Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Women (and Men!) Who Blog

Randy and the girls dropped me off at the BlogHer conference Saturday morning and went on to have a fun day. They rode the merry-go-round on Navy Pier, played at the Chicago Children’s Museum and Randy rented a family sized bike to tool around with the girls.

I was sorry to miss all this, but I was busy with some fun of my own, the grown-up, smarty-pants kind.

I initially approached the conference as a chance to get some writing tips and network a little. It morphed into something that was more about the love and the issues than the craft, although I did nab a very useful handout How to Write a Protest Letter by Jennifer Pozner.

I met lots of great people, including some bloggers I’ve been reading for a while. The whole conference was fun and relaxed and it was so cool to see all the beautiful diversity of the women (and men!) there – all ages and hues and shapes and abilities and backgrounds. I met women from Oregon and Arizona and California and Philly and Canada. . . And I loved seeing all the beautiful babies the mothers brought! Yeah!

Here are some of the awesome people I met:

Kim Moldofsky is so cool and friendly and a great food writer with more than one blog!

Veronique Christensen at Little Elephants married a Dane, owns a merry and frequent laugh and blogs about creative and fun things to do with her kids, like fishing off the balcony with a stick and string. I’m going to try this with the girls today!

I met Leah Jones in an interesting session "Book to Blog and Back Again!" Leah writes about her conversion experience at Accidentally Jewish.

Catherine McNiel is lovely and a fellow Chicagoan mom blogger. Read her at Everyday Life as Lyric Poetry and Chicago Mom Blogs.

Kristin Park’s story of postpartum depression packs a wallop. Her blog helps women with PPD and those who care about them. I felt instantly connected to Kristin; she also lost a brother in a car accident and has a family member with a long denied mental illness.

Glennia Campbell blogs about travel, kids, politics and the American Idol tour! (Listing is such a blunt tool, isn’t it?) The cool name of her blog, “The Silent I” refers to the pronunciation of her own name.

Shannon Hutton had a trying time just getting to Chicago!

Cynthia McCune, a college media educator, works on balancing the public and the private in her blog, McCunications.

N.F. Hill rocks!

Gayle D. Weiswasser excerpts and links to book reviews in her blog Everyday I Write the Book. How super-useful is that!

Lori Shapiro is a mommy blogger (oh wait, do all women who blog about parenting use this title? – I’ll call her a mom who blogs) I met at the lunch with AOL Family coach Kathy Peel.

Peel is an adorable little cheerleader who exhausted me just by saying hi. When she asked if anyone had clutter issues and I threw my hand in the air, she offered the idea of trading jobs with a friend. Friend cleans my clutter, I offer my talents in exchange.

“What do you do well?” asked Cathy, fishing for a swapable skill.

“I can go to dinner like nobody’s business,” was all I could think of. Of yeah, and I blog. And I love playing with kids. So good luck with all that. We’ll be at the park.

Danielle Wood is director of editorial at the cool brand spanking new site education.com.

Kyran Pittman writes cute and soulful at Notes to Self.

Jeremy Pepper says he blogs for three people – himself, a good friend and one of two others, depending on who is in his good graces that day. Nice guy, his blog is Greek to me.

Judy Coates Perez creates amazing hand painted quilts. Go look at these! Beautiful!

2 comments:

Believer in Balance said...

I'm so glad I finally made it to the conference! I couldn't let a little thing like a CANCELLED FLIGHT get in my way! It was very nice meeting you!

Lori at Spinning Yellow said...

I didn't know you linked to me b/c you used my real name (I'm so exposed, oh, yeah, I put it on my card, so I guess it's fair game!) Anyway, nice to meet you, too! I still haven't recovered enough from BlogHer to post about it!