This is what I learnt;
Lesson 1: Four flights of stairs gives you a good cardio workout. Seriously I had to wait 5 minutes until I could breathe normally again when I finally arrived at Blogcamp on the second floor of The Studio in Birmingham. Now, I'm not an unfit person (really?) but I have been glued behind a pushchair for the last six years and therefore always use a lift, so stairs are a bit of a novelty for me.
Lesson 2: You should read your schedule as soon as it is given to you. If I had done this I'd have known that the first talk started at 10.30am not 10am and as I am quite obsessive about being on time I did spend 1/2 hour wondering when everyone else was going to come into the room and park their bums. I would also have realised that the talk I most wanted to go to had been cancelled :-(
Lesson 3: It's ok to change your blog if that's what it needs. I'm not good with changes and in the past I've been known to start a new blog rather than change the one I've got (probably why I have four blogs now). Change is ok, change is ok, change is ok.....I get it, one blog already revamped. Did you know you can even change your blog name and url on Blogger without losing your hard work? I also learned that it's ok to have more than one blog...phew! Thanks Bangs and a Bun!
Lesson 4: I don't drink as much coffee as I thought. There was plenty of coffee at Blogcamp and it was good. I always thought I spent most of my day sat on my bum gulping back coffee (ha, if only) but with a cup of coffee at every opportunity left me all coffee'd out and I actually reached my max!
Lesson 5: Don't be a Dick! This was the most talked about slide of the day, and in fact was so important it was shown twice. As a person who worries about what people say and think all the time I thought the talk on How to be a Snark would help. Stu Heritage, snark tiger, looked like a little pussycat in front of a room full of oestrogen (his term not mine) but he still gave us a very amusing and informative talk about how to get away with being a snark, and when to back out. Glad I didn't miss this one, and he was rather nice looking (or is that just the oestrogen talking?)
Lesson 6: Lunch was free! And it was rather nice too with plenty to choose from. In fact we were really looked after all day with coffee on tap, water (in bottles), pastries for breakfast, buffet lunch, biscuits and yummy cakes.....quick break time for a cake pic!
Lesson 7: I learnt what all those buttons mean on a camera and picked up some good tips on how to take a good photo. My daughter will be pleased, I only said the other day that I needed a new camera and she retorted 'no mum, you just need to learn how to take a photo!' Well daughter, lesson learnt. Thank you Daddy Pig, aka John Arnold from PhotoWalkthrough
Lesson 8: I discovered Pic Monkey an online photo editor and how easy it is to use. Yes, we do have photoshop, I bought it for my daughter (yes, I bought it!) but I can't use it. I have tried. PicMonkey is a great little tool and I think my boring bad photo's will be getting some tweaking done very soon.
Lesson 9: PRs are actually quite nice, when sat meekly in front of an audience of 100 bloggers with fire coming out of their ears! I've only just recently been getting approached by PRs so I was a little naive in this session but learnt lots and next time I get an e-mail from a PR I'm not going to delete thinking they've got the wrong person, I might just give them a chance.
Lesson 10: You can't fit in everything and are likely to miss the most buzzed about talk of the day. I did, I missed the Follow, No-Follow talk which really created a stir. However, from what I picked up from talking to others it was about this http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569 which I think explains it fairly well. And if you are on Blogger and want to no-follow a link there is a handy little box to tick, whoopee!
Finally, I learnt that Bloggers Rock! (when they are not being dicks!)
6 comments:
A great summary of the day! :-)
Great write up. I didn't know you were going to be there, sorry we didn't meet up! x
glad you enjoyed the day. wish somebody would bring just one of these blog conferences to Scotland, thats north of the border and miles and miles from London or birmingham
ps did they not teach you about turning off the most annoying thing in blog commenter's lives - horrible horrible captcha!!
Sandy, I'm sorry we didn't meet up too, maybe next time
Elaine, I didn't know you could turn off captcha.
Thanks so much for coming along on the day, it was great to see so many enthusiastic people, and I'm glad you had fun! Great cake photos, by the way!
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