I'm Finding My #Blissdom, Are You?
Let's rewind a little bit. The year is 2012 and I decided to join
Twitter. (Silly me, don't know why I waited so long!) After following a few celebs and brands, I saw the interaction that some of my favourite brands were having with regular ordinary people
JUST LIKE ME! I thought, man this is cool! So slowly, I started following some of those people and liked what they were saying on twitter. I started clicking on their blogs and would you believe that I actually READ through whole posts?!? It was amazing to see that there were other people (
JUST LIKE ME!) who were sharing their thoughts, dreams, ideas, and sometimes literally EVERYTHING including their kitchen sinks :)
Well, within a few months of "twittering", I saw a few of my fellow tweeps getting all excited because of two "Blogger's Conferences" that were coming up. At first, I honestly didn't know what to think. As far as I understood of what a "Conference" was, I pictured a bunch of bored people listening to a presentation about (fill the blank) all while enjoying a free breakfast. As I began following the tweets I started seeing that this would be a good place to learn about "blogging". Well, I entered contest after contest trying to win passes to either of these conferences and low and behold, I received a notification from Lynn, over at
OttawaMommyClub, saying that I had been randomly selected as a winner of a free full conference pass to
She's Connected. Woohoo, I had just saved myself a lot of money for something I wasn't really too sure about. Well as the days drew closer, the anxiety started kicking in. (I'm a bit of an introvert - at first!) Not knowing what to expect, I just grabbed my essentials (a notebook, some pens, my smartphone, and my daughter's tablet!) and headed to the conference with my kiddo :).
Well, 2 days of inspirational and informative sessions, sweet brand swag, and meeting the people behind the twitter handles proved that IF I had paid for this conference, it would've been worth EVERY PENNY! It was amazing to see that this blogging world goes BEYOND just you, a computer screen, and a keyboard. How a simple message using only 140 measly characters can change someones life, and/or connect you with people around the world! This intricate network of people sharing their experiences was intriguing as much as it was humbling. I was overwhelmed by how much information I walked away with, but in a good way!
Let's fast forward a little bit to 2013 :) I wanted to switch things up and attend Blissdom this time. Heck, it was being held in my neck of the woods and so many of the bloggers I had gotten to know were raving about it! Well, all of the stars seemed like they were lining up, with the exception of the most important star. . . my employer. My work schedule didn't work in my favour and as I result I had to miss out on attending Blissdom. Well, sort of! I was, what some would call, a virtual attendee. I was there in Twirit (twitter spirit). Yes, I was at work, but luckily it was a slow couple of days and it allowed me to follow along with a few of the microsessions, and connect with some pretty cool bloggers. One of my fave connections was tweeting
Christella Morris. It started with a funny tweet, that lead to me reading her twitter bio (The opinions expressed on here are my own, except the ones you don't like, those are your moms!) which lead to us following eachother, and from there I knew I had found a new friend (someone
JUST LIKE ME!). We've been twit chatting since then, and I've watched her grow and go viral (she's at over 900,000 shares/views for
this post) and is now the new
YMC Tech blogger! YOU GO GIRL!
Now don't get me wrong, I was able to "walk away" from Blissdom 2013 with some very handy tips and information. I was even connected with some pretty cool brands like my friends over at
Microsoft and
Tim Hortons to name a few! But after everything was said and done, I knew I was missing out on the actual
CONNECTION with my tweeps and the people behind the brands. The people behind the final product that we see are what
really matter. I knew at that moment that I
NEEDED to attend the next Blissdom no
Ifs, Ands, or Buts! To be honest, I've been driving my spouse a little crazy over the last couple of weeks. It's been a lot of "Blissdom this" and "Blissdom that", and "Oh, at Blissdom" . . . you get the idea. It's driving me absolutely insane that financially this probably isn't the brightest move for us (seeing as my spouse has recently found herself unemployed due to illness), but I know that the benefits of attending this conference will pay for itself. One major advantage is that it's being held in my neck of the woods again, at the wonderful Delta Meadowville (where I saw nothing but rave reviews from last year's attendees!). As of right now, all I can ask of those reading this is for some positive vibes as I start a new journey and hope to finally find
MY Blissdom!
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