theme of her journal - her style, handwriting, soundtracks. Her deep-thinking nature, I am sure, is both a blessing and a luxury.

Tavi's got the rest of her life before her - it's hard to believe that she's only 17 - but she's already accomplished so much. She said apart from "having a folder on my desktop titled 'World Domination'", she doesn't know what she wants to do in the future. She will finish her last year of high school when she returns home to Chicago from this trip to Australia, and take a year off before going to college. I expect she's driven and intelligent enough to educate herself to an academic standard without formal education.

I did not meet Tavi but Cheryl snapped this photo of me with Tavi in the background. The queue (full of extremely stylish girls and women) to enter the Athenaeum for both her talk and signing was enormous - Cheryl was kind enough to get the Rookie Yearbook One signed for me. The Rookie Yearbook is a compilation of the first year of Rookie Mag's writing and art - a beautiful package. While it's aimed at a teenage audience, I can relate and feel inspired, it seemed that from the age of the audience (an equal mix of teens and adults) do too. Rookie Yearbook Two will be out in September - Tavi said it will be more for girls and boys than the previous issue.

Rookie Mag holds meet-up events for young Rookies (there was one at the Melbourne Writers Festival over the weekend - check out Carolyn's blog for awesome photos of Rookie Day). The event at the Athenaeum felt like a Rooke meet-up. There was so much inspiration, enthusiam and community spirit in the room. One of my favourite things about seeing Tavi was meeting all the wonderful people at the Athenaeum. I met bloggers I already knew: Cheryl, Carly and Pip - who wrote an amazing wrap of the Tavi event - and had a lot of lovely women coming up to me to tell me they're fans of my blog. Hello and thank you Estelle, Norma, Ash and Rachael!

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PS: listen to Tavi at the Opera House here. Or watch the speech and interview here. It's the same speech as she gave in Melbourne.

 

Blog home

 

Up close, delicate and fleeting.

I have been taking a lot of pictures on my phone. I walk around, phone in hand, it's an extension of my body, just like the theory I studied during Communication and New Technology at university. I am always on the lookout - everything is a story. I focus up close, making acute observations, looking at the detail. These small things really do make the world brighter.

Look at the seeds in these strawberries! The plumpness, the light and shade, the richness of the red. They were the sweetest strawberries of the summer.

Look at this fleeting rainbow! Look! It existed, right there on a flight of stairs. I marvel at the rainbows created by the sunshine and glass, reflecting onto the concrete jungle. I love that I'll only see them in the early morning, when the warmth of the sun is delicious, and there's the prospect of a great day ahead of me. Sometimes when it's grey, the rainbows aren't there at all. We are lucky to catch them, even luckier they'll let themselves be photographed.

I've been enjoying this summer more than usual, and I think it's because I am noticing the small things, having fun and being thankful. I guess these photos represent this summer so far, and especially the night I just had. Up close, delicate and fleeting.

I was invited to do some reading at a Midsumma event this week. It was at a performance art show called Quippings, a regular event in the disability community, held at Hares and Hyenas in Fitzroy. Some extremely talented people spoke and played music. I love the diversity in the room. It was inspiring, moving me to write more and get up and read. I saw some old friends there, and made new ones too. I was told I saved their bacon, agreeing to read at last minute, and so unprepared I was, I chose to read two pieces from my blog. Untouched and Our disabilities do not inconvenience you. I'm glad I had no time to prepare.

I used to read poetry at readings around the city. I'd stand in front of strangers, telling them my inner most thoughts in rhyming, alliterative verse. Now I tell strangers around the world my thoughts. You, my readers, don't see me when I write, and I don't see how you react, at least not your facial expressions and gestures only your comments if you choose to leave them. It felt strange to be so openly vulnerable, so vocally sincere. The buffer of a screen disappears. The audience was able to hear my voice soar and waiver, maybe even see me thinking back to the time when I wrote it. I could ad-lib anecdotes. Strangely, and thankfully, I didn't think of him when I read Untouched.

It felt good to receive such an instant positive response from the audience. In this new media world where instant validation is encouraging and ego boosting, and harsh comments can make you question your worth, I do recommend reading your writing out aloud at least once in your life.

I bared my soul by reading my blog posts aloud to an audience of mostly strangers. So different to writing silently. Exhilarating in a different way. I feel appreciated. I received hugs. They saw me up close, delicate yet strong, and the recital was fleeting.

A boy kissed me at the end that night. It was fumbly, friendly, quick, on the run. Permission sought. Twice. I guess it was in response to my vulnerability of my blog post (but I don't want to be a pity kiss). His stubble scratched my face. He apologised. I told him it's ok, I like stubble.

I kept on waking up at intervals through the night to feel whether his kiss really happened. And my lips bled gently in the morning. It confirmed just how sensitive to the touch I am. And so I wrote a poem. That doesn't happen so much now. I like that it happened. I still haven't asked what it was, and truthfully, I don't want to.

-

i can feel the pins of your bristles throb on my lips,

leftovers from our fumbled kiss

I smiled as it happened, I'm smiling now,

it's nothing and it's everything,


 

and you stay on my lips for hours more than seconds,

lustful bruise

hopeful scrape

bloody beautiful memory in the morning,

a reminder that you were there.