No, there hasn’t been an influx of birds, but there will be a few more tweets coming from the Chicago area this weekend.
That's because with the 2009 BlogHer Conference officially starting Friday, crowds of female bloggers have migrated from all over the country for a weekend of tech talk, avatar updates and content tweaking.
Held at the Sheraton, the women attending the conference range from mommy-bloggers to online advice columnists. A sold-out event, the BlogHer conference was open invitation, so the women who attend have readership ranging from 10 to thousands.
Okay, so these women blog. Big deal. Why come in from all over the country for the conference?
For Kathleen Leonard, a first-time attendee from Houston, this is an opportunity to spread the word about the two blogs she maintains – her “glamorous grandma” blog and her blog that offers educational tips for the typical college student.
“I want to take my blogs to the next level, like I’ve just started blogging, and I want to learn, I want information, education, all kinds of stuff,” Leonard said. “I want to take that next step so I can get advertisers and I can get my information out there.”
With sessions like “Business of You: Bloggers are Pioneers in a Post-‘Employee’ World” and “Leadership: Owning Your Expertise,” this conference really is geared towards helping women understand the business behind blogging. They even have sessions about Twitter – “Twitter Basics: How and Why?” (We were wondering the same thing.)
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Leading these sessions are powerhouses like seven-year blogger Amber Rhea who helped found the Georgia Podcast Network and food blogger Deborah Hamilton, who was once dubbed “the Rachael Ray of bento” by The Washington Post.
You may not have heard of them, but these women are blogosphere celebrities, we promise.
But besides the informational sessions, there are, of course, other incentives.
“Friday night and Saturday night there’re more parties!” Marie LeBaron, one of the hostesses of the SocialLuxe Lounge BlogHer pre-party said. “On Saturday there’s this huge party called BowlHer ... it’s just a great bonding opportunity for all of these women who don’t exactly know each other, but we all have this one thing in common.”
So if your Internet’s running slow in the local Starbucks this weekend, take a look around and see if a sexy and tech-savvy lady is hogging all the bandwidth.
But don’t cause a ruckus. Because you never know, she could blog about it.
