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.

 

Bob Evans at Spotify HQ

 

Sometimes I pinch myself about how lucky I am. I love my life. This weekend just gone, I went to Sydney for Healthivate, the health focused blogging conference (so much inspiration, and I will blog about it all soon). The weekend was packed with exciting stuff, so much so, I need a holiday after my holiday. On Friday I saw Bob Evans at Spotify. I won a little competition he ran - five words or less about why we want to see him live. "I'm in Sydney for blogging", I wrote. And then "I'll bring my mum". I'm not great at maths, but I'm good at five words or less.

It seemed like a bad weekend to fly. Due to inclement weather in Sydney and Queensland, many flights were delayed or cancelled. Including mine. On the way up and back. And my Mum's flight from Albury was delayed too (though she had further dramas, with a boom gate closing on her car at the airport parking!). It seemed Friday was a day of delays. My train to the skybus was delayed due to some signal fault, I missed Kevin doing Like a Version on Triple J because the train was stuck in the wasteland of no phone reception, and then when I arrived at the airport with minutes to spare before check in closed, I was told my flight was delayed one hour and 20 minutes! We later found out Kevin's flight was delayed and lengthy too.

When we were finally in the air, we circled a holding pattern for an hour. So I arrived in Sydney three and a half hours after I was due to depart. Sheesh! And it was raining. So much rain. Which, along with our lateness, effectively scrapped our early afternoon plans of popping into the Mama Mia office for a quick hello. So after dropping our stuff at the dodgy motel, getting changed, and waiting for a taxi then a bus in the hideous rain for half an hour, we made it to the Spotify office with enough time to wolf down a delicious pork crackling roll and a well deserved alcoholic drink - at 3.45 pm.

Spotify is a digital music service that allows listeners access to a huge range of songs. I think the music is stored in a cloud? I really want to explore the app now. As I imagined, the office (just new) was very trendy, and its workers equally as trendy. Is it a sign that I am not trendy when I use the word trendy?

The Bob Evans show was the first live Spotify office gig in Australia (Spotify has only been in Australia since May last year). And it was pretty special. There were about 25 people in the room - Spotify staff, music industry people and a few fans. There was wine and canapes and a brilliant fruit platter. What would an event be if I didn't take a food photo?!

Mum and I talked to some great people - music fans, including one girl who saw Nirvana play back in 1992 - this impressed me a lot! It was Mum's first Bob Evans experience and she loved it.

Kevin played five songs: his newest release Go (incredibly beautiful played acoustically, and catchy too), Hand Me Downs (my favourite of favourites), I Just Don't Wanna Grow Up Anymore, Someone So Much (a request from the man who was late) and Don't You Think It's Time (the song that got me into Bob Evans). Some of the audience members I spoke to were impressed with the way Kevin hit the high notes - they described his sound as pitch perfect. I don't know anything about music, other than the enjoyment it provides, so I'll just say that I am continually impressed with how his electronic sounding songs translate so well into acoustic versions. And it was a privilege to see Kevin play such an intimate show.

After the set, we stuck around to talk and drink, and caught Kevin for a quick chat. Mum edged in first - launching in to tell him she was my Mum, and then telling him about the airport boomgate on her car.

I went to say hello, and we had a chat about the plane delays and the difference a gig with lights on makes, and the upcoming conference I was speaking at. And we had photos. Mum told Kevin that I talk about him a lot. A bit embarrassed by my fandom being discussed before the star, I quickly said "No Mum, that's Darren Hayes that I talk about a lot"! Kevin was amused.

It was such a great afternoon. I feel very lucky to be a part of it, and I love being a fan. Thank you for putting on the show, Spotify, and thanks Kevin for the tickets and for being genuine, participating in your own social media and for being awesome!