I’m back from my Build Your Blog Conference weekend. As usual, the conference was fabulous and I really enjoyed the chance to hang out with all my super-fun blogger friends. This was probably my 12th conference and I think my 3rd time at Build Your Blog, so I’ve picked up just a “few” friends along the way and there’s always dozens of new people to meet. Thank heavens for name tags!
Side note: This post was from the 2016 Build Your Blog Conference and it has sadly closed down now. However, if you are looking for a good conference in the Salt Lake area, check out my conference directory.
A blog conference is such a great experience, I think every blogger should try to attend at least one per year. You learn SO much and you meet the most wonderful people. And they are really just a ton of fun. I always stay at the hotel, so it’s like the world’s biggest slumber party.
The Build Your Blog Conference is really the Bomb!
This year, we have 700 Build Your Blog Conference attendees, so it really was a pretty BIG DEAL. I found out afterwards that this is the 2nd largest conference in the whole U.S. Who knew?? That’s very cool to have it right in my backyard.
I think nearly all of my buddies from last year’s blogger cruise were at the conference, including the Six Sisters and both of their parents, so it was kind of like old home week. This family is so awesome and I only get to see them a couple of times a year because they’re so insanely busy. Well, and so am I.
So I figure these little conference weekends are also a vacation of sorts, but it’s a pretty action-packed vacation. I had my step tracker on and I maxed it out both days! Tons of standing around talking and walking around downtown.
As with every blog conference I’ve been to, I learned a TON. So much that my poor head is about bursting. Over the next few days or weeks, you’ll start to see a few changes here and there.
Some of them will be technical (like this new larger font!) and some of them will be changes to my writing style and some of my topics.
I hope you’ll stick with me through all this. I don’t say it very often, but I really do appreciate you guys for making the choice to visit my blog and read my random thoughts that I leave around here, and sometimes leave me nice comments. That’s the reason I got into blogging in the first place. I have so many ideas and things that I really love to share with people, and I love it to hear that it helps them. That really makes my day.
Conferences like this can actually be a lot of hard work, because you are sitting in lots of different classes and absorbing a LOT of new information, but it’s also plenty of fun too. We had more than six hours of pre-conference webinars that were PACKED with enough new material to explode your brain on the spot. I was literally listening to the last one in the hotel parking lot! There was also a huge after-party with food and prizes, and dancing, and a photo booth.
And, as I usually do, I ended up sharing a room with three complete strangers. Just local bloggers who’d heard through the grapevine that I had extra space in my gorgeous room at the Little America Hotel. Most people wouldn’t do that, but I’m pretty outgoing, so I never think twice about it. And we always have a terrific time. I think it’s a great way to make new friends.
If there’s a blog conference anywhere you can get to, I definitely recommend them. Even if you don’t make it to a single class, just the “sitting around the hotel talking shop” part is more useful information than you’ll get from the interwebs in a year, I promise!
Thanks so much to the Six Sisters and The Blogger Network for putting all this together, and to the Real Housewives of Riverton who set up the terrific after party for us. Everyone worked so hard and made it a great time for all 700 of us at the Build Your Blog Conference!
Here are some other conference posts that you might enjoy:
List of the Best Blogging Conferences in the US
Expert Tips on What to Pack for a Blog Conference
Attending a Blog Conference
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