Well I made it back from Chicago where I attended BlogHer 2007
which was my first blogging conference experience and one that happened
to be about 80% all women. This was the third annual BlogHer
Conference, which was their biggest to date with about 750 attendees
who took over the Navy Pier in downtown Chicago on Friday and Saturday.
"A World of Difference" was the theme of this year's conference which comes from the BlogHer Online Community that was founded in early 2005 by three women bloggers, Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort and Jory Des Jardins. BlogHer's mission is to provide opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure , education, community and economic empowerment. The conference sessions where divided up into five different sub themes; Art of Life, Business of You, Community, Identity and Technical.
I was really inspired by being together with so many women who were sharing their experiences, knowledge and wisdom with each other. All of the sessions had a panel of bloggers who were related to the session topic and each session opened up the room for the participants to ask questions, which is really how you got the most information. Where else can you go and find technology being spoken about and taught to you by women (not men)! That was pretty amazing in itself.
AskPatty.com is a pretty incredible blog which is written by women automotive experts who give automotive advice to women. Jody DeVere
is the President who participated on the panel in the Business of You
session entitled Professional Blogging: Ways and Means. This session
spoke about blogs that are making money either through advertising or
through sponsorships. Jody actually has had to turn down several
advertising proposals in order to keep the focus on the content. Tom
actually got to interview Jody at BlogHer where she announced CarBlabberLipsticking today.
a new addition they just launched on the site. Check out the video interview posted on
I got to chat with Breanne Boyle who works for Jody as their eMarketing Manager and who's written for many automotive magazines including Motor Trend. Breanne told me that they just are finishing up their first promotion in which they are doing a sweepstakes with an insured prize worth $50,000 in automotive merchandise. They have not gotten the response they had hoped, so I offered up my expertise in the area of online promotions and hopefully I may have the opportunity to work with them on their next one.