Made it back from Chicago and BlogHer and can barely remember my own name, let alone pull together a blog post. So here are some bits and pieces of wisdom or foolishness. You decide which is which.
Interesting Fact: Flickr can be used as a child behavior modification tool
Waiting for my flight in an overcrowded, hot and muggy O’Hare I sat behind a woman with three overtired, overwrought, whining kids. The mother was reaching the medical condition that I believe psychiatric professionals term “Losing One’s Shit.” At the point where she stepped away from the kids and said, “You have to not touch me and not talk to me for the next two minutes”, I knew I had to spring into action. Since my laptop was open and I had Flickr in a window, I quickly typed in the tag “terrier” into the “search my photostream” option. Up came all 2000 or so of the pictures I’ve taken of my dogs Lucy and Oscar. “Hey kids, want to see pictures of puppies?” Kids rapt. Crisis averted. Another mom saved. Hint: this works best with terriers.
Interesting BlogHer Fact #1
Georgia Getz of the great site, I Am Bossy, is thin as a whippet. But just as funny in person as she is electronically.
Interesting BlogHer Fact #2
Keynote Speaker Donna Byrd, publisher of The Root, showed grace, calm and what I’m calling “The Sotomayor Poker Face” when asked about last week’s events with her fellow Root editor, Professor Henry Gates. Can someone send Sonia and Donna to Vegas, ’cause those gals could clean up in high stakes poker.
Random Thought
Chicago is an amazing city, especially if you walk it. And don’t keep staring up at the tall buildings like I did. It makes you look like a rube from farm country. Plus you miss all the interesting architectural and decorative details on the door arches, gates and gratings.
Wishful Thinking
Can one recharge one’s brain with an iPhone charger?
Internet Expectations Exploded
Checked my visitor stats to find they are through the roof. Hundreds and hundreds more visitors than usual. Thought it was my fabulous wrap up of the BlogHer Conference. Nope, someone Stumbled my tribute last month to Farrah Fawcett. That’s okay, she deserves another look.
So you are the frustrated momma in the airport’s hero! Good for you!
When you come up with that charger for the brain, I’ll be first in line for one.
You got to meet Georgia – good stuff!! Glad to hear she is as likeable in person as she is on her blog. And how ’bout you entertaining the kids — see you DO have the makings of a mommy blogger. There’s your table for next year 😉
Thanks for coming over to mine to visit, and sorry I missed you at BlogHer. It was my first experience at BlogHer, and I’m only just Twitter-izing myself, so I wasn’t doing a stellar job of networking. On the other hand, I got a lot out of every session, which was really what I was there for in the first place.
Next year, (in spite of my griping, I’d like to go again) I’m going to organize an expats table. I’d also love to see more emphasis on world bloggers and activism. It would be nice to have a bigger and more altruistic focus than just the “me, me, me” of mommyblogging and swag swapping.
And you’re entirely correct, btw — the description for the International Bloggers breakout session was terrible. I’m all smug now that I went, but it was the word “international” that pulled me in… otherwise I really couldn’t quite figure out what it was going to be about. So glad I went. That was absolutely the highlight for me.
Sorry Carma. Little late for me to be a Mommy Blogger. Although I am the Godmother to the World’s Most Beautiful Baby. I rather aspire to be “The MacGuyver of Child Care”, swooping in during a crisis and fixing things with duct tape. Or pictures of terriers.
Expateek. I actually find the BlogHer organizers very responsive about tweaking the conference to meet interests. The wide variety of tracks and sessions this year was magnitudes over last year. Mommy Blogging, the party contingent and now the monitezation crowd are always going to very prominent, but there were and will be ways the rest of us can get a good experience. We just need to give them feedback on what we want, such as international focus.
I think some of us are just never going to fit in the nice categories. But I’m working on a Birds of a Feather table for next year. Working name:
“Boxes? We don’t need no steenkin’ boxes. The table for Bloggers Who Defy Category.”
Join me!
Thin as a whippet maybe, but still digesting the fondant on one of the BlogHer party cakes. Burp.