The ruminations of an artist on art & life...art quilts, beading, knitting, drawing, painting, printmaking, bookmaking are all my passions, I love to explore creating....

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Blogher 2008: My Take or Where were you?


I spent yesterday at the big Blogher Conference in San Francisco---such great female energy and enthusiasm! 1000 women bloggers all in one place. I met many interesting women bloggers ( and I just spent a nice quiet Sunday afternoon checking out their blogs and websites--about 40 of them!), ate some good food, learned some new techie terms, and mostly enjoyed the whole day. The conference was the 3 or 4 person panel discussion format--but the panelists all answered many questions from the audience, and the spirit of passionate women bloggers certainly made for some interesting and lively discussions. I say women on the Net are a force to be reckoned with!

By the afternoon (why do conferences always start at 9 am?) I found myself wandering around forlornly thinking "where are the craft bloggers?" (Yeah--where were you?) I met about five bloggers who said they blogged about crafts--but that was it--and the Craft Blogger Meet Up had about 12 women and was moderated by a DIY blogger who did not write about crafts---so hey! us crafty women bloggers were seriously under represented ---WHY?

If you have a craft blog I do urge you to check out Blogher--a website just for women bloggers to connect with each other...Blogher "The community for women who blog. You say it. We share it." I know there is power in networking and organizing and this conference just re-enforced that knowledge for me. Thanks Blogher!

I did meet the woman who has the wonderful craft blog Zakka Life....I have been reading her blog for awhile--and found her comments at the Craft Blog Meet Up to be right on. I have discovered I really enjoy meeting bloggers in person--especially after I have been reading their blog for awhile.

I also met two local (California) women food bloggers with great blogs : Foodista, and Food Gal. And I met a "Mommy Blogger" (a group who had a very large presence at this conference) from Alaska (for those of you who don't know--Alaska is my "real home"---I was born there, lived there exclusively until at 38 I decided to attend College--but I digress) anyhow-- she blogs from Anchorage, Alaska and I thoroughly enjoyed reading her blog: Scribbit, A Blog About Motherhood in Alaska.

At lunch I met a women who has a blog/website all about girlfriends---she was giving out postcards that said "Thanks Girlfriend" on them--- do check out Girlfriendology.com, her blog review of the conference is excellent.

I suppose in retrospect--the lack of crafty bloggers allowed me to meet some women blogging about subjects I rarely explore via blogs--so my internet horizons sure expanded from attending the conference.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aurora, thanks for following up and checking out RookieMoms.com. I actually got passionate about reading blogs because of craft blogs, and had the same thought about the underrepresentation of them at BlogHer. One of the most popular pages on RookieMoms.com is about making baby pants out of an old tshirt. (I know, I know, how Berkeley can you be...) Check it out: http://www.rookiemoms.com/make-some-easy-kids-pants/

Scribbit said...

It was nice to meet you too!

Anonymous said...

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I love your blog and have an award for you over on my blog! Please come on over and take a look.
smiles,
alicia in Hawaii
www.curiosities808.wordpress.com

zakkalife said...

Hi Aurora,

I couldn't agree with you more, where were all the craft bloggers? As much as it was fun to meet people outside of the craft world, I would have liked to meet more craft bloggers. We'll just have to do something about that for next year.

Thanks for mentioning my site in your post.

Glad I got to meet you last weekend.

kind regards,
jessica

Erin Riley said...

Hi Aurora, I met you briefly at the meet up, and I felt the same way about crafter representation. There are so many craft blogs out there, I expected a significant presence at BlogHer. I assume this was your first conference too?

Owlhaven said...

Hi Aurora,

It was nice to meet you at Blogher!

Mary, mom to 10

Mary Timme said...

I've read this post several times and always been looking at other stuff you had so kindly linked us to and forgot to say thanks. So, today I'm saying thanks

Timaree said...

Didn't know there was such a thing as a woman's blogging conference. Maybe us crafters are out of the loop (or busy making them).