A couple of weeks ago I attended my second World Domination Summit (WDS) in Portland, Oregon. This year I set a goal for the weekend; to step up and be brave.
So here it is, my tale of three braves which unfolded at WDS 2014.
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February 2014 has been quite the month - it's included my first trip to the tropics in well over a decade, immediately followed by a short trip to the equally beautiful Washington Coast, and has been filled to the brim with lots of thinking about the future.
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So here's the deal, I'm fortunate enough to not depend on this site for income. I have a full time job which pays the bills including those to keep this site going and improving. That being said I have bigger dreams. Much bigger dreams.
Read MoreJust a little reminder before we get in to my last Alt Summit post!
Thank you so much to those of you that have provided me with feedback through the reader survey! If you haven't taken the reader survey yet, I'd really appreciate it if you did!
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Yes, it's true. Fantastic people do attend Alt Summit and sadly, I only met a tiny snippet of them. Going in, like I mentioned in my experience post, I was concerned I wouldn't connect with anyone as I'm not really a designer. As a whole, I found the Alt community to be extremely welcoming and accepting. I was able to connect with pretty much everyone I talked to either about being gluten free or having a serious love of travel. So if you work in a particular little niche of the blogging world like me, don't let that stop you from going to Alt.
So let me tell you about some of these fantastic people...
To be totally honest, I didn't really get excited about attending Alt Summit until a few days before I left and even then, I really didn't know what to expect. As a food and travel blogger without any official design credientials, I wasn't totally sure if I would connect with the other attendees, speakers, or the sponsors for that matter.
All that being said, Alt was everything I never knew I needed in a creative and career sense. I can't say enough about how valuable the experience was for me as a blogger, as a writer, and as a creative person. When I attended Camp Mighty last year, I found my people and after Alt Summit, I've found the working community I'm supposed to be a part of.
So here's my Alt story...
Last week I shared my overall experience at BlogHer Food 2012 and this week I'd like to share a couple of the take aways that stood out to me during the various sessions I attended. Overall, I came away feeling energized - creatively, intellectually, and entrepreneur-ially. So here's a of my big take aways from BlogHer Food 2012;
* Think about why you do what you do.
* Keep some personal projects, ones that aren't going to be posted on your blog.
* Surround yourself with colossal dreams.
* Back up your blog!
* If you don't already have photoshop or another paid photo editing software, go, download GIMP. Also, read the live blog of this amazing Post-Processing session - I feel like my editing skills just took a giant leap forward!
This past weekend I had the great opportunity to attend my first blogging conference: BlogHer Food 2012. It was a very interesting and almost over stimulating experience - so much information and so many amazing people to meet. I'll admit that I got a bit star struck seeing Tory Avey, Molly Wizenburg, Terry Walters, and Elise Bauer. And a bit teary eyed listening to Diane Cu, Todd Porter, and Kim Sunee.
Under normal circumstances, I could never afford to attend a conference like this - so when I found out that BlogHer Food was headed to Seattle I applied for a "BlogHership". Sort of a take off of an internship, a BlogHership allows you to attend the conference without the fee in exchange for volunteering your time to help out with conference operations. I was very fortunate to be accepted as a "mic wrangler" - which meant I was assigned to run the microphone to participants during several sessions.