Although I am still recov­er­ing from the travel, lack of sleep, and chaos of the week­end, I have to admit I am already try­ing to fig­ure out if I can go again next year in New York.

I left my apart­ment of only 2 weeks last Thurs­day.  I drove to Min­neapo­lis (about 5 hours away) where I would be fly­ing out to Chicago.  Thurs­day night, I had sup­per with a friend of mine from ele­men­tary and high school who had lived two houses down from me for about 14 years and the neigh­bor who had lived in between us.  It was a lit­tle reunion for us.  Sur­pris­ingly lit­tle of our con­ver­sa­tion cen­tered on our expe­ri­ences grow­ing up, but it was fun to recon­nect with them after not see­ing them for sev­eral years.  After sup­per, of course, I made the respon­si­ble choice and went to bed early in prepa­ra­tion for my 6 am flight, I stayed up talk­ing with my brother and sister-in-law far too late.  I got about 3 hours of sleep before it was time to get up.  For­tu­nately, my travel was pretty seam­less.  I had no issues with secu­rity.  My flight was on time.  We arrived in Chicago a lit­tle before sched­uled, and I was able to maneu­ver the blue line and find­ing a cab all by myself!  I waited to reg­is­ter, and I began meet­ing other blog­gers right away.  Molly was stand­ing behind me in line, and we vis­ited while we waited to get our badges and bags.  After the first ses­sion and speed dat­ing, I vis­ited with Andi and Kim.

I went to a great ses­sion about find­ing your mommy blog­ging tribe.  In each ses­sion, I felt like I picked up one or two key points.  If I had let myself over think it or get over­whelmed, I could prob­a­bly ended up throw­ing my hands up and say­ing that I wasn’t going to do any­thing new because there were too many things to do or as Megan said sev­eral blog­gers do each year, throw­ing in the towel and shut­ting down my blog.  Instead, I decided to focus on these things:  First, be who I am.  Write for myself and own my blog posts and my life and my thoughts.  Sec­ond, com­ment on oth­ers blogs.  I am not an amaz­ingly great writer, but I think I have some pretty inter­est­ing things to say once in a while.  I think it is okay for me to put those on my blog and share them with oth­ers when I read their blogs.

As part of my BlogHer expe­ri­ence, I was cho­sen as a vol­un­teer to be a micro­phone wran­gler.  That meant that I was assigned to four ses­sions (out of the six avail­able) to hold the micro­phone and get it to the per­son mak­ing a com­ment or ask­ing a ques­tion.  Because of this, I ended up attend­ing a cou­ple ses­sions I wouldn’t have cho­sen otherwise.

The first ses­sion I “worked” (although I can hardly call it work­ing), was a ses­sion for blog­gers who didn’t fit into the typ­i­cal blog cat­e­gories (i.e. mom blog, polit­i­cal blog, review blog).  After that, I wran­gled the micro­phone at the ses­sion dis­cussing what it meant to be pro-woman in a post-Palin world.  This ses­sion had an amaz­ing panel.  There was a very lively dis­cus­sion, and by the end, the miro­phone was placed in the stand and peo­ple were so anx­ious to talk that they were lin­ing up at the stand for their turn.  Lucky for me.  I was able to sit back and lis­ten.  Both of these ses­sions were SO good.  They had amaz­ingly diverse and thought­ful women on their pan­els.  Although,  I have to admit that I hadn’t read any of the blogs of the women on the pan­els I attended, I can safely say that I will be adding most if not all of them to my Google reader.

Fri­day night wrapped up with the com­mu­nity keynote.  This is the ses­sion where blog­gers sub­mit their best posts of the year and sev­eral are cho­sen to be read to those who attend the con­fer­ence.  Karen W was one of the blog­gers cho­sen to read her post.  She also has a sum­mary post that lists all the blog­gers and their cho­sen posts (about halfway down).

Fri­day night, we social­ized.  There was a cock­tail party com­plete with Wii bowl­ing and karaoke in one of the ball­rooms.  At that party, I showed up look­ing very cute in a new dress, but I knew NO ONE!  That is absolutely not my idea of a com­fort­able sit­u­a­tion.  So, I walked around the edge of the room until I spot­ted some­one else who was alone.  Emma was stand­ing around watch­ing peo­ple.  I took a chance and intro­duced myself.  She and I vis­ited a while.  Then, her friends Annie and Allie arrived.  Even­tu­ally, I also met Jen­nifer and Amy, too!  Hav­ing met so many new peo­ple, I was very excited to meet Amy whose blog I have been read­ing for quite a while now.  Hav­ing quite a bit in com­mon with these ladies, I was very glad to be able to hang out with and fol­low them around for the evening!

At some point, I also met Tara who I had been fol­low­ing on Twit­ter for a few weeks.  It was fun to put faces and names together.  It was also a lit­tle funny, because I didn’t rec­og­nize either Tara or Amy until some­one explained who they were to me.  After 22 hours, I col­lapsed into bed.  I will admit, I skipped the keynote and the sec­ond ses­sion on Saturday.

My first ses­sion was titled “Women of Color and Mar­ket­ing.”  Again, I fig­ured that this was a ses­sion that was prob­a­bly not all that use­ful for me.  First, I am not a woman of color, and sec­ondly and more impor­tantly, I have noth­ing to do with mar­ket­ing.  I am not mar­ket­ing any­thing, and I am not mar­keted to.  I fig­ured it was just one of those things.  Attend the ses­sion because I was a vol­un­teer and it was my job.  Well, um, I was obvi­ously wrong again.  This was prob­a­bly my favorite ses­sion of the con­fer­ence.  I know, I know.  The panel was AMAZING.  The room was packed, and every time some­one made a com­ment, I found myself being more and more impressed with the intel­li­gent, well spo­ken, crit­i­cal think­ing, smart, beau­ti­ful, and funny women at the con­fer­ence.  Seri­ously amazing.

Thurs­day after­noon, I vol­un­teered at the Green and Eco Blog­ging ses­sion.  Although, I was bummed that I didn’t win the Miche­lin tires that were given away at the begin­ning of that ses­sion, it cer­tainly didn’t hurt when I found out that I won a Mac­Book from the Safe­ty­Tat give­away.  Then, I won all the give­aways I will win for a decade because I fol­lowed up the Mac­Book win by win­ning a Flip Ultra from Mom­flu­ence at the clos­ing keynote session!

Now, as part of being a mom blog­ger, I will abruptly end this post to go get my chil­dren who are awake from their after­noon naps!