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Here are the sessions we have lined up so far. Remember, early bird registration ends this week, on July 1st. Don't delay!!
LIFESTYLE TRACK
1. Chronicles of Fit Divas
2. Social Media Moms
3. Best Business Practices for the Lifestyle Blogger
4. Building Your Social Media Tribe
5. Style File: Trends in Fashion & Beauty Blogging
6. Love That! Design Blogging
7. Foodies
TECHNICAL TRACK & WORKSHOPS
1. New Bloggers Guide: Blogging 101 & 201
2. Building Your Media Toolkit: Kits, Training and More
3. The Smart Girl's Guide to Smartphones & Apps
4. Twitter 201 - Creating True Engagement with 140 Characters
5. Strike a Pose: Taking Better Photos for Your Blog
6. How Important Are Your Stats?
7. CSS, HTML & Blog Design
8. Blogger's Toolbox: Platforms & Plugins
9. Vlogging 101
10. Good Blog Writing: A Workshop
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRACK
1. Marketing to Latinas
2. Making Your Blog Your Business
3. Bloggers as Brand Ambassadors
4. The Book Deal: A Guide for Bloggers
5. Self-Promotion: Be Your Own CEO
We also have a great and easy contest going on where you can win one free night at the Ritz Carlton, South Beach, our conference hotel! Check out the contest and rules here. Hurry, the contest ends July 1st!
We’ve been busy for Months! Weeks! Days! finalizing our speakers and sessions to ensure that we have a great agenda for you all. Although there are still a few more days to submit your speaker proposals, we would like to share a few of the fabulous sessions and speakers on our line-up. (As a reminder, you can submit your speaker proposals until June 30, 2010.)
Before I go into the details of some of our speakers, let’s do a little preview of what we have lined up for the weekend.
So let’s get right into it and start highlighting just some of the speakers and sessions we have planned for Blogalicious Weekend 2010!
The Session: Building Your Social Media Tribe. Learn how to promote, gather, and engage your community by women that have built and gathered their own communities. The speakers will share their social media tools, how-tos, and best practices for all those attendees that want to gather their own communities, regardless of its niche!
The Track: Lifestyle
Speaker Highlight: Ana Flores; Spanglishbaby.com
If you haven’t met Ana Flores of Spanglishbaby yet, let me introduce you to one of our favorite bloggers. Ana Flores is truly a child of two worlds. Born in Houston to parents from El Salvador, Ana grew up in El Salvador until she headed back to the U.S. to attend the University of Florida and receive a Bachelor in Telecommunications-Production. Since then she has worked as television and entertainment producer, with a specialty in the U.S. Hispanic industry, both in the U.S. and in México.
Ana and her husband moved to Los Angeles five years ago when the TV industry came calling back. They thought they had escaped it all when they moved to Playa del Carmen in México to act as irresponsible beach bums, but the offer was too tempting to pass up. Three years ago, they joyously welcomed their daughter into their bilingual and bicultural family. These days, Ana Lilian is splitting her time as a brand consultant building bridges with Latina bloggers, a freelance writer and TV producer, and dedicating precious time to her labor-of-love blog for parents raising bilingual and bicultural children: SpanglishBaby .
The Session: Bloggers as Brand Ambassadors. This session will be a hands-on workshop to train bloggers in handling the ups, downs, and unexpected of being a brand ambassador. The speakers will share three different case studies that can arise when bloggers work as brand ambassadors and will lead a conversation on possible approaches and devise the best possible solutions and outcomes. Participants will come away with tangible, useful, and lasting problem solving skills, not to mention a better understanding of the large companies and brands that retain bloggers for their marketing campaigns. Awesome!
The Track: Entrepreneurial
The Speakers: Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann are the founders and principals of The Motherhood Creative.
Cooper spent two decades working in top tier public relations agencies in New York and Washington DC before co-founding TheMotherhood.com and TheMotherhood Creative. In addition, Cooper has written for numerous media outlets including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the HuffingtonPost, MomsRising and BlogHer.com and has been featured in several books about mothers online. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband and their four children where they are active in their community and spend far too much time carpooling to and from sporting events.
Emily ran corporate public relations firms in New York and Dallas for clients CBS, Scholastic, Frito-Lay, Morgan Stanley and others, and was Director of International Business and Acting Commissioner to the United Nations and Consular Corps for New York City. She co-authored the book Living with the End in Mind, published by Crown Books and featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show numerous times. She has written for BlogHer and MomsRising and several books and anthologies. Emily lives in Larchmont, NY, with her husband, two girls and their hyper-active dog.
The Session: Self-Promotion: Be your own C.E.O. Bloggers will learn how to start, manage, and build their own company.
The Track: Entrepreneurial
The Speaker: Lucinda Cross; CorporateMomDropouts.com
Lucinda Cross is a speaker and author and founder of Corporate Mom Dropouts, blog, radio show and book. For several years, she has made it her life’s mission to uplift, inspire and change people’s lives. She likes to call herself a catalyst for motivation, passion and high energy and has worked with small business owners supporting them to work on their business and not in their business, and women who were interested in learning how to work from home and take charge and create the life they love.
Lucinda has created a highly successful marketing implementation company for small business owners. She is also the creator of several successful programs such as Marketing Made Easy for Corporate Mom Dropouts, I Want More: 6-Figure Mom Marketing Implementation Kit.
Her life has been filled with wonderful experiences – from being a single mother, to a Mompreneur, sharing her gifts as a marketing strategist, mentor and writer she uses that wisdom and insight to motivate moms to create a better life, a better community and a better business. She has been featured in New York Enterprise, Black Star News, Harlem News, 1600am, LA Business Week, Essence Magazine, several Internet Radio shows.
We are thrilled that the awesomely fabulous ladies of The CleverGirls Collective will be hosting The Bay Area Blogalicious Mixer...
There are so many reasons why South Beach is a great place to hold the second annual Blogalicious Weekend Conference that we decided to try and list them all, right here! Let's face it, between the possible celebrity sightings, to the fabulous restaurants, and beautiful beaches, South Beach is hot and sexy. Let's not forget the surrounding Miami neighborhoods that offer an eclectic mix of urban lifestyle living and traditional Latin flavors. I mean really, is there a better place to hold a conference? Not just any conference, but a Blogalicious conference.
We don't think so! And based on the standing ovation you guys gave us last year when we announced Miami as our next location, we think you all agree - Miami is it!
But aside from all the great things about Miami, how about all the great reasons why registering for Blogalicious before our early bird prices end on July 1st is a great idea?
When you combine the great things about Miami and the reasons why you have to register early, we've got our very own Top Ten list!
Here are the Top Ten Reasons to Register Early for Blogalicious 2010
1. When you watch the next episode of Basketball Wives, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you too, will have a chance to visit the same restaurants, boutiques, and hotel as Evelyn, Jennifer, Suzie, and the rest of the gals. You might even spot one of the gals since the second season was just picked up by VH1.
2. You'll save $65.00 on registration which equals two mango mojitos, a nice Cuban dinner, and Cuban dessert at a great South Beach restaurant.
3. You won't end up on the waiting list because Blogalicious 2010 WILL.sell.out. We've doubled attendance this year but passes are going fast.
4. You already booked your room at the Ritz, so go ahead and register!
5. The "I'm Going to Blogalicious" badge is not only a cute accessory to your blog, but another way to let everyone know you are going to hottest conference this year. Woot!
6. The early flamingo catches the Blogalicious worm. You'll start to get exclusive, attendee insider tips, news, and benefits so don't miss out!
7. Registering is already on your to-do list so register today and scratch that sucker off- done!
8. You don't want to spend your Blogalicious money on your summer vacation with the family, boyfriend, girlfriend, your dog, or whomever.
9. Will Smith said it best in 1998, "Bienviendo a Miami... [it's] the city that keeps the roof blazing!"
10. When will you ever have another chance to stay at a luxury South Beach hotel like the Ritz Carlton for only $199 a night?!
So here is what we are doing. We are holding a contest where you can enter for a chance to win one free night at the Ritz Carlton, South Beach. That's a prize value of $199, plus taxes.
Here's all you have to do to enter to win one free night:
1) Tweet your reason why registering for Blogalicious before the early bird is a fabulous idea. We've listed our reasons above as an example. Be sure to use the hashtag #blogalicious10 in your Tweets.
2) Leave us a comment with your reason(s) in this post and provide a link to your tweet so that we know you did it. One entry for every unique tweet and comment!
3) Get two entries for every unique post on your blog. Like Rule #2 above, leave us a comment here so we know you did it.
Additional rules: You don't have to be registered for the conference to enter this contest, but you must be registered by 11:59 pm July 1, 2010 to win. If you are not registered by July 1, 2010 you can't claim your prize and we'll give your night to the next winner! You must also claim your prize by 5:00 PM EST on July 12, 2010.
One winner will be selected at random and announced on Friday, July 2, 2010.
So what's your reason!?
The second Blogalicious DC Meetup was another great event. Our speakers, Terri Holley, Scrappin’ Michele,ProMomBlogger and moderator Ananda Leeke shared advice, tips and priceless information on Creating Your Digital Footprint with our enthusiastic audience. Everyone in attendance also received an impromptu tutorial on Foursquare 101! The discussion was so lively and informative that we quickly ran out of time. These ladies were so energized to continue the conversation that they took to the sidewalk to chat…Next time we’ll have to plan for an afterparty!
Thanks to the Washington, DC Economic Partnership for lending us their swank space for our event, as well as to Niambi Jarvis and the DC Office on Women’s Policy and Initiatives, and Food Arts DC for the delectable refreshments.
If you missed the event, don’t worry – you can check out photos here.
Stay tuned for a meetup in your neck of the woods soon!
Wow! The 7pm movie on 5/27 is SOLD OUT! If you weren't able to get your ticket, no worries. Come on out and meet us at Zengo for happy hour at 5pm! We'll be networking, chatting and mingling in our Blogalicious fabulousness.Join the Blogalicious DC community on Thursday, May 27, 2010 for a night out to celebrate spring, girl power, and each other. We'll be meeting at the bar at Zengo at 5pm for Happy Hour and then heading over to watch the 7pm show at Regal Gallery Place Stadium 14.
You MUST PRE-ORDER your tickets to guarantee admission to the movie. Click here to purchase your movie tickets from Fandango. Make sure to purchase a ticket for the 7PM SHOW ON MAY 27th.
Gather your best girlfriends and get Blogalicious!
It’s very important to us that the Blogalicious Weekend conferences remain as accessible as possible to the bloggers that want to attend. For this reason, we make it a priority to keep the registration costs as low as possible, the hotel room rates as reasonable as possible, and to offer important extras – like sharing a Family-Friendly Area Guide with conference attendees beforehand, assisting attendees with finding a roommate, and providing free childcare to those parents are attending Blogalicious with their little ones in tow.
Still, we recognize that some bloggers may want or need to have their Blogalicious Weekend registration and trip expenses sponsored by a company that they have a working relationship with. That’s a-ok with us and we are more than happy to know that brands are recognizing our importance as ambassadors for their products and services. That said, we have to make sure that the Official Blogalicious Weekend Sponsors are not overshadowed by the companies sponsoring individual bloggers (“unofficial sponsors”). To make sure that everyone is happy and that our Official Sponsors get their due, we have put together these guidelines for bloggers seeking individual sponsorship to Blogalicious Weekend 2010:
Ø You may not represent yourself as an official representative of Blogalicious in order to secure individual sponsorship to the conference.
Ø No swag, gifts or materials from unofficial sponsors may be distributed or posted within the conference space, directly or indirectly.
Ø You may not use the Blogalicious Weekend 2010 room block to secure a room to host a private event for your sponsor.
Ø Any private events hosted by/for your sponsor must not conflict with the Official Conference Agenda.
Ø If you are working with a company that is interested in becoming an Official Blogalicious Weekend Sponsor, please have them contact us at: sponsors@blogaliciousweekend.com We’d love to have them!
Questions? Email us at: info@blogaliciousweekend.com
Image Credit: The Research Goddess
Jonesie, Ny and I are firm believers in putting out into the universe what we hope to receive. And, we like to conduct business that way. This includes “paying it forward” by lifting up others in recognition of those who lifted us up. Do I sound sappy enough yet? I say all of this, because it’s the truth!
We were contacted awhile back by the wonderful Research Goddess, Amybeth Hale, who was writing a story about “media professionals to watch,” and we were honored and humbled to learn that Elisa Camhort-Page of BlogHer had given our names as women to be featured in the story. {I especially love how she came up with the idea in the first place.}
You can link to the original story on Mashable here and the expanded story on the Research Goddess’ site here, but that’s not the point of me posting. What I really wanted to do is acknowledge the importance of paying it forward to those around you. In this day and age, when so much of social media is clouded with negative publicity and pitting various groups against each other, it is so heartwarming to know that, at the core of the medium, community and relationships remain the driving force. So thanks (again) to Elisa and Amybeth!
Who would you lift up to pay it forward?
Seven months to go! We've already been getting lots of questions from those of you getting a leg up on planning your trip to Blogalicious 2010. We love the enthusiasm! Here are a couple things to assist you in your planning:
1 - Is it true that this year's conference is 3 FULL days?
Why YES it is! We heard your feedback loud and clear that you wanted more time for sessions, networking and hands-on seminars. In order to maximize your experience, we decided to begin this year's conference on Friday morning and go through until Sunday evening. Hopefully this allows you to dig your heels in and get everything you want out of the weekend without affecting your travel plans. Bonus - for many of us, Monday, October 11 is a holiday!
2 - When (and how) can I reserve my hotel room for Blogalicious 2010?
The Blogalicious hotel room block at the chic Ritz Carlton-South Beach is now open. We are excited to offer you a competitive rate of $199/nt starting the Thursday night prior to the conference through the following Monday. Feel free to request a room with 2 double beds to share the cost with bloggy friends. You can connect with potential roommates on our Big Tent forum. Or pamper yourself with a room all to yourself.
To reserve by telephone, call 305.671.2609 or 1.800.241.3333 and reference group name (MamaLaw/ Blogalicious), and event dates.
To reserve online, go to:
http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/SouthBeach/Rooms/Default.htm. To apply the discount select “Optional information”, and in the field entitled “Group code” enter MMLMMLA
You will not be charged to reserve your room.
Any questions? Send us an email to: info(at)blogaliciousweekend(dot)com or leave us a comment.
Reminder: Early Bird Registration is open!
A little more about Shannon
For those of you who attended Blogalicious 2009, you had the distinct pleasure of hearing Priscilla Renea before her album was released. I heard her again today at an event I attended in DC. I didn't realize that she started off on YouTube (just like Justin Bieber), so here's an artist that is from social media and is using social media to share her talent. Please support her by following her on Twitter @priscillarenea and getting her cd. Here's a clip from YouTube and check out her website.
