BlogHer - BlogHer Reach Out Tour Update: Boston and DC are on, but other four cities have been cancelled - Comments

so bummed you won't be in nashville

happydaydeadfish — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:49:11 -0500

grr...oh well! i'll meet up sometime, somewhere!

STILL Want to Meet up?

haasiegirl — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:21:07 -0500

Some of us are still goign to meet up in NO just to have a bloggers day out instead. Come to

http://www.momdot.com/?p=2103

to sign up!

Understandable... Sorry for those who will miss them.

GeekMommy — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:52:35 -0500

As someone who lives in Denver, I wasn't about to make the Southern conferences - but I know how disappointing it is to have to call them off.

Conference planning is far harder than most folks realize. I grew up with a Mom who was a professional meeting planner and watched those headaches for years.

It's actually really saying something positive about the folks at BlogHer that you guys withdrew rather than trying to push on and maybe lessening the BlogHer experience for those attending in the cancelled cities. It takes courage to say "no, we don't think we can provide the kind of experience we promised you given the current situation, we'd rather cancel than let you down."

Major kudos for being that brave guys. I'll see you wherever the main '09 show is. I *WISH* I could make it to either boston or DC - those sound amazing! :)

Lucretia (aka GeekMommy)

Raising a child in a digital world, still a digital girl

I was one of those too. I

c525600 — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:35:14 -0500

I was one of those too. I as planning to go to Greensboro for sure, I just hadn't registered yet. I too hope it wasn't because of people like us!

Come anyway!

haasiegirl — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:48:42 -0500

If you have bought a ticket and still wnat to go to NO, some of us bloggers still want to meet! Email me at my blog

momdot@live.com

www.momdot.com

trisha

New to this - would do ATL too

jsharrow — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:21:06 -0500

I'm new to blogging and would like to get more info. I would go to Atlanta too. Making Boston might be a hike. I'm in Milwaukee right now! Have a house in Atlanta. Maybe next year?

Sure, but...

Elisa Camahort — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:17:26 -0500

I don't think we can say "no one", actually ;) But in any case I tried to address this above, that it's about delivering equal experiences and equal value.

We're all very focused on the sponsor/money side of it in this thread, but again it was both sponsor *and* community interest that were at issue in the four cancelled cities vs. the two cities we're still doing, and how that aligned with BlogHer's own commitment of $$ and people resources. Yes, conference organizers will tell you that registration is, in general, something a lot of people leave to the last minute (except for our annual event, where we seem to have the opposite experience) but there are limits to how much you can rely on that when you're talking about what was going to be involved in this two-week, traveling tour.

As for the focus on making money at the annual conference. Some folks do perceive that, and others perceive a focus on mommyblogging, but there was one track focused on $$, one on mommies, and three more programmed tracks, plus two self-organized tracks, that were focused on Identity, Technology, Politics & Activism, and meet-ups across a wide array of subject matter interests. You can build a BlogHer schedule that never mentions $$ if that's not your thing...and our general sessions have never been about making $$.

But also, I think it's pretty well-known that our sponsors (who often are focused on those who are interested in $$ or those who are parenting) are what enables us to make the conference more accessible to *everyone*, no matter what kind of blogger they are or subject matter they're into. That translates directly into more diversity in attendees and speakers. Past polling has shown that our community agrees that it's a good trade-off, if we set good guidelines.

Elisa Camahort Page
BlogHer
elisa@blogher.com

My BlogHer profile truly shows you everything I do online...Check it out!!

Who needs schwag?

rubyji — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:38:13 -0500

No-one's coming to these conferences for fancy food, cocktails, and bags of junk we throw away as soon as we get home. What I would most love would be a BlogHer unconference, which still requires promotion and some sponsorships, but which would take advantage of the incredible energy and creativity of participants without so much overhead.

I have already lost interest in the SF conference because there's so much focus on making money, which isn't something I'm interested in doing with any of my blogs. What I'm missing is connection to the BlogHer community.

Left out, again.

Soulprncs2 — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:00:59 -0500

Well, I was coming to sign up for New Orleans. I was going to use it as a test to see if I wanted to spend the big bucks for the big conference. I guess I will sit by and watch from the sidelines. I was looking forward to meeting other Southern Bloggers.

Y'all come back, now, ya hear!

debontherocks — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:36:34 -0500

We're sad it didn't work out this year, but still happy you love us southern girls enough to try to visit so many of our gorgeous cities. We know exactly what you mean about businesses who don't yet understand blogging, and we are appreciative of your first efforts to at least raise awareness for us. We'll pull it off another time, and in the mean time continue to work to support this important community with our (sometime drawling) voices.

Deb

www.debontherocks.com

blog

www.3smartgirlz.com

consulting

Event planning is HARD.

Rita Arens — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:54:16 -0500

I don't envy Elisa and Kristy and the rest of the BlogHer team one bit. Even trying to schedule something as small as a book signing in an unfamiliar city without knowing for sure who will come and who won't is maddening. You don't want to pressure anyone, but it becomes very difficult to find space and plan food, etc., without having an accurate head count. I remember one of the founders saying BlogHer is like planning a wedding every year. Can you imagine? I cannot.

I think one thing we as a community could do to ensure BlogHer events keep happening and keep happening closer to us is to register right away for events we plan to attend.

Surrender, Dorothy - When I was your age, we just let them ride in the back window.

Rita Arens is a contributing editor for BlogHer -- Mommy & Family.

Our page has been corrected

KristySF — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:29:51 -0500

Thank you, almostgotit, for letting us know.

---
Kristy Sammis
BlogHer's Conference & Event Planner
e. kristy@blogher.com

Virtual Conference

alvenable — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:36:02 -0500

There was a Virtual BlogHer Conference via Second Life held in
conjunction with the physical 2008 Conference. Maybe that will happen
again next year.

A. L. Venable is a Random Citizen. She writes at Dimple and a Smirk (dot) com and Our PDX Network.

It all works together

Elisa Camahort — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:32:54 -0500

I think the point we are trying to make above, is that a lot of things have to come together. We were going to send 8 people on the road for two weeks to hit all these cities, so that's a lot for company resources. We were charging $100 per conference, which doesn't cover the cost of putting on such an event, but our actual experience in doing these for several years is that in our community $100 is an investment, and after reading for years about how the annual conferences were run for that same attendee price, I do not think attendees would be satisfied with a meet-up style event. I think we'd get a lot of grief about cutting corners, and I could hardly blame anyone who thought so. I was just at a conference where attendees paid $400 for two days, and they didn't feed us anything. And yes, people were not happy. And there was way more talk about food than you could imagine!

So we have always been open that sponsors subsidize our events and make it possible for us to keep them at a low price, but yes, as A.L. points out, they do it because they want to support a community of bloggers, not BlogHer itself so much.

My point in the post is that all of these things have to come together. In Boston and DC they definitely were, but only four weeks out, even doing the most optimistic projections, they were not. We certainly realize that many people register in the last 4 weeks, but trying to do something at the scale of the Tour also scaled up the risk. And to those of you who mention the economy and the weather and all of those things...yes, I'm sure those were factors, and the uncertain economy is certainly a factor for BlogHer just like it is for our community members.

Regarding the week vs. weekend...actually, oddly enough, the weekday stops were doing a little better than the weekend, but the annual event will continue to be a Friday/Saturday thing for sure.

I know I'm not really saying anything different, but I hope I've shed a little more light on the same explanation? :)

And almostgotit: I'll tell the ConvergeSouth to kill that link right away. Thanks for the heads up!

Elisa Camahort Page
BlogHer
elisa@blogher.com

My BlogHer profile truly shows you everything I do online...Check it out!!

NB need to take down or update BlogHer Tour pages!

almostgotit — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:36:58 -0500

Good news: Converge South blogging conference in Greensboro (Oct 16-17) is still on, for those who still want a Greensboro blogging conference

http://2008.convergesouth.com/

HOWEVER: Converge South is still cross-promoting and linking to the BlogHer Greensboro 2008 conference page as well, which is still live and still reading that the BlogHer conference in Greensboro is a "go".

http://www.blogher.com/blogher_conference/conf/3/city/3

BlogHer Reach Out Tour Update: Boston and DC are on, but other four cities have been cancelled

Elisa Camahort — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:25:29 -0500

Today I am disappointed to announce that BlogHer's Reach Out Tour scheduled for next month will now include Boston and DC only. We are canceling Nashville, Greensboro, Atlanta and New Orleans.

We decided to do the Tour one year ago, based on community polling about where BlogHer ’08, the annual conference, should be. Our ambitious plan was to do six full BlogHer Conferences, complete with multiple tracks of programming, full meals, fabulous cocktail parties and schwag.

Delivering that kind of high-quality experience requires a tremendous amount of company, sponsor and community member interest, participation and resources. Four weeks out from the start of the Tour we realized that it only made sense to carry forward with Boston and DC, where we have very strong sponsor and community interest and participation. We did not have that same combination of sponsor and community support in the other four cities that would make it reasonable to devote the kind of resources it would take to produce a BlogHer conference and meet both sponsor and attendee expectations.

Boston and DC have exciting agendas planned, and registration is still open for both events:

Boston on October 11th
DC on October 13th

If you were planning to come to the Tour, we sincerely hope we will see you in person soon...if not at one of these two Tour stops, then at the annual event or at a meet-up some time in the future. We are definitely sorry not to get out there and see more of you face-to-face!

Finally, I want to thank our slate of sponsors, including Platinum sponsors Yahoo! And GM, who have been supporting us for years. As many of our attendees know, the conference registration fee is subsidized by such companies who want to support BlogHer and women bloggers. We thank them, and with their support BlogHer Boston and BlogHer DC will be the kind of high-quality events that BlogHer has always produced.