I woke up Sunday morning in New York City after a night of singing Karoake with the National Women’s Rugby Team. The Blogging conference was over and I needed to go out and experience more of my favorite city in the world.

I lived in the city for three years and if I don’t get out of Aspen and have my fix every year I start to get the shakes. Usually I do not choose to visit in the swaltering heat of August and quite often I bring my children with me. Once, I even convinced Wade to come with me. He looked so small as he stood there in his ski coat looking around at all of the huge buildings wondering where the grass was.

But here I was alone, which wasn’t such a bad thing, and so I put on my sneakers, shorts and a t-shirt and ran through the lobby and out into the street lest I be deterred from my mission of doing what I love to do, walk forever exploring and meeting the people, soaking up all of the culture. I didn’t get very far before I reached Barney’s on 61st and Madison. I was looking in the windows when I saw in the reflection a beautiful yellow skyscape of the city and I had to turn around. “Are you the artist,” I asked  and that is when I met Walford Williams.

Walford and I talked for an hour about his life in the city and his artwork and we shared our thoughts on life and love and he was a beautiful person of whom, of course, I had to interview. I was so mad that I hadn’t put my video camera in my bag but Walford agreed to letting me interview him on my iPhone. When I was finished I was sad to leave him and his artwork and so I bought one of his pieces so I can always have his energy and his talent near me as I write to all of you.

His interviews are below and I am sorry Walford, that I could not portray you without all of the noise and the bad lighting but I had to share your beautiness with my friends, good filming or not.

To see more of Walford’s creations visit his website.

Don’t forget to watch both videos and to visit Walford next time you’re in the city!

Walford 1-iPhone-cell

Walford 2-iPhone-cell

Walford’s Avatar on FaceBook

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