Aug 11, 2011

BlogHer ’11 Wrap-Up: What An Awesome Week!

Sarah Auerswald / Sarah's Blog / 5 Comments

BlogHer ’11 has wrapped up and I am getting back to my old, normal routine. Gone is the hotel room, the seeing thousands of digitally-connected women all in San Diego to connect in real life and learn and build businesses – and gone is the SWAG.

Now I’m back home and back to a house with no housekeeper and no Expo Hall where people throw free stuff at you as you walk by, all in the hope that you’ll write a blog post about it or even tweet.

So for a moment, if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to look back at my time at BlogHer ’11.

I headed down to San Diego a few days early to meet up with some amazing Mom Bloggers and the team at Sony Electronics who were showing us all the Sony CyberShot WX9, which is this great, 16.2 megapixel, fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand camera that can take really great pictures under many different lighting conditions. Perfect for Moms on the go, like me!

We were wined and dined, which was fabulous, given a camera of our very own, more fabulous, and got to meet and be photographed by Brian Smith, very, very fabulous!

Sony treated us like absolute Queens! And I really love the camera, which I will be using to take all my blog pictures from now on. Thanks, Sony! And thanks to Kimberly Clayton Blaine, The Go To Mom, for inviting me!

(And yes, I’m wearing makeup. Why do you ask?)

Then, on the eve of the conference, my MomsLA co-founders, Elise Crane Derby and Yvonne Condes, and I helped throw the OC Blogger Bash Happy Hour (aka Drinking For Diapers) – a cocktail party meant to get people excited about The OC Blogger Bash coming up September 24 and designed to raise money for Help A Mother Out. Vin de Syrah in San Diego is a very hip spot and it was thrilling to be there with the Happy Hour’s sponsors, the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau, who really know how to dress the part and have fun!

MomsLA was happy to help raise money for HAMO’s diaper fund with a raffle of 2 iPads during the party – one donated by Momversation and one donated by YWater. We also had some great swag in our goodie bags from Harry & David (delicious toffee) and Meaningful Beauty (smoothing neck cream). Our first BlogHer splash was a big success and we were happy to have hosted so many of our MomsLA Contributors!

After our party there were others as well, including Clever Girls Collective Rock Star party, which was massive and very impressive. I like seeing women bloggers making buckets of money like that; it’s inspirational. And I like knowing that I’m a Clever Girls member.

Friday the conference began in earnest. Actual sessions and everything. Walking through the convention center in San Diego, I couldn’t go 10 yards without running into someone I knew, which was really fun. Some friends from LA and some from all over the country. It was reunion central!

(There were even Men at BlogHer ’11. Go figure. Hi Neil Kramer!)

I attended a panel discussion on the PR side of bad pitches and I have to say I felt one of the panelists was very crabby, but I got some great advice for our business as well, so it was a win for me.

Then I met up with a bunch of friends for a lovely lunch. Thank you BlogHer, for providing Vegan and Gluten-free options! How awesome is that?

My MomsLA buddies and I helped throw another cocktail party for FamilyFINDS Friday afternoon at another impossibly hip place called Airr Supper Club in San Diego, which was really fun and a great way to get the word out about their brand. Then of course there were more parties Friday night, including one thrown by Barbara Jones’ One2One Network at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, which is a Fabulous location.

Saturday I was treated to breakfast by the Blogging Angels and Zebra Partners to do some brand examination and get up close and personal with some San Diego Startups. It was great access to some very interesting new companies, some of which I can’t talk about yet since they’re really about to Launch Big, and there were great takeaways for branding.

I walked the Expo Hall Saturday and got all the Swag a mom blogger can handle, as well as possibly the most-talked-about Hit of the Hall: False Eyelashes applied by the nice ladies at Skinny Cow.

Saturday evening I was invited to a super elegant event, again thanks to One2One Network – and Sony Pictures Television – at the swanky University Club for cocktails, dinner and a screening of Pan Am, the new retro-themed TV show coming out this Fall from Sony and ABC. It was a thoroughly enjoyable show that I can’t wait to watch more of, and the event was very exclusive!

We all hit our friend Andrea Fellman’s Secret Style File party after that, but got there too late for a goodie bag, which is a shame because I understand there was a gift card for a dozen cupcakes shipped anywhere from Georgetown Cupcake, of DC Cupcake fame from our friends at Discovery, and that I would have liked to have had. Oh well.

Finally, we made a perfunctory stop at the famous Cheeseburgher party, which looked like it was fun for the people already with McDonald’s bags on their heads, but by then we were really done in. My compatriots and I headed back to the hotel room where we promptly collapsed into bed.

Sunday was just a travel day for me – I couldn’t take any more and needed to get back to my family.

As I was waiting for my ride to pick me up from in front of the hotel, I overheard two women making fun of a third who had “had meetings with all kinds of brands over the weekend and didn’t even go to any sessions,” which they clearly thought was icky crazy behavior since after all, the conference was there for people to learn. But I guess it’s what you make it. Let’s try to be tolerant of others, ladies.

{Full Disclosure: I was given a Sony Cyber Shot Wx9 camera and treated to a 2-day expenses-paid event sponsored by Sony Electronics. Photos either taken by me, or used with permission from Kimberly Clayton Blaine, Yvonne Condes and Elise Derby.}