Food blogging (and general blogging) conferences and workshops are all the rage right now. One cannot log on to Twitter without someone mentioning an upcoming conference event or listing their recaps of highlights from such weekends. Last month I flew to NYC to attend BlogHer and Big Summer Potluck. This past weekend I attended the sold-out International Food Bloggers Conference (IFBC) in Seattle. Lately I’ve been attending many of these events and already have plans to fly out to San Francisco next month for another one. All these conferences begs the question, why?
I cannot speak for anyone else but myself but I have made some observations worth noting. Conferences are opportunities to learn, network, refuel, and reconnect with friends, old and new. Depending on where you are in your blogging career, you will be motivated to attend for different reasons and that is okay. My primary motivation for attending these events are going to be different than why someone else decides to go. And for the record, my main motivation for attending these conferences is to see friends. Where else are you going to find so many people you connect with on a daily basis in one place?
When I attended BlogHer in NYC last month I skipped all the sessions and only attended the Expo for one day. During the same weekend, I attended a very special all-day workshop in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Although I was the keynote speaker at this event, being a speaker wasn’t what made this day wonderful.
The all-day food blogging workshop affectionately known as the Big Summer Potluck was magical because its focus was 100% on community building. Community building is something very close and dear to my heart – so of course I’m going to find much value in attending a workshop like this. Everyone who attended this workshop left inspired, encouraged, and most of all – validated. I believe food bloggers of all experience levels want to feel affirmed in their craft and this workshop certainly provided this.
Big Summer Potluck was small compared to others. Only 40 people in attendance but the quality of each session was world class. Pam Anderson, former Executive Editor for Cooks Illustrated and Best-selling New York Times author, shared her professional expertise on recipe development and writing. Both of these sessions were very helpful and useful because she has expertise in a professional setting which I found to be extremely valuable. Abby Dodge also gave a short recipe demonstration from her new cookbook. Melissa DeMayo – professional food stylist extraordinaire shared practical tips and insights I found valuable in application to my own growth. Erika of Ivory Hut also shared her photography knowledge and what I hadn’t realized is how accomplished she also was in professional photography – she’s humble like that. What I appreciated the most from these ladies was how approachable they were. All four of these ladies have worked in professional settings and have written or contributed to multiple books and magazines. Yet, each one was extremely gracious. Some people throw around titles as a way to make themselves seem larger than life. Others, however, do not. What attracts me to Pam, Abby, Melissa, and Erika is the fact that they are confident enough in what they do and what they have accomplished they have no need to self-grandiose themselves to try to appear bigger or better than others. As a result, new bloggers and accomplished professionals left Pam’s Bucks County home as dear friends. It was truly one of the best conference experience I have had to date and an honor to have been included as the keynote speaker.
Of course none of this could have happened without Maggy and Erika who organized this event with community building in mind. Maggy Keet (Three Many Cooks) is Pam’s daughter. She has an amazing heart to help others and started planning this event to fill a void she saw which other conferences were not filling. Both Maggy and Erika intentionally capped the number of attendees to 40 people to keep it intimate and real. There was no mention of SEO, Google Analytics, or how to make $30,000/month blogging. The focus was relationship-building and improving on skills to help attendees grow in their blogs. Although there were generous sponsors, this event wasn’t about making money. The only money collected was $25/person to cover the expenses of rentals, brochure printing, and other incidental costs. It’s amazing how the vibe of an event can change when money is not involved – it becomes more pure/honest and less self-seeking. There is an unconfirmed rumor spreading around the blogopshere that there will be another Big Summer Potluck next year. If community building is important to you, this is a workshop not to be missed. UPDATE Rumor has been confirmed.. there will be another Big Summer Potluck – stay tuned!
And then there was IFBC. Now let me make this clear: I understand the business aspect of putting on these conference events. It’s a money making stream of revenue which is in great demand and I’m not opposed to this one bit – it’s a business. However, it does change the tone and feel of the conference when it becomes a marketing machine for its sponsors. I get it… you can’t organize an event on this type of scale without the generous support of sponsors. And of course they need to promote them. But when you pay $350/ticket, objectivity in how you promote them may be muddled. If you followed the #IFBC thread on Twitter you likely saw a wide variety of viewpoints during each session regarding the promotion of sponsors. I wasn’t bothered by any of them but certainly many others were.
As for the sessions, I enjoyed listening to each one even those I thought beforehand I wouldn’t appreciate. There were panels on analytics, SEO, FTC ethics, writing, pitching to publish, and several others. Considering the hundreds of people who attended, I had a very good time and loved the food truck crawl for lunch. I finally met several people whom I had hoped to meet, made new friends while reconnecting with others I haven’t seen since last year. I look forward to next year’s IFBC.
The best two sessions of the conference were given by Saveur Magazine‘s Editor-In-Chief, James Oseland and Saveur photographer, Penny De Los Santos. What struck me about both of them was their obvious passion for food and people. This resonated with me so much I was reminded why passion and integrity should always be the driving force in everything I do and come before anything else.
The other major food blogging conference is called BlogHer Food. This year the sold-out conference will be hosted in San Francisco next month. This conference is similar to IFBC in size but very different in how they do things. Attendees have the option to choose a wide variety of tracks based on their preferences. Sessions include the business aspect of blogging, working with sponsors, how to make the jump to becoming a pro-blogger, and a host of other topics. Although this conference is heavily sponsored driven, BlogHerFood panelists are not the sponsors themselves. If you haven’t attended a conference this size, I will warn you that you may feel like a small fish in a big sea of people. My advice is to make friends ahead of time with people and meet up with them. You’ll enjoy the conference so much more if you’re with friends. I had a blast last year and I’m most looking forward to seeing friends who neither made it to BlogHer, Big Summer Potluck, or IFBC.
Why I attend these conferences is going to be different than why someone else attends. Each one is unique and I attach different values to the reasons why I go. Last year’s motivating factors are different than this years and I’m sure I’ll have different reasons for next year’s conference circuit. But if you’re considering going to any conference or workshop in the near future, ask yourself why you want to attend and what you hope to get out of it. This will help you decide which conference is best for you before you invest lots of time and money. When you take into account the cost of attending a big conference, flying to another city, and paying for a hotel over multiple nights, it can easily cost well over $1000. Not cheap.
If you live in the Seattle area, Keren Brown, food networking extraordinaire, often hosts free or low cost events for food bloggers. She also puts on all-day workshops in the areas of food photography, styling, and writing instructed by industry professionals. I’ve attended several of her workshops including Dianne Jacob’s all-day food writing seminar and Delores Custer’s food styling workshop. Her website, Frantic Foodie, is a great resource for local food related events and you can learn more about her workshops on her site.
It is crazy the number of food conferences and just blogging conferences in general there is now, isn’t there? It is so great that there are so many different avenues for people to gain support and blogging knowledge.
Looking forward to BlogHer food! See you then!
I loved following your tweets while you were at this conference. You are truly amazing and so very helpful! Love your site and this post!
Loved your perspective on all of the different conferences… I think it’s important that each person understands why they are attending and what they expect to get out of the event. I know for me, IFBC wasn’t what I expected, but really helped me to gain a lot of perspective in the end (which I ended up writing about, probably more bluntly than I should?). I am still inspired by the Big Summer Potluck, though, and I think it will be a hard one to beat.
Alice, you nailed it. Thank you for sharing and thank you for mentioning and supporting my events.
I am not a pro blogger but, like you, wanted to connect with the people I interact with.
If they would have charged DOUBLE for IFBC, I still would not feel gypped. I felt it was a classy conference, despite what anybody else said about “infomercials” and the like. It takes a lot to bring in that kind of talent to speak, organize that many amazing chefs together, and to cater a pre-party, a dinner, and a film. Honestly, to pay for all those things separately would have been outrageous. So, I felt it was worth every single penny (and more).
Would have enjoyed BlogHer events for sure. But every time I see one of their events, it’s already sold out!! Drat!
So excited that you’ve gotten the chance to do all of this networking, traveling, and inspiration-gathering. It’s amazing. Your blog (and YOU!) will only benefit from it!
As always, great to see you at IFBC. You’re always a welcome face to see in the crowd! 😉
I totally agree; the Big Summer Potluck was such an amazing event! It was also the first time I’ve met up with other bloggers, and I think that if I had stepped into BlogHer Food, I would have been totally overwhelmed. The Big Summer Potluck was the perfect setting for connecting with other bloggers and building community, which like you is my main motivation for attending such an event. Great post Alice! 🙂
Great points, Alice. I think the main bonus to these sort of events is absolutely the people. We all take a little something here and there from various sessions, but getting to hang with your food homies all weekend is priceless. I think you raise good points about commercialism and intent. And…great seeing you this weekend! xox
Thanks everyone for your thoughtful comments. I’m looking forward to seeing many of you in October at BlogHer Food. The great thing about many of these conferences are the live streams they share with the world for free. I think IFBC is very generous to do this. I also know that BlogHer provides live tweets and recaps of the sessions.
With so many conferences and workshops popping up all the time, it’s important to choose wisely because they are expensive.
I love attending conferences too. It is so fun meeting up with fellow bloggers and friends. I can’t wait to meet up with you at Blogher Food. It is going to be a blast!
Same feelings, here 🙂 I love catching up w/ friends and making new ones. I love being in the same room with a ton of other people who have the same passion for food that I do. And there are always a few sessions that are valuable and worth listening to. I was one of those who was bothered by the pushes from the sponsors (they just felt like a complete waste of everyone’s time), & the self-promotion that was integrated into the SEO session by the conference organizers themselves… was quite tacky. I’m not going to BlogHer this year, but I hope to see you at an event sometime soon. Congrats to you & all of your successes this year XOXO
Loved seeing you again at IFBC, Alice! I think you hit the nail on the head. We all have different reasons for attending conferences, and frankly I often have a different reason for each and every conference. I for one would love to have more regional/local kinds of meetups, workshops, and conferences organized by the local bloggers such as BSP because it’s a chance to build a stronger blogger community.
Woah, I used the word definitely WAY too many times. LOL.
Alice, what a wonderful post about blogger conferences. And thank you for your kind words about the Big Summer Potluck! It was such a truly wonderful experience – both planning it and then being part of it on the day. As you know, I think there is such a strength in connecting all these highly-motivated, highly-talented women and men! (Shout-out to Chris from The Peche.)
There is definitely something to be said for the big conferences – sounds like IFBC had some absolutely mind-blowing sessions and I can’t WAIT for Blogher Food, but I think there is definitely an emerging need for small, community-based events that are more focused on relationship-building! That’s the fun part 😀
We are DEFINITELY planning another event for March 2011. I hope we can accommodate more people, but I think the smallness is what made it special. We shall see!
I followed the tweets during and read the blog write ups after on BSP and was delighted that everyone came away from it with a renewed sense of community and new/renewed friendships. It was a great idea and it worked!
As the larger conferences continue to grow they run the danger of losing their perspective and the very reason they were created for in the first place. So many talented, creative, inspirational people would love to be able to meet their readers, followers, fellow bloggers etc., but the cost of attending some of these events is cost-prohibitive for them. For those that go the sponsorship route it would seem most have as much chance of winning a lottery as they do attaining a sponsor.
More and more I see smaller localized and affordable events sprouting up and I hope that it is a trend that continues. Most of all I hope that they remain true to their original plans to keep things on a smaller, more localized community scale.
I love the idea of down-sized, intimate social network gatherings and my only fear from this wonderful post is that the BSP next year will grow so big that it will be in danger of losing what it so wonderfully achieved on the first go round.
Alice, I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic myself, in a sort of reverse engineer way. Maggy and I booked to go to BlogHer Food at the same time, and we’re sharing a hotel room. But I have no illusions that myself and the lovely ladies of ThreeManyCooks are two very different kinds of bloggers, and as such, we’re going to want very different things out of that conference. So I knew I might not see much of my bestie while we’re out in San Fran. And that was pretty damned daunting. That was, until the Big Summer Potluck. Now I know I’m going to be just fine. Not only will I make new friends, but I’ll have plenty of BSP pals in attendance for when I’m stuck in one of my more shy moods (they happen more often than people realize).
I think that the big conferences can be important, but for me, the smaller gatherings are always going to be better. Because like you, I prefer being part of the community that we food bloggers create. Before I started food blogging, I knew exactly 3 people on the East Coast, and it was a lonely existence for James and me. Now, I have friends bursting out of my ears thanks to the connections I’ve made on twitter and through my blog. It’s been an immeasurable joy for me. I can’t wait to see you in San Fran, Alice.
As a relatively new food blogger myself, I appreciate your sharing valuable tips and advice on these conferences. It’s so nice to know people like you will share what they have learned with those just entering blogging. Thanks!
http://www.shelovestocook.com
Great post! I’m pretty new (started my blog at the beginning of this year) and I learned a lot about the different conferences from your thoughtful comments.
What a wonderful post Alice! Big Summer Potluck was magical and for me in a deeply spiritual way; so much so that every time I think about BSP, the tears come. In fact, I spent the better part of the following 2 days in tears just trying to wrap my head around what had taken place. And what I’ve decided about that day is exactly what you’ve talked about in this piece – it was about community, about raising one another to our best possible place, our best possible selves. I almost didn’t attend – I have repeatedly told The Professor how sad I would feel to have missed this. Yes, you were the keynote and I loved, loved, loved what you shared but it was also about the whole – Maggy, Sharon, Erika, Abby, Melissa, the behind-the-scenes husbands – and it was about all of us being in that one place at the right time, and the spirit moved. It was an awesome day. I look forward to BlogHer Food in San Francisco next month, but I know this will be a different conference, it will have a different feel – and that’s ok too. It is a pleasure to call you friend!
I couldn’t agree more my friend. Big Summer Potluck was more than anyone could have expected out of a one day event and for only $25? I totally got more for that money than anything thus far. But I do have to say, with each day that passes, that I get more and more excited to return to Blogher Food this year with so many friends to see and new ones to meet. Can’t wait!!!
Hi Alice,
Thanks for the perspective. All of these conferences can get pretty pricey – and since my blog only earns about $30 a month (pathetic, I know), it doesn’t justify a flight across the country for me quite yet. That said, I am thrilled that BlogHer Food is in my back yard, which helps keep the costs low.
Like you said, everyone has his or her own reasons for attending – I am most excited to see friends and meet people I chat with online every day. But this year, I am also eager to promote the book I have coming out in the Spring. I learn so much from others – it is exciting to ponder what gems I will take away that make my life, blogging, and cooking more efficient and fun.
I loved Big Summer Potluck so much. So special, and as my only food blogger event, it is what I will compare every other event to from now on. I do wish I was headed to BlogHer Food, but you should know that your tweets from IFBC made not being there completely bearable. You shared so much, so much detail, so many quotes. I felt like you were a reporter live on the scene, and that wasn’t something you had to do. It really was a gift to those of us who couldn’t be there.
I was ill and sold my IFBC ticket the day before (insert saddest emoticon ever) but am planning on next year. The session videos aren’t working for me at the moment, have to fix that, but I loved following along via twitter, flickr and posts. I’m hoping BlogHer Food also puts sessions online during or after for those of us who don’t have conference budgets.
We need a west coast Big Summer Potluck, or a series of them. Maggy could franchise it. heh
Jen and Michelle: Can’t wait to see you in San Fran!
Hannah: I very much look forward to the day we finally meet in person. I just know you have a very bright future ahead of you.
Amy and Debra: BSP was so magical. I still get warm fuzzies when I think of that day. Who can forget the mothers, husbands, friends, who all helped with that day? Cannot wait to see you both in San Fran! Yes, it will be different but being together will be so much fun!
This was a lovely post, Alice. I cannot wait to go to a blogging conference, to meet all you lovely people that I chat with on a regular basis through blogs and twitter. I do hope there will be another Big Summer Potluck next year – that sounds right up my alley and I would love to attend!
I agree re: conferences [in general] – I love meeting/reconnecting with people. Take aways are obviously important, but the people are the ones that make the experience 100 times richer
as a matter of fact, i can’t wait to see you again next month! Muwah!
XOXOXO