Last Friday was a special event for me. I was able to attend the “Blog Her” conference at the New York Hilton midtown. The BlogHer conference is the world’s largest conference for women content creators. Over the past 11 years, following their first conference in 2005, their events have empowered women in social media to meet, inspire, and celebrate each other, and find opportunities to work with brands, new ideas, skills, and connections. The conference lasts three days and is attended by 3,500-plus content creators, social media stars, credentialed experts, entrepreneurs, top brands and keynote speakers such as Christy Turlington Burns and Gwyneth Paltrow every year.
Having never attended a conference, when I first found out that I was going to be present at BlogHer I was delighted. This was definitely going to be very exciting experience for me. During the process of applying for internships, the thought that I would be doing things like attending blogger conferences never even occurred to me. I think that upon finding out about the news, I could easily have hugged my supervisor there and then.
I’ve always struggled with my terrible sense of direction getting to the Hilton was an endeavor. After twenty minutes of relentless searching, I finally realized that the hotel was a straight-line from the subway. Upon my arrival, I was lead to the third floor were the conference was going to be held. The conference room itself was enormous and packed with all kinds of people. Outside, a corridor led to yet another massive room where an exposition was being held in which several brands and companies were exhibiting their products and ideas.
Subsequent to registering, I received a really cool goodie bag filled to the brim with several different products and gifts I was impatient to try. As soon as the other intern arrived, we busied ourselves with handing out magazines to several different people interested in BELLA.
We later were able to sit through several compelling presentations by speakers such as Soledad O’Brien, founder of the Starfish foundation, a foundation devoted to aiding committed and hardworking scholars to get through college by the means of financial assistance, mentoring and support. After a lovely performance by Darian Musk the musician and online innovator who single-handedly amassed millions of fans by realizing global online concerts, it was finally time for lunch.
Following lunch was Gwyneth Paltrow’s keynote. Throughout her keynote, Paltrow mainly spoke of the conception of her lifestyle blog goop. She also broached various other subjects such as her divorce and her experience starring on an episode of the show Glee. This keynote was particularly interesting to me as I have always loved Goop, which has always been very helpful to me when traveling thanks to it’s detailed and well-curated city guides.
Overall, I can confidently say that my experience at the BlogHer conference was an amazing one. I can’t wait for next years’; I will definitely be back for more!
