We have some very important information regarding making hotel reservations for the BlogHer '08 Conference in San Francisco!

As of this morning, we are at about 80% capacity on our room block. This means that there ARE still rooms available (really!), but our room block will sell out. 

For over a year now, I have been traveling and going to professional conferences as a person with a disability, a wheelchair and crutches user. Abilities and disabilities vary wildly. My own issues are most often bathrooms, distances, exhaustion, and stairs. I am less aware of issues and solutions for people with visual impairments and for the deaf or hearing impaired community; I apologize for not addressing those issues here.

If you have mobility issues and wonder about the accessible geography of the conference, I have a ton of information!

What would the BlogHer annual conference be without some proper blog bling?

Sure, the first order of business is actually registering. And then it'd be awesome if you'd like to add yourself to our ever-growing roster of attendees.

But even if you haven't gotten around to these first steps (ahem, tick tock), it's never too early to add BlogHer '08 badge beauty to your blog. We've worked up our Official "I'm Going!" and "I'm Speaking" buttons for you again this year. But we've also added a few more "personal" buttons to the mix. (You're doing what at BlogHer?)

Check 'em out:

Bit by bit, session by session, the BlogHer '08 Conference Agenda is being revealed. Check out the link, and make sure to scroll or click your way down to see the detailed descriptions, not just the session titles.

There are now five tracks:
Who We Are
What We Do
What We Believe
How We Communicate Who We Are, What We Do and What We Believe (aka the tech track)
And (drum roll please) we decided to add a MommyBlogging track!

In the first of what will probably be numerous such posts, I am here to ask you what you want.

We've lined up a fantabulous photography mentor for a session in BlogHer '08's How We Communicate track, and we want to know how you want her to focus the 75 minutes she will have for her session.

Meet Ma Ra Koh. This is a rare case where her About page tells you a really compelling story. As she says:

I didn’t find photography.

Photography found me.

And then it healed me.

Never been to a BlogHer Conference before? You're not alone.

I mean, you're really not alone!  There will be lots of first-timers at the conference this year, so we thought it would be nice to set up a mixer just for you before the conference kicks-off.

When: Thursday, July 17

Time: 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Where: Westin St. Francis 

I wanted to post a brief reminder that our special earlybird pricing for BlogHer '08 ends tonight at midnight!

We haven't published the full agenda yet, but you can get an overview of the event (and our keynote speaker) here.

You can also get logistical info here.

Hot on the heels of her quadruple-win at the 2008 Weblog Awards, I am pleased to announce that Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce) is returning to BlogHer '08 this July in San Francisco.

Heather was part of the very first BlogHer "Naked" session at the inaugural conference in 2005, and spoke about the ups, downs and late nights of monetizing your blog in 2006.

Thanks to your overwhelming response to our early registration options, it's looking like BlogHer '08 will be a sold-out event!

Of course, we want everyone who's interested to be able to attend, so we're encouraging all BlogHers to register early. To help with this, we are extending Earlybird Registration prices to March 31. (You can check out our basic price breakdowns here.)

San Francisco: ready or not, here we come!

The BlogHer community has been submitting ideas for BlogHer '08 session since pretty much the day after BlogHer '07 ended. And you can rest assured that we have been saving all of the ideas, suggestion, speaker recommendations and "shameless plugs." But if you were waiting to hear just a little more about what we have on tap for BlogHer '08 before making your suggestions, then this post will be welcome.

I'm announcing the official "Call for Ideas" for BlogHer '08 this July 18-20 in San Francisco, CA.