My name is Monique and I'm a Conference Newbie.

LOL...thanks for the advice!! :) I can't wait to get there!

Seriously. Last year was my first time going to the main conference and that's what I wish someone had told me. All the parties have munchies but I really needed a meal. Eat dinner. That's my advice.

Contributing Editor Sassymonkey also blogs at Sassymonkey ( http://sassymonkey.ca ) and Sassymonkey Reads ( http://sassymonkeyreads.ca ).

I have been thinking about your final question for the last hour and it just doesn't work. My first conference, in 2006, was a completely different experience than the one you're going to have in 2010. Well not completely, but in about a zillion different ways. It's not just the size that makes the experience so different, it's where we - the blogging community - where we are in time and space.

Back then, blogging was new for the masses. It might have been happening, quietly, for five or so years but it was the beginning of the beginning - does that make sense?

Now years later, so much has changed in technology, in media, in business, and in our own ideas about what blogging is (or maybe isn't) - that your experience as a first timer is going to be completely different than mine was.

And that's a good thing. I swear it is.

The thing I can tell you that never changes and applies to most life experiences is... it will be what you make of it. You have a military background - you know how some people dread a PCS to a duty station that was never on their dream sheet? They get there and the struggle for three or four years? Well it's like that. You can turn that duty station into the best experience ever if you open yourself up to the possibilities.

I'd like to meet you - and I hope I do! (If you see me rushing from one place to another - just stop me, tell me you're Monique, I'd like to say hello in person. Thanks for a post that really made this old-timer think!)

~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Life. Flow. Fluctuate.