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!

 

Healthivate. The most relevant blog conference I've been to.

Last Saturday I attended Healthivate - an inaugural health blogging and social media conference - in Sydney. I will say from the outset: Healthivate was the most relevant blog conference I have been to. The most relevant for my niche and goals. It was about telling stories rather than selling stories. The stories shared were moving, passionate, uplifting and life changing. Healthivate reinforced the idea of sharing stories for health.

I have been so inspired by the conference, and came away with lots of things to write about, and so I've decided to write a number of posts about it. As I told one of the speakers, I tweeted the shit out of all the sessions - I wanted to share everything. Tweeting at a conference is a great way to reference ideas and people at a later date too.

We have a long weekend here in Victoria and my plan is to write blog posts specific to Healthivate themes. Stay with me :)

Healthivate was held at Australia Technology Park in Redfern. It's a beautiful industrial space with locomotive history on display, as well as various conference spaces. Visit Good Googs for lots of stunning pictures of the venue. It really is picturesque.


The conference wasn't just for bloggers who blog about chronic illness and disability, as some may have perceived. It focused on many facets of health and wellness - healthy eating, family time, sex (look out for an hilarious story about sex talk with my mum), sharing stories online, performance art, bullying, mental health and suicide, laughter, health advocacy, social enterprise and social media. My Mum came along to hear me speak. She enjoyed everything about it, and even wants to start a blog now - though can someone else teach her please, because me teaching her the Internet always leads to an argument.


There was a brilliant flash mob who surprised us with Oh Happy Day. It was so vibrant and such a beautiful sound, the room couldn't help but smile.

At lunch time, we had laughter yoga. Did you know that the body gets the same feel-good effect from fake laughter as it does from real laughter. And as I found out during laughter yoga, fake laughter leads to real belly laughter. It was fun!

I also met some wonderful people, and am flattered by the compliments I received. I saw bloggers I am already friends with (Lori, Fox In Flats, Catherine Saxelby, Valerie Khoo, and Louisa Claire - and her tiny baby) and the beautiful Sarah Wayland who I have know for year's and I met there for the first time, plus loads of other new friends I made who I will mention in my future posts. Mia and Dea were two bloggers I got to know as they were at my table - and I can't wait to read more of their writing soon. I have a list of the awesome people I met, and want to acknowledge them shortly. It's the connection with people that makes blog conferences worthwhile. Crossing that online to offline space, knowing people by their user name or avatar and discovering how awesome they are in person. Mum said she overheard some bloggers talking about me in the toilets and then they recognised her as being my Mum! How cool?! And can you believe über famous American blogger Jessica Gottlieb knew who I was? She came to say hello and told me she loves my work. I'd chatted to her on twitter before the conference and thought she was funny - she's hilarious in real life!

I felt incredibly privileged to speak at the conference, especially alongside some prominent people from the food, blogging and media industries. And also Richard Branson and his arse. Yes! Here is a list of speakers. Thank you to Kathie Melocco (Healthivate's organiser) for finding me and believing in me enough to want me to speak.

Healthivate's content was focused on health, and so was its food. Forgive me for not taking more food photos - all I have is this one of my little yoghurt pot. The main sponsor was Macro by Woolworths - and we got a huge grocery bag of goodies to take home - organic flour, pasta, quinoa, popcorn and more. I've already eaten the bag of vegie chips and I want more! We were also given fruit and vegie smoothies (made by Vitamix) throughout the day - and I loved them. Though my tummy seemed to wake up too (I mentioned it briefly to Catherine Saxelby - poor thing, she must hear about bowel movements all the time!). When I got back from America, all I wanted was a vegie smoothie, and I think I have to make some at home again. There were yummy salads and sandwiches at lunch, and sushi and wine for canapés. I felt extremely virtuous, especially considering the night before I'd downed three glasses of alcohol by 5.00pm.

Of course, as with every blog conference, there were things that I think could have been improved on. There were two sessions where the hosts phoned it in. I (and many others in the room) found it hard to concentrate and to be honest, the content was quite technical. I'd like to have spent more time on our panel - the speakers' stories - not just mine - were worth detailing further. And I would have loved there to be more networking. Hopefully next year there will be a Healthivate conference over two days.

So for now, this is a really brief post on my thoughts about Healthivate, but stay tuned for more soon.