Back from BlogHer

Who would have imagined that, after a grand total of 16 or so hours together in a car together, after getting lost many many times, and spending pretty much three meals a day together for four days, I would like Sage even better now than I did before? Blogging: the kind of passtime where you meet people you can talk to for 16 hours with no CD player. I'm just saying.

BlogHer. Hm. The highlights for me were the road trip with Sage, and both of us staying with a friend that MadHatter and I both knew long ago and who lives in Chicago now. Highlights further included meeting bloggers I read a lot and who read me. And then I met bloggers who I read occasionally but got on so well with I'm adding them to my little-scrap-of-paper version of bloglines right now.

As much as I enjoyed myself, I do have to say it was a little weird. Initially, I started blogging because it allowed me to reach out to people when I was isolated and alienated--however, I've grown to love the form for itself, for its own particular strengths. It's a text-based medium, and the rules of engagement are pretty clear, and the friendships and relationships pretty equal and manageable and defined. So it's hard to walk into a room of 800 conferrees and feel as comfortable as I do conferring with you (all 30 of you) online. Thursday night, Sage and I attended a cocktail party:


The drinks were free, the hotel was chic, the bloggers were enthusiastic and well dressed, and, increasingly, drunk. It was really loud and though I immediately got to meet a couple of bloggers I knew--there was Oh, The Joys right at the door, and, whoop, it's hard to miss Her Bad Mother's platinum bob, and Bobita's smile lights up the room--it was crowded and awkward and not really my thing. I did get to meet Kyla, and I have to say, she's the bomb. I have not been a terribly regular reader of her blog, but I am so girl-crushing on her right now, I hope she'll be my friend.

There was an incredible amount of swag at this conference, a real shock as I'm used to more academic affairs where even the styrofoam cups of coffee are charged at a premium. At BlogHer, the lattes are free, served up in a quiet rooftop lounge to the caffeine-deprived. As we registered on Friday, there was not one, but two bags of stuff. Stuff stuff stuff. A butterball turkey pot holder. A glow in the dark cocktail glass. Weight loss breakfast cereal. Branded messenger bag. An AOL-branded Flash key. And more, more, more. It really struck me what a marketing bonanza the female blogosphere represents: in an exercise called 'speed dating for bloggers', I met nearly as many marketing people as I did bloggers, which gave me pause. Apparently, we have money to spend as consumers, readers to deliver as bloggers, and credibility with and access to, women with money. While this may be true, it's not the way I would characterize myself.

The cocktail party on Friday night revealed to me a fact I did not suspect: the female blogosphere is good looking and well dressed! A sea of wrap dresses, beautiful leather purses, and daring shoes. Nice hair and stylish sunglasses. I can say I've never been to a conference where the attendees were so consistently well- and stylishly-dressed (present company excepted of course--I wore sensible shoes because my friend's condo was a bit of a walk-train-walk away, and the days were longer than twelve hours). I managed to snag babies from people in the guise of giving them a break--but mostly I just wanted to sniff their little baby heads. I was missing Munchkin, but she did just fine without me. And Friday night I met more people I 'knew'--Kittenpie, Motherbumper, GingaJoy, Sandra--and more I knew of--The Redneck Mommy, Something Blue, Metro Mama, I Am Bossy, and and and too many more to list--and I started to feel more comfortable. Comfortable enough to put MBT stickers on my shirt as pasties. (You're going to have to dig around the intertubes if you want to see a photo of that. I'm not putting one up ...) What fun, funny, people: if you are reading, I'm so glad to have met you, and hope to see you again. You're all good dancers, too.

But blogosphere, I'm glad to be home with you. I'm thinking back to April, when Mad, Cinnamon Gurl, Bubandpie, and Sage came for a bloggy sleepover party, and how much easier that was--more lowkey, less noisy, fewer people. I'm not, as it turns out, much of a party animal. BlogHer was great for the opportunity it offered to meet so many possible friends, to get drunk, to chatter and laugh, and in such surroundings as the wildly overcrowded and touristy Navy Pier, the too-cool-for-school and outrageously noisy W Hotel, and generally the beautiful and bustling city of Chicago. My inner quiet nerd is all a little overwhelmed, I think. Um, and possibly hungover. I'll be mulling over all my experiences in the next week, I'm sure, so you can expect more BlogHer related posts.

So the point of this post is: all of you who didn't go, I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you, and while I'm glad I went, it was a lot of people, noise, bustle and I'm going to hide in this digital cave for a couple of days. All of you who did go, thank you for bringing me out of my nerd shell and making me comfortable enough to drunk and sticker-covered and to do my Molly Ringwald dance for you. I would stay up late for you people if the opportunity presented itself again.

A little bit of calm ...