I am back home in St. Louis after spending five wonderful days in Charlotte, North Carolina for the Type-A Parent Conference. While I am exhausted today, my brain is still spinning with all the wonderful ideas to put into action. My heart is also very full from all the warmth, kindness, and friendship I felt at the conference. I feel like this conference in particular has that “your with family” sort of feel while still learning an amazing amount of information at the same time. The vibe of the conference remained the same from the previous year, but I did prefer the more laid back atmosphere of the original Asheville, North Carolina location. Regardless of where the Type-A conference is held in 2013 though I plan on attending.
During the presentations and sessions I tweeted my notes live. If you missed any of it you are welcome to download them from my SkyDrive account.
Thursday I flew into Charlotte. I love to get into conferences early to get my bearings and be ready to soak everything in. My obsession with the She Crab Soup at the hotel lounge started at lunch this day also. It was so yummy! As folks trickled in there were lots of hugs and wonderful catching up. We had a wonderful dinner on the first night with a small group in a private dining room at a local restaurant which was fabulous. It was so nice to have a quiet (relatively) evening with just a few to get to know each other better.
Friday the conference actually began. We had a nice breakfast and then the opening keynote with Chris Garrett. Sessions (classes) started after that. My first was Traffic Building Bootcamp with Heather Solos. I’ve heard her speak on this before but it is so jam-packed full of information that I wanted to go again. It was worth it because I learned more great tips from her again. I then learned some super helpful tips for my “About Me” page. A few I implemented right there during the session, others I will be working on this week. Friday evening I attended a dinner hosted by Amy Bair on behalf of Microsoft. Wonderful food and wonderful conversation. The conference parties were after dinner – I peeked in on them, but they are super loud so I ended up down in the bar instead. There is always a flow of people coming and going there that stop for a few minutes, or hours, and I had a wonderful time.
Luckily things did not start until 10 on Saturday morning! It is so hard to select which sessions to attend because they all sound so fabulous. This day I started with “Creating Content that Goes Viral” which was a lot about video, but I learned some interesting things. Then I went to a session about using email subscriptions – there really were some very good points about this and it will be something I will be implementing on my blog soon – stay tuned! After lunch I went to my favorite sessions, Blog Design. I have been needing to get some changes made on my blog and this was so helpful to know some design “rules” that will make it nice for my readers.Then another lovely dinner with new and old friends, more parties, and more fun hanging in the bar.
Sunday started with an amazing Keynote Panel with 3 amazing bloggers. They each started by reading a post from their blogs. They were all so moving in such different ways. I highly recommend taking the time to go read these three posts. I swear they are very worth your time to read!
- Overwhelmed by Motherhood: The Anatomy of An Anxiety Attack by Katherine Stone of Postpartum Progress.
- My Son Has a Super Power by Tanis Miller of Attack of the Redneck Mommy
- Holding True: Maintaining My Non-Diet Status in the Post-Holiday Onslaught of Shame by Cecily Kellogg of Uppercase Woman
We then had the Blogger Town Hall Meeting which had a panel of bloggers and PR women. I love this part of the conference. Always such great opinions and ideas from everyone. We had one last party Sunday night also where I did a little chair dancing. I’m always amazed at what great dancers so many of these women are at these events. I think I need to take some classes before the next conference!
Monday I finally headed home. Sad to leave all of my friends and all the fun. Luckily I will see many of them in August at BlogHer also. Some of my favorite people at Type-A this year…..
- Nicole of Cute Culture Chick was a fabulous roomie! Sometimes there are horror stories with roommates, but I had the best one this year!
- Jackie of Nerd Family is such a wonderful friend – we are soooo different in many ways, but totally get each other.
- Tara of Feels Like Home is always my favorite person to see. I feel like we are just old friends and it feels so comfortable to see her and just start talking about anything.
- Heather of CupCrazed was the craziest new person I met – OMG she cracks me up so much but she is also one smart lady!
- Daria of Mom in Management told the funniest story EVAHHHH! GENO – WE GOTTA A PROBLEM!
- Allison of Couponing for 4 I was able to get to know so much better and I just adore her sweetness!
- Danielle of Extraordinary Mommy is my neighbor – we are just maybe 10 minutes from each other – but we never see each other in town – we seem to have to be a few hundred miles away from St. Louis to see each other!
- Jamie of Mama Mommy Mom who I had lunch with the front of only LOL
- Ann of Not a Supermom is someone I have tweeted with so much, but I loved being able to spend time with her in person and get to know her better – fabulous woman
- and so so so many other wonderful people – I can’t being to list them all.
A huge thank you to Kelby and the entire staff and volunteers of the Type-A Parent Conference for doing another amazing job with this event. I can’t wait for next year!
© 2012, Robyn Wright. All rights reserved.
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