I started this site in March of 2009 and though I immediately tried to sign up for tickets to last year’s BlogHer conference in Chicago, they were already sold out.  In order to attend BlogHer10 I purchased my ticket the DAY they went on sale.  This meant that I had an entire year to forget about the conference.

As I mentioned yesterday, in the weeks leading up to BlogHer I just wasn’t feeling it and probably wouldn’t have attended if I hadn’t won the $150 shopping spree from ShopatHome.com.  Once I did win, it was full speed ahead with the planning and the fun.  Here, in bullet form, are some of the highlights.  {Hey, without bullets we would probably be here all day long!}

• I had a 5 p.m. flight to NYC and at 10 a.m. I received a phone call letting me know that they had canceled my flight.  I received another phone call letting me know that they had taken the liberty of booking me on another flight.  The new flight had a connection through D.C. and wouldn’t land in NYC until midnight.  I freaked out a little, called my airline {United}, was placed on a 3:05 p.m. flight AND received a $150 travel voucher “for my troubles.”  It was no trouble at all and actually everything worked out better, but who am I to turn down a $150 travel voucher?
• Immediately after landing I went with a friend to the infamous Shake Shack.  We went to the one on the Upper West Side and I was relieved that there was no line and we were eating within 20 minutes of arriving.  I’ll be honest though – I don’t understand the hype.  The burger was tres small, the shake was OK but not mind-blowing, and I don’t know, $30 for two people to eat fast food seems really pricey to me, even by NYC standards.
• I was at the Hilton New York at 7 a.m. on Friday, waiting for BlogHer to begin.  While I was waiting int he lobby I met the lovely Sabrina from RhodeyGirlTests.com, one of my new favorite sites.
• Missed a session and lunch but had more fun shopping up a storm in the garment district.
• Was underwhelmed with the first session I chose to attend so I walked out and started collecting swag at the Expo Hall.
• Finally met Laura from one of my fave NYC sites – 89thandBroke.com – and spent the rest of the day with her, mainly collecting swag.  {I think it is fair to say we are both freebie hounds.}
• Companies go ALL out for BlogHer.  Here’s a little peek at the Hershey’s Suite, where you could stop by and make S’mores anytime you wanted a treat:

The entire hotel suite was converted into a special Hershey’s room.  It was hard not to be impressed.  And the treat was pretty darn tasty, too.

• Met some of my best friends from college for dinner at The Stanton Social, which I thought was positively amazing.  If you ever go there, make sure you order the chicken and waffles.  Crazy delicious.

Here’s all of us in an uncharacteristically good photo at The Stanton Social.  I’m in the middle, in my black uniform.

• Met up with Laura at the Metamucil Suite {!} the next morning as we had both pre-arranged to start the day with foot massages.  While this was totally awesome, we were on our feet pretty much all day so I’m sure the foot massage would have felt better later in the day.
• Immediately went down to the Wii Station so that we could exercise a little and win a free game.  Laura and I had played the game the afternoon before and the hostess told us that if we returned the next morning she would give us each a free game, Gold’s Gym Dance Workout, which hasn’t yet been released to the public.  In addition to the Wii, we were able to try out the brand new Kinect for the Xbox 360.  I want, want, want a Kinect.  Oh my goodness.  Kinect is like a Wii, in that the system can sense your movements… except there’s no controller.  Your body is the controller.  Let me write that again – YOUR BODY IS THE CONTROLLER.  The program senses your movements and then YOU appear on the screen.  Not an avatar that you create… YOU.

Here is Laura playing one of the games.  If you look at the screen, the purple person is Laura.  I know what you’re thinking – that doesn’t look like a human at all.  But the longer Laura stood there, the more that purple person began to take her form.  And we were playing with an early release of the program, so most of the bugs should be worked out before the November release.  {Seriously ladies, put this on your wish lists now!  I’ve already told my boyfriend it is the only thing I want this year. }

• Laura and I attended two more sessions – one on monetization and one on professional blogging, and then we spent what felt like 10 hours in the expo hall collecting MORE swag.  When I got home and laid out my goodies this is what it looked like:

Swag, swag, and more swag.  And I’m not sure you can tell this, but the majority of the items are full-size items!  It was awesome and I had to borrow a bag from my friends in order to get everything home.  Some of the highlights included the full-size Eucerin products, Assets, NyQuil, and a pillow from TempurPedic.  I had more swag than what you see in the picture originally but I ended up giving an entire bag of stuff away to the bouncer at a bar, but that is a story for another day.

• Right as we were about to leave the expo we ran into a rep for Ebay Fashion who reminded us that we should Tweet about Ebay Fashion for the chance to win a $1,000 shopping spree care of Ebay Fashion and BillMeLater.  Laura and I had passed the booth earlier, but hadn’t gotten around to tweeting the first time around.
• **Updated to Add** We found Padma from Top Chef hosting a taste test:

• We headed back to Laura’s apartment and got caught up on the Real Housewives of D.C.   {Earlier in the day we had also seen one of the Real Housewives of O.C. in the expo hall.} I thought it was kind of a snoozer but it was nice to sit down and relax for awhile.  We headed back to the Hilton and got into a couple of BlogHer parties, but left pretty quickly because we had dinner plans with another blogger… Katharine from NYC Recession Diary!  It was so nice to have a delicious meal {Nana Sushi} with two fab bloggers!
• After a very long night Saturday {I didn’t go to bed at all} I made it home by 10:30 a.m. on Sunday.  The first thing I did, of course, was check my email and Twitter.  I was half delirious at the time from the lack of sleep, but learned from Twitter that I had WON the $1,000 shopping spree from Ebay Fashion and BillMeLater!!!!!!  Seriously… on the trip to NYC that I almost didn’t go on I won TWO shopping sprees.  Crazy, folks.  Enter those giveaways.  I am proof positive that you never know when you might win something.

Wow, did you make it through all of this?  Liane form SampleSaleWebsites.com asked me for a quick email recap about the conference in general, so here are the main things I took away from it:

The positives:

- great seeing and networking with so many bloggers in one place

- GREAT swag
- many many many sponsored parties

The neutral:
- the good parties were invite only {and I have no idea how people made it on those lists}
- the vast majority of bloggers were mommy/family bloggers and therefore most of the conference seemed to gear around talking about mommy blogging issues

The bad:

- I did not like any of the panel sessions

Real quick, I want to explain my final two thoughts.  I have nothing at all against mommy bloggers and read quite a few blogs that could be classified in that genre.  However, I do not think BlogHer did a great job of offering options to people that were not mommy bloggers.  The panels I went to weren’t geared toward mommy bloggers in particular, but the majority of the panelists were mommy bloggers and that ended up being the focus of every single session.  I found it to be very frustrating and thus found the sessions to be a waste of time when with a little bit of tweaking they could probably have been worthwhile.  I hope that in the future BlogHer will consider offering “tracks,” based on your level of blogging expertise.  For instance, the majority of the monetization panel was geared toward people who have just started blogging and WANT to make money blogging, not those that already are and want to learn new methods.

With that being said, I honestly had a great time and hope to attend next year.  San Diego in August 2011, anyone?