So day five... my last official day in the big city. I was sad that I was going to be leaving, and that I didn't have more time to explore the city while I was there. Next time, I'll be doing a lot less planning and a lot more spur of the moment sight seeing.
Day five was the Book Blogger Convention. I wasn't really sure what to expect. I know I was incredibly wore out from the week and wasn't too happy about having to get up so early, but I really wanted to go despite that.
Erica and I woke up somewhere around the crack of dawn. I honestly can't remember how we got there, I'm pretty sure there was still a shuttle that morning and we took it, but who knows... Erica? Or did we take a taxi? We took a taxi didn't we! There was an actual breakfast! Which was nice! Not just a muffin bagel spread, there was real breakfast foods! I liked the taters, yum. Plus we also got to mingle with other bloggers and industry people, it was quite the experience.
Then after breakfast they moved us over to the room where the actual conference would be held. IT WAS FREEZING in there... which might have been a good thing now that I look back at it, since it helped keep me awake. But honestly I was so interested in what the speakers were saying, I would have preferred a nice balmy room! The keynote speaker was Maureen Johnson. She is hilarious! And it was wonderful to hear her speak and share her experience. I wish I would have taken notes so that I could remember some of her key points and share those with you... my bad.
I was also very briefly able to talk to her afterwards and snap a picture with her.
Next up was Ron Hogan, he talked about 'Professonalism and Ethics in Blogging.' His presentation was very fantastic! You can actually watch most of his presentation here, I really recommend that you do!
Professionalism & Ethics in Blogging: #BookBloggerCon from Ron Hogan on Vimeo.
Break for lunch were I met some more fantastic book bloggers!
The rest of the afternoon was composed of the panels. The first panel was 'Writing and Building Content' It was moderated by Rebecca of The Book Lady's Blog, with panelists; Amanda of The Zen Leaf, Kim of Sophisticated Dorkiness, Betsy of A Fuse 8 Production and Christina of Stacked.
The 'Marketing' panel was next, moderated by Heather of Age 30+ Books, with panelists; Gayle of Everyday I Write the Book, Yen of The Book Publicity Blog, Ann from Books on the Nightstand and Thea of The Book Smugglers. They had an excellent discussion on marketing and included an RSS feed, Twitter and Facebook as application you should use to market your blog and make it accessible to readers.
'Blogging with Social Responsibility,' moderated by Marie of The Boston Bibliophile, with panelists; Zetta of Fledgling, Terry of The Reading Tub, Wendy of Caribousmom, and Stephen of Band of Thebes.
And my panel 'Impact of the Relationship Between Author and Blogger,' moderated by Nicole of Linus's Blanket, panelists; Amy of My Friend Amy, Bethanne of The Book Studio, author Beth Kephart, and Caridad Pineiro of Caridad Pineiro's Blog. I felt like a kid that got invited to sit at the smart people's table and really shouldn't have been there. I was able to say a few things, but half the time I wasn't even really sure what to say after some of the panelists had talked. It was a good experience and I was glad that I did it though.
If you want a well detailed post of the panels than check out the BBC post that Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness did. She does a great break down of all the panels... she doesn't have much on my panel, but I'm afraid that the whole room may have felt the same way she did...
Here is a little highlight video that I did...
After BBC Erica and I raided some of the leftover goodie bags they had, yes we raided them... but they told us we could! Then we thought we'd catch the subway back to the hotel room. It was not fun carrying that huge as bag! But we ended up running into Chelsy of Big Honcho Media, whom both Erica and I have had the pleasure to work with via our blogs, so we walked and talked to her on our way to the subway, and yes, it made the heavy bag a little more bearable!
We got back to the hotel room and we weren't sure when to expect Cat as she was spending the day with her long lost cousin... and her dang Canada phone charged her to text! But we both knew we were starving, so after we got some of our crap situated back in the room, we headed to Junior's! Which is known for it's cheesecake, and which we did not have any! I know crazy... but it was really good! We got a TON of food, we couldn't eat it all...
Then after that we walked around times square and went to some of the stores and shops. We wanted to get some I <3 NY shirts, I mean can you really go to New York and not come home with one of those. It was nice just to see the city and the people after it seemed I'd been running around all week. The Hershey's and the M&M stores were really neat too... it smelled like chocolate in their, I think they should sell chocolate scented air fresheners! LOL.
We finally met up with Cat back in the hotel room. We spent the night getting our bags ready to head out the next morning... and hoping we weren't over the fifty pound limit.
Saturday morning, I ended up taking a shuttle to the airport and got home without a hitch. My flights home where much better than my flights there... things were on time and even early! I ended up running into Lenore of Presenting Lenore on my flight to Detroit, it really is a small world. I miss you NYC!
Read: Day One, Day Two, Day Three or Day Four