How Not To Be A Successful Blogher Attendee

I just came back from a blogging conference. I know.

Don’t worry, though, because this was the Blogher conference which means it wasn’t all about geeky tech and music and political bloggers. It wasn’t even all about female writers telling their personal stories, either. I mean, sure there was some of that, but you could totally ignore it. Because, let’s face the facts: there’s nothing to be gained from hobnobbing with nerds.

Luckily, there were two entire halls dedicated to the dissemination of products and product knowledge. There were brands to connect with, dudes. Brands, who might potentially give you a coupon for some diapers if you tweet about them. There were so many contests and raffles and draws. And, of course, just a ton of stuff.

The companies realized that, as mommy bloggers (c’mon, the other bloggers don’t matter), we deserved to be given fantastic new products and assorted marketing gadgets like:

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But here’s the thing, it still wasn’t nearly enough. I understand that in past years the sessions were sponsored and the bloggers themselves were sponsored and there was swag everywhere. This year, not only was the swag off to the side, but the organizers even had the gall to schedule conference sessions and keynote speaches at the same time as off-site brand events. And that, my friends, is where they keep the good swag.

This was my first conference, so I hadn’t yet made the important contacts with PR reps and in-the-know coupon and review bloggers about how things were going to work. I don’t have to tell you how dismayed I was to be at the Dear Abby 2.0  session hosted by Aunt Becky and The Mouthy Housewives and then look at my Twitter stream and realize that I should have been at the Getting Gorgeous event.

And wasn’t it just my luck that one of the Voices of the Year, Karen Green from The Kids Are Alright was my roommate? So of course I had to attend that thing, too. In fact, I was so torn up about missing out on MomTV.com‘s Twitter giveaways that tears came to my eyes while Karen read aloud about two Holocaust survivors from the same region who meet one another more than 60 years later. I looked around the table and it was clear that everybody else felt the same way.

Still I didn’t learn! The next morning after breakfast I was drawn into the panel with the International Activist Blogger Scholarship Recipients, four female bloggers who risk their life and liberty reporting on the stories from war-torn countries and dicatatorships. You see, Esra’a Al Shafei from Bahrain, founder of MidEastYouth.com, is pretty kick-ass for a nerd. After describing how the state of Egypt had been stalking her like it had a giant crush on her, she says, “If you’re going to piss a lot of people off, you’ve got to do it very well.” It was pretty awesome until I noticed the grand ballroom was only sparsely attended. I started to sweat and that’s when I noticed the #BECbreakfast hashtag on Twitter. Fuck me, it happened again.

By the end of the day I knew the wool was being pulled over my eyes, Blogher organizers. Clearly the real conference —  the brands and the marketers and the swag — was happening elsewhere. But it was too late. I had blindly assumed (making an ass out me and you, right?) that the conference was all about the scheduled sessions and official parties, so I hadn’t bothered sniffing out invites to the real events. (Xbox, I heart you truly.) So there I was slumped in my seat during the closing keynote listening to Marie Wilson, Founder and President of The White House Project; author and activist Gloria Feldt from Heartfeldt Politics; and P. Simran Sethi, Emmy Award-winning journalist and blogger talk about how much influence female bloggers wield. They said we have the power to organize and to lead and to take office. We buy 80% of consumer goods and we can change the way corporations operate,  demand better, more wholesome and more environmentally sustainable products. Together, they argued, we could make a difference. Which was all fine and dandy except that half the attendees were scrambling all over the place for swag and I was missing out.