Guess whose picture is in the New York Times Fashion & Style section?

Go ahead and guess. I’ll wait.

MINE!!! Check it out here. (Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou to Janet at Slice of Pink for letting me know about the article. Big hugs to my BlogHer BFF!)

I was at the closing session of the keynote, frantically trying to clean up my final liveblogging session and get it posted. The fabulous bloggettes behind Dooce and Greek Tragedy were about to take the stage. A very professional-looking photographer snapped a picture of me typing away and asked if she could snap a photo of my badge as well “in case the picture is published”.

Yeah. In case it’s published in the frigging New York Times!!

Ladies (and gents, if you’re out there), prepare to have your mind blown…

Do you remember the Community Experiment I started on July 1? The idea was that I (and any of you who played along) would set an intention to achieve something by July 31. At the end of the month, we’d check in and see what had manifested in our lives in response to that intention. I thought about setting an intention to manifest $1 million…

Image from http://www.millionaire500.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/milliondollardreaming.jpg

…but I decided to stick with something more realistic and believable. My intention was to secure a paid writing assignment unrelated to my full-time job by July 31, 2008.

Funny story.
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I wanted to post one final recap of BlogHer 08 before I return to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. The conference was a great experience, and I heartily recommend attending if you have the chance.

My favorite sessions were Building Traffic via Content and Community, which I live blogged and posted about yesterday, and Coming Out via Blog. My main reason for going to the “Coming Out” session was to meet Stephanie Quilao of Back in Skinny Jeans and hear her speak about what it was like to reveal her bulimia relapse in her blog. Stephanie (who, on an unrelated note, is gorgeous and a phenomenal speaker) is a huge source of inspiration for me–she motivates me to be honest, to be open, and to keep trying. If you’ve never read Stephanie’s moving posts about her relapse, please do check them out.

It was also very cool to see Heather Armstrong speak. She was very honest about the work that goes into maintaining an A-list blog and the impact it has had on her life. Here’s a (poorly taken) picture of her:

By far, the best thing about BlogHer was the people I met. Here are Sarah of Suite Apple Pie, Janice of Our Lady of Weight Loss, and Clair of Clair Nation.

Sarah and I bonded over breakfast, and I just love her!! I also really clicked with Nora of Nonlinear Girl, Tiffany of RedBullMom, Caroline of Remabulous, and Christine of Half Full. Oh, and I got to meet Alison of Uncommonality, whom I’ve been following for a while. It was so great to put a face with the name!

The highlight of the trip was spending time with Zandria (who’s from the DC area and who I met in person a few weeks ago) and Janet. How do I love them? Let me count the ways…

I can’t wait until the ReachOut tour comes to DC in October!

(Note: If I included your picture in this post and you’d like it removed, let me know and I’ll be happy to take it down! I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable…)

I’m liveblogging Session 3 of the “What We Do” track at BlogHer 08–Blog to Book Redux. Here’s the description from the official agenda:

This session rocked the house last year, so we’re bringing in more bloggers, publishers and agents to dish about your opportunities to turn your blogging talent into a book publishing dream come true. Ellen Gerstein from Wiley & Sons has published many a blogger’s book. Neeti Madan is a literary agent with Sterling Lord. Jennette Fulda and Rita Arens represent two different blog to book approaches, one a memoir and the other a blogging anthology. Walk away with some insider info and effective tactics you can employ to get yourself on the published author path.

The goal of this session is to talk about publishing–from conception to birth and thereafter.

Jennette opened the session by describing how her blog translated into a book deal (Half-Assed). She started her website, Pasta Queen, because she weighted almost 400 pounds and wanted to lose weight. At first, she kept it secret but eventually “came out” and built an audience. At the BlogHer conference in 2006, an editor was looking for blogs and someone pointed out her blog. She had thought about writing a book, but had wanted to wait until she reached her goal weight. She put together a book proposal and submitted it. Then she spent nine months writing the book while keeping up with the blog and working full time.

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I’m liveblogging Session 1 of the How We Communicate track at BlogHer 08. Here’s the official description of the session from the conference agenda:

Elise Bauer is back to give one of the most requested sessions…Building Traffic. Elise focuses on content and community, with a dash of technology know-how thrown in for good measure. The space keeps evolving, and so does Elise’s presentation, so whether you’ve seen it before or not, you’ll find new things to learn.

This is Elise’s third year delivering this presentation at the BlogHer conference. You can access her presentations at Elise.com.

Elise’s blog, Simply Recipes, is a food blog for people who cook. Simply Recipes averages 80,000 visitors and 150,000 page views per day, and she has more than one million readers on feedburner.

Elise noted that the first step in increasing traffic is to think about the goals you have for your website and figure out how increasing your traffic would support those goals. (In addition to her popular website, Simply Recipes, Elise also has a personal blog that averages 100 visitors per day, and she’s happy with that. Increasing traffic for that site doesn’t further her goals.) It’s important to remember that maintaining a high level of traffic requires a great deal of effort—Simply Recipes is Elise’s full-time job. Another potential downside to increased traffic is that you may have an accompanying increase in rude or mean commenters.

Elise organized this presentation around three key concepts—content, community, and technology.

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