Blogger Social: WORTH THE TIME!!!
This weekend’s Blogger Social in New York was surprisingly fun and productive. I suppose I should clarify my use of words like “surprisingly,” “fun,” and “productive:”
Like so many things I find myself doing in the course of my consulting practice, I felt, on heading in to NYC Friday evening, that attendance at the Social was a duty, or a chore, not an enjoyment. Something I “owe” to Drew McLellan, Lori Magno, and Gavin Heaton for past favors. Something like entertaining a client at her favorite revue in Vegas, when I would rather be watching baseball on TV or at my son’s lacrosse game. So, with my expectations firmly lowered, I arrived at the party and, (surprise!) had a very good time. Among the revelations – most of the bloggers were exceedingly fun and interesting people with which to converse…and drink. As I’ve whined about before in this blog, I came to blogging late in life and under the strict tutelage of Mark Fortier. I am always, therefore, engaging in discussions about blogging with a nagging – and potentially debilitating – suspicion that I am out-gunned, that everyone else in the conversation has years of blogging behind them, that they are creative geniuses at commercializing their blogs, and they consider me an insufferable rookie.
Quite the contrary, I found the conversation stimulating, the contacts valuable, the ideas useful, the drinks enjoyable, and the food, er, passable. I hope we do, indeed, turn this into an annual event and that I will have more time – and experience – to making it a success each year.
Kudos to Drew, Gavin, Lori, and CK for all their hard work in putting it together.
Among the very useful bloggers whom I met and with whom I hope to maintain relationships were Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing, Vahe Habesian of Marketing Charts, and Kaitlyn Richards Wilkins of Catch Up Girl. It was particularly rewarding to get to know Toby, since AnnaMaria, months ago, had specifically warned me off the Diva Marketing blog, assuring me that my Y chromosomes were simply not appropriate.
For supposedly world-weary, hard-bitten, bottom-line, red-State MBA’s such as myself, I can only say that I not only had fun, I picked some good contacts and some good ideas for commercializing the things we are doing on our blog. That makes the Social worthwhile and worth repeating.
