BlogHer is great for lots of reasons -- it's a conference where the speakers are just as amazing as the crowd, which is, in a word, stellar.

However, I have very personal reasons for thinking BlogHer is the best conference ever.

Today, I am one of the three cofounders of a web startup that has a woman CEO, a woman CTO, and a woman COO.

All of whom met at the first BlogHer conference in 2005, in San Jose, California.

When I went to that conference I was a regular old blogger with a personal blog. I read so many great blogs by women, but I had no women friends in real life. I went because I thought, I can see these people? In person? And when I was there I was so star-struck by many of them that I was too shy to talk to them. It was just a pleasure to breathe the same air, really.

I know you're going to think that's really silly, and that's okay. I have a deep reservoir of silliness. I know it.

When I left Blogher, my limited idea of myself and what I could do hadn't changed. Yet. That was the work of the women I met there. For the first time in my adult life, I had friends who were women. Little by little, email by email, blog post by blog post, we changed what each of us thought was possible, for ourselves, for each other.

The next time we asked ourselves that old question, "Why is it so hard for women to get a seat at the table?" there was a new voice in our heads, the voice I now think of as the BlogHer voice, and it said, "It's a lot easier to get a seat at the table...when you OWN the table." Forget about getting a seat at a conference -- start your own conference! Forget about wishing for women executives in tech -- start your own company and hire your friends!

But I wouldn't have had those ideas if I hadn't stumbled on BlogHer, and I couldn't have stumbled on BlogHer if Elisa, Lisa, and Jory didn't decide to create it. And I wouldn't have had those ideas if the women who came to that first conference -- (I'm looking at you, Grace Davis. And you, Ronni, and Amy, and Ryanne, and Julie).

So now we have a company with a woman CEO and a woman CTO and a woman COO. And the work we do? The work we do together? It's only incidental that it's software. Because what it is -- what it really is -- is applause. It is praise, for all these glorious women. Because it is fitting, and it is right, to give them thanks and praise.