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Sparkle (3)
Ahoy, BlogHers! All right, I’m not exactly your Cruise Director. But close. My name is Polly Pagenhart, and I’ll be joining Elisa Camahort Page and Jes Ferris as the newest member of BlogHer’s Conference Programming team.
I’ve been a BlogHer member since late 2006 (and a blogger for even longer: my six five-year blogiversary is this month). [Ed note: Time flies! It's felt like six years!] I got hooked by my first BlogHer conference in San Francisco in 2008, and I’ve been to every annual conference since. BlogHer’s Executive Vice President Gina Garrubbo knocked some sense into me at that first one, urging me (and everyone else in the room) to “take the money!” that companies were eager to give to bloggers for ad space. I became a BlogHer Publishing Network member not long after that. A little later I became a Contributing Editor. So over the past two-and-a-half years, by one means or another, I’ve had the good fortune to meet –- and maybe even hug, or dance a jig in front of -– many of you already. (Warning: I can be exuberant.)
Back in 2008, like many first-time BlogHer conference goers, I wasn’t sure what to expect at my first conference. I was honored to be going as a speaker (on the “Is Mommy Blogging Still Radical?” panel, and as a “Community Keynoter”), but amazingly that still didn’t quell my fears. A hotel filled with over 1,000 strangers? Aaaaak! What if someone came up and talked to me? Or worse, what if no one did?
I soon discovered that (1) every BlogHer conference is filled with people sharing the same concerns I had; and (2) they’re also filled with hugely dedicated BlogHer staff and volunteers who, along with tons of genial vets, are eager to help newbies feel at home and get as much out of the conference as possible. I discovered an alchemy happened at the conference that mirrored the best alchemy of our blogs: I had the opportunity to meet kindred spirits in members of my various online “tribes,” but I also forged unexpected connections, finding allies in places I hadn’t had the courage -– or the imagination -– to look.
I discovered something else, too. At panel after panel, event after event, it became more clear that we were all doing something that really mattered: not just to ourselves, but to our various communities. The New York Times reporter I kept bumping into helped clarify, too, that the scope of what we’re up to extends beyond our communities to the media landscape around us. Collectively, our voices are impossible to not hear. And it becomes truer every year.
It’s an enormous honor to now be a part of helping shape the space in which these voices come together. As Conference Programming Director, I’ll be working alongside Elisa and Jes and Lori Luna's superb Conference Events team, spinning the ideas, passions, debates, and Next New Things you propose into coherent, enlightening, exciting programs. With my teammates at BlogHer, I’ll see to it that you leave with as many new skills, insights, and connections as possible; as much support, company, and downright delight as you can stuff into your suitcases. I’ll be tuning my ear to both the shouts and the murmurs: the things BlogHers are absolutely dying to talk about, as well as some we really must. I approach this work as a writer, an educator, and a feminist, and am inspired by my conviction that what we’re doing with our blogs matters. To us, to the communities we bring together with our blogs -– whatever the size -– and to the world around us. We BlogHers are thousands of ordinary women (and a bunch of enlightened men!), taking media into our own hands and sharing our voices with millions of others. That, I believe, is extraordinary.
BlogHer’s Assignment & Syndication Editor Rita Arens recently asked me what it was I was doing in my new job here. I quipped:
Official title: Conference Program Director. Activity, now: trotting as fast as I can to get up to Elisa’s and Jes’ lightning speed! Ongoing activity, as I imagine it: wrangling, listening, shaping, nudging, arranging. Looking for the shape of the forest amidst the trees. On a good day, identifying the birds flying over the forest itself. Being gently pedantic here & there. Advocating for the little gal. Things of this nature.
Give me a shout, BlogHers, or a murmur, if that’s your style! Comment on this post with your bright ideas,
