1500 passionate women + dozens of Sponsors x 3 days + 1 city = More than 10 favorite things about BlogHer 09

… but I’ll try to incorporate as much as I can into one two blog posts (just too long!). (And, just in case you’re not an active participant in the blogosphere, BlogHer is an annual conference for women bloggers that I just attended in Chicago. It’s a wild three days filled to the brim with swag bags, parties, food, festivities and fabulous females!)

#1 BowlHer – By far, the BEST BlogHer Party! (And they had some stiff competition – no apologies to the ‘Room 704′ party gift bag ’surprise.’) Sponsored by One2One Network, Collective Bias and GNO, this event brought 500 women to the swankiest Chicago bowling alley for a red carpet entrance (complete with paparazzi) and the cutest bag (regardless of schwag). It was a blast being one of the hostesses along with girlfriends Michelle Lemar, Beth Rosen and Wendy Piersall. New girlfriends and co-hostesses Beth Davis, Kim Janocko, Anne Marie Nichols, Corvida Raven (who did an excellent session too!) and the fun and fashionable Jen Khatchatrian made it a blast to participate as well. Thanks to all – especially Barbara Jones for all her hard work! And, thanks to sponsors: Campbells, Sears Portrait Studio, Hershey’s, Shine by Yahoo, Picture Me, Pepperidge Farm, Colgate, Mom TV, Moxie Girls, Bright Pink, Lifetime, Autism Speaks and Little Debbie.

#2 Companies doing it right – Lots of companies were there to woo women and some of them really ‘got it right.’ e.l.f. (for ‘eyes, lips, face’) Make-up engaged bloggers with parties, make-overs, samples (like this mini makeup collection – so cute and full of great makeup!) and a whole lot of energy from Marketing e.l.f. guru, Ted Rubin. A brand off my radar jumped back on with a tasty, branded lunch. Ragu created an perfect pitch to all of us with their tasty entrees (with a full serving of veggies – see, I learned!), creative design (6′ ‘bottle’ of Ragu sauce made out of vegetables) and fabulous centerpieces of some of the vegetables they use in their sauces (like red and yellow pepper flowers). Michelin – was there in 08 and 09 and showed they cared with a pre-event dining guide to Chicago. Swag bags included a clever rubber wristband with a built-in thumb drive – and five BlogHer participants will win a set of tires with it. (Plus, see image below of the Zen Michelin Man – from the thumb drive they provided but so cute I had to include!) Pepsico/Frito Lay treated it’s ‘Fab 15′ well with a party (that I had to miss – dang it!) and a personalized Lands End bag filled with goodies. Thanks – and check out their Woman’s World site for girlfriend adventures. I don’t care what anyone says, I love my Crocs. I wore my Mary Jane Crocs to the Crocs store for their party with Crocs social media popular guy, George G Smith Jr. (Such a nice guy!) Fun to get a tour of the store, see the new shoes and walk around in my comfy Crocs! Last, but not least, SlimPerfect hosted a contest on Girlfriendology as well as Muffintopless for bloggers to model their Little Black Dress. Winners received fabulous SlimPerfect ‘attractive activewear’ and their hair and make-up done (by Nicole and sponsored by U! Creative) prior to Thursday nights parties. (NOTE! SlimPerfect is offering 50% off through July with “BlogHer” as promo code! Tell them Girlfriendology sent you!)

#3 Seeing & meeting friends – As much as I love Twitter, you can’t get a good hug through a Dell laptop. (or even a Mac for all you Apple fanatics!) So, it’s best to see and meet girlfriends in person – like Michelle Lamar, Andrea (Mommy Snacks), Sugar Jones, Christy Nelson (who gave me a perfect friendship bracelet), Linda Lowen (the amazing Women’s Issues editor from About.com – so excited to meet her in person!), Sarah Pasquinucci and her team from P&G (who was on a smart, savvy panel).

#4 Hanging out with local girlfriends - Sure, it takes a road trip to get a bunch of local girlfriends together – but it makes it a fun adventure when you have your girlfriends nearby. So, it was dang fun having girlfriends there like Andi, Kate the Great (who got some awesome fashion advice from Project Runways Tim Gunn), Shannan, Lisa & Leslie, Monika, Julie, Michelle, Lucrecer, Amy in Ohio, Carla & Tom Streeter and my roomie and Megabus partner, Carole.

Here’s Monika, Lisa and Kate meeting Tim Gunn! (Okay, not exciting video probably unless you’re Monika, Lisa or Kate!)

# 5 Chicago – Hats off to my favorite city (destination for wonderful breaks in reality for 17+ years by my husband and me). It hosts a great girlfriend get-together. The Sheraton is a beautiful hotel, has incredibly comfy beds and was perfect location to keep us generally all under one roof for conferences, exhibition space, rooms (with little time to sleep in them), dining, partying and lobby lounging. Sure, the wifi could have been better, but the food was pretty tasty for serving the masses and (thank God!) they serve Starbucks coffee. And, for those very few jaunts outside to the real world, Chicago welcomed you to enjoy walking and exploring this perfect city and it’s world class restaurants.

And, since there is SO MUCH great stuff from BlogHer, we’ll add a part two right HERE!

Tags: About.com, Apple, BlogHer, BowlHer, Chicago, One2One Network, ragu, twitter, Wendy Piersall

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 5:27 pm and is filed under Be a Better FRIEND. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.