I am sitting at my desk visiting all of my new friends from the BlogHer ‘10 Conference and as I read their accounts on their experiences in New York City and as I see their photographs I am getting a greater understanding on how I could have done things differently and thought I would share these observations with you in case you are thinking of attending your own conference.

#1: Do Your Research

I wish that I had done more thorough research on the sponsors and the speakers who were attending the conference. When I visit Heija on Twitter I see that she was very organized and knew exactly what sponsors to visit at the Expo rooms and what suites to check in on. She also knew every social event that was happening and fluttered and twittered her way to all of them, whether she had an invite or not. If I were smart, I would have followed her everywhere but I didn’t want to be intrusive. I guess, in the end, you can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl.

• Find the social events that are occurring outside of the conference and get yourself invited
• Research more thoroughly the attending speakers and connect with them well in advance. Let them know your coming to the conference and discuss how you think you could help each other through your blogs or social networking sites.
• Visit all of the sponsor suites

#2: Connect Ahead of Time with your Online Friends

• Find out who is also attending the conference, they should have the BlogHer badge in their sidebars.
• Get their cell phone numbers
• Plan luncheons, dinners, cocktails etc…ahead of time.
• Find a roommate

#3: Delve Deeper into the Social Networks that you Already Belong to

If you’re anything like me you belong to a gadzillion social networks and don’t use any of them efficiently. This realization came when I sat next to Holly Hamann from The Blog Frog. When I asked her the benefits of joining The Blog Frog she quickly showed me a printed out diagram of how it works. Each Network will provide something different and new for your blog so investigate and use them efficiently.

#4: Definitely stay at the hotel where the conference is being held

#5: On every business card you receive write a reminder to yourself of where you met this person and what connection you had with them.

#6: Do your follow through when you get home, sooner rather than later, even if you have piles of laundry to do, love deprived children and dogs and a husband who is starving for your attention.

As I sift through the hundreds of business cards and visit all of their twitter handles and blogs I see that the doors have cracked open and it is up to me to swing them wide open.

More later but if you have anything to add to this list, for I am sure that I am still missing so much, please comment and let us all in on your secrets. I hate being in the dark, unless I’m sparkling.

Photo Courtesy of Carissa Rogers from Good N Crazy. Carissa definitely had her finger on the pulse and was an expert on bringing us all together, if only I had followed her everywhere.

Visit Ryan Marshall’s Pacing the Panic Room for incredible photographs taken at the conference. He was one of the few men there and he seemed to soak up all of our energy capturing us on film.

To see his truly fantastic vimeo, that I was completely impressed by, go to Mammapop.com. I debut with all my new best friends doing my Sparklecorn shizzle.

I woke up on Sunday, both sad and relieved that I had made it through the BlogHer ’10 Conference with bulging elevators, lobbies, hallways and conference rooms filled with the other 2,400 bloggers attending the conference. Women and men connecting, networking and processing information while they “Networked Offline.”

It took me a while to rid myself of the stunned deer persona but there was no time to let my insecurities prohibit me from meeting these intellectual and talented individuals, all blogging for a cause, a passion or a skill, some sharing their knowledge and other’s, like me, attempting to spread optimism and humor in a suffering world. It felt really good to be surrounded by like minded people who didn’t look at me with three heads because I am a “Mommy Blogger” and so I fought the urge to run upstairs to my hotel room and hide.

It was frustrating to not have my finger on the pulse of the conference but I made myself let go of all things intangible and opened myself to every person who crossed my path by initiating conversation, regardless of how exhausted or reclusive I felt. In my past year and a half of blogging I have become quite accustomed to the feeling of being backed up against a wall but learning how to plow through the humps with my writing helped me at the conference for if I have learned nothing else, I have learned that humps are just speed bumps in the flow of life that, if given any validation, could turn into treacherous cyclones of self doubt and sink me into wet cement quickly hardening, suffocating my passion. That bad huh, you ask and I say, most definitely, but only if you let it be.

As I listened to the panel of female activist bloggers speaking, women who cannot be filmed for fear of their lives, I began to see the whole picture. By blogging on the internet these women are able to let the world know about the injustices that are taking place throughout the world and they are not at the mercy of the media to distort their stories. Now, with access to the internet we can get first hand stories of the struggles from amazing women like Esra’a (Bahrain) who founded the website Mideast Youth and Humanity Ashore by Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai. I encourage all of you to please visit these websites and support these incredibly courageous women. The internet now makes it easier for us to choose our cause by reading these stories first hand and not only that, it allows us to follow these blogs and see the results of our contributions, and this is fantastic.

What became clearer and clearer with each new conversation was that as bloggers the internet is our highway and our blogs our the vehicle to bring truths globally. Truths, humor, fiction and non-fiction stories and so much more that may otherwise never reach an audience and that  social networks such as She Writes, The Blog Frog, MomActive and Today’s Mama are becoming our tools to help us decide what is veritable and what is not, eaking out the talent and connecting us to our niche.

After an action packed weekend I was ready for a day to myself and so I slept in, checked Twitter to see if other bloggers had put out the word on a good breakfast café, which of course they had, and walked over to sit at the counter to enjoy the eggs I had been craving all weekend.

I ordered a coffee with steamed milk and as the warm delicious liquid flowed down my throat, promising a renewed energy to help get me back home, I eavesdropped on a conversation that a man and his father were having at the dining table by the window behind me. I imagined that they had been meeting at this table every Sunday for years to have breakfast and philosophize together. The son was talking to his father about Global Warming and was asking his father what he thought was going to happen to all of those people around the world who lived in warmer climates. He said to his father, “Those people are going to need help, but one of the most cantankerous diseases in the Corporate world is Narcissim. You see dad, we’re all in this Universe together. We’re all sharing the same airwaves. But you don’t believe in it and that is why you don’t understand me. If people can’t let go of their narcissism than they will never care enough about those who are suffering or dying enough to make a difference,” and it hit me, the magnitude of how social networking is changing the world and how imperative it is that people realize the power and the necessity of it.

In closing I’d like to say thank you to all of the BlogHer Conference sponsors for allowing this amazing conference to transpire and thank you to the BlogHer staff for successfully running such an organized and tremendous event. Throughout the next few weeks, as I sift through my notes and research all of the information I took in at the Conference, I will continue to share with you what I have learned and introduce you to all of my new BFF’s and in the meantime stay connected!

Photographers: Amy from the Bitchin’ Wives Club, Pauline/OhMommy from Classy Chaos & Ryan Marshall from Pacing the Panic Room

Token Daddy Blogger, Jason Mayo, from Out Numbered

My partner in crime, Heija Nunn from The Worst Mother in the World.

Thank you for bringing on the sweetness with your little one! Baby Making Machine.

Tutus for Tanner participant

Bulging elevators

Message Board at BlogHer

Our new word for traveling is officially called groveling. Where do I begin? Yesterday was the most gorgeous day of all as we packed up to sadly leave Nantucket and embark on a horrendous journey of ferries, taxis, planes, shuttles and trains.

I should have known, when we almost missed the ferry, that the day was going to be a long one. Never having a solid grasp on time, I went to feed the children before being sucked into the black hole of travel.  We raced up the ramp to an irritated boat guy who was arguing with my mother about whether or not he should let us on, in the end the kids looked so cute that he couldn’t say no.

We went to the top deck of the ferry and sprawled out to enjoy the sun and the wonderful fresh air. As my mother and I recapped the past three weeks, holding on to the stories before they slipped into the fabric of memories gone by,  Tucker appeared to tell us that his body felt all achy. He was breaking out in hives and I got worried thinking that I had failed on my duty as tick sergeant. I went running to boat guy to grovel and beg him to let me into the secured baggage storage so that I could get my tweezers out to perform surgery on these two little black spots on Tucker’s tummy that suddenly looked like deeply embedded ticks that I had originally misdiagnosed.

Tucker was so brave as I dissected and removed his spots in front of the other passengers. When I finished picking I heard what my mother had been trying to tell me all along that the hives were probably from a plant he was sitting next to while waiting for the boat. “Good to know,” I said as Tucker walked away with two freckles less than before. Can’t be too careful can we?

When we finally got on the plane we sat on the runway for two hours due to mechanical difficulties and of course we missed our connecting flight to Aspen. Arriving in Denver at 12:30am I waited in line at the “customer service” desk.  Tucker whimpered by my side with his little rocket pillow in his hand and suddenly the line opened up like the red sea and everybody pushed me to the front, “get that little boy to bed,” they said sympathetically. I wanted to put my hands together and say Namaste but decided against it.

Off we went in the rain to the hotel motel Holiday Inn, say Waaaaa???? I do not lie when I tell you that we were moved into three different rooms for one reason or another and as we shuffled from room to room we passed the many policemen who seemed to be very busy, why? I’ll never know.

Each time we moved we ran into our new Engineer friend who had been sitting in the seat in front of my fidgety kids as the plane sat on the runway. Thankfully he had a good sense of humor as he recounted his experience with the kids hanging upside down, kicking his seat and disturbing his peace. Each time the elevator doors opened and we saw each other standing there we had to smile. “No soap in my room,” he reported. “Our room was unmade,” I reported back. “Need a toothbrush,” he reported the second time. “The second room was occupied,” I reported back.

The kids, recharged from room hopping, were mesmerized by the remote control used to regulate mattress firmness and as I lay next to Axel allowing the deep slumber to take me away from it all I could feel the mattress moving underneath me and Axel’s little voice saying, “You’re 70% firm. Now you’re 40%. Now you’re 20%,” until I lunged for the control and demanded that he get some rest. Finally, finally, everybody fell asleep.

Six hours later I roused the children from their sleep.  Axel sleepily took a glass of water from me and went into the bathroom. A few seconds later we heard a huge crash and a groan and ran in to find him laying face down on the floor, lifeless. Whether it was from getting up too fast, dehydration from traveling or pure exhaustion I do not know but in the few minutes that it took for him to come to I swore that the first thing I would do when I got home was to schedule a full exam for my little Axel who never seems quite well.

After that things went quite smoothly until Brevitt noticed that our plane to Aspen was  circling around in the air. “What now?” I moaned and then we heard the announcement that a plane on the runway needed to be towed off and that we would probably have to return to Denver. “Oh no we’re not,” the kids and I protested. This trip needs to be over NOW! We held our head in our hands and prayed for the plane to be removed and miraculously it was and we landed and we were home.

And tomorrow? I turn around to do it all over again to attend the BlogHer ’10 Conference but this time I will be with me, myself and I and we usually get along really well when we are all on our own. Oh and I’ll be with you too of course as I write to you all about the weekend. If all goes well, it will begin with the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia “Bloggers’ Night Out party tomorrow night, so stay tuned and good bye to Nantucket, Melanie and my mother, I’ll miss you dreadfully!

My mother’s bench in her garden with Lilies growing through the cracks