My Experience: The 20 Something Blogger Summit

20 Something Blogger Summit – Chicago from Richard Boehmcke on Vimeo. I show up about 1:54 in the video above talking about being a horny viking. Check it out.

Last month I spent an incredible three days in Chicago attending the first ever 20-Something Blogger summit and had a fantastic time. I’m super pumped to be relaunching this space with a recap of what was an awesome weekend reconnecting with old friends, making new friends and attending panels and keynotes that left me itching to get to work.

Meeting New Friends

Over the weekend I stayed with three people I had never met before. I kicked the weekend off by enjoying a bottle of champagne with Cuyler and Abby (since Danielle didn’t get in to town until a little while later) because nothing helps breaking the ice when meeting new people better than alcohol (and because room service is classy). Everyone’s personalities meshed really well together and the hotel room felt more like a giant slumber party than an awkward grouping of four internet strangers who had never met before in person.

Catching Up With Old Friends

I had a great time catching up with Nic, Katherine, Terra, Caryn, Bob and Nico. We met up at the welcome party, caught up during the event and had an awesome time celebrating Katherine’s birthday on Sunday evening in Wicker Park.

Event Panels/Key Notes

Gala Darling – Lessons Learned From 5 Years of Problogging

Gala Darling is a fashionista who blogs about living a life of radical self love. While she began blogging just about fashion (which led her to work with Betsy Johnson and the Olsen Twins), her blog has taken on a more magazine-like format and she writes more about living an incredible, positive life than just fashion now. She pointed out that as you grow, your personal blog is going to grow as well and your audience is going to change.

A few of the topics she hit on included:

• Be positive. Don’t trash people on your blog. It turns people off.
• You’re the average of the five people you hang out with the most.

Ben Brator – The Texts From Last Night Story

Ben is one of the brains behind Texts From Last Night and he shared the story of how TFLN got started (it definitely wasn’t the “overnight success” many people assume and the original texts were stolen from people’s cell phones in bars). It was interesting to learn that 3,000 – 5,000 texts are submitted PER DAY and it takes several editors to sort through them. Some of the texts go on the website and others are sorted to be used for commercial items such as books and desk calendars.

Ben Boudreau – How To Handle Being Internet Famous

I was vaguely familiar with Ben before the Summit and really enjoyed listening to his story of how he went from unknown to internet famous in about six months and the crazy experiences that happened to him as a result.

Doniree and Tim Jahn – Growing Your Blog Through Guest Posting

Doniree and Tim Jahn led a great panel on growing your blog through guest posting on other blogs and hosting guest posts on your blogs. They’ve both done a great job of building community around their blogs.

Nate St. Pierre - Building A Community for Good

 I did not expect to be moved to tears when I entered this panel. Nate has started three communities that focus on providing a social good: Love Drop, Love Bomb and It Starts With Us. Get specific details on each of these projects right here. Nate talked about how it only takes one email, one mission, fifteen minutes, $1 to change lives. He’s doing it every day. Get involved. It’s easy, it’s virtually free and it’s making a radical difference in the lives of people around you.

Jen Friel – How To Be Unapologetically Awesome

While I really enjoyed all of the panels I attended, Jen’s life in general is just incredibly inspiring. For the past 20 months, Jen’s nomadic life of adventure has been sponsored by various companies including Ford (due to a combination of passion and being slightly crazy) and her life is being turned into a scripted tv show. A few of the quotes from her panel included:

•  Get out there. Do something with your shit. Put yourself out there.
• Be present always.
• Luck is when opportunities meet preparations.
• When you’re promoting products, companies or services tell a story.

 Sunday Keynote: Jenny Blake

Jenny’s keynote was incredible and I think it was one of the most tweeted about events at the Summit. Caryn did a great write up of Jenny’s talk, but a few of the things Jenny talked about that really resonated with me was that when it comes to achieving the things your soul yearns for, there is no road map. If you had a road map to your biggest goals and adventures, they wouldn’t be BIG scary goals. If you jump toward them, the universe has a way of working things out in your favor.

Exploring Chicago

I think exploring a new city is one of the best parts of attending a conference or event in a city you don’t live in. Although I didn’t get a chance to enjoy Chicago Style pizza (sadness), I did get to enjoy exploring a new city.

Once the panels ended for the day on Saturday, I headed out with my adventurous roomies to explore Chicago. We hit up the Miracle Mile for a little shopping at Forever 21 and Gap, joined Caryn, Terra, Nic and Bob for dinner and then headed down to the Navy Pier. We rode the ferris wheel, talked about everything and nothing at all, watched some fireworks and then took the Water Taxi back downtown. Although I am aware that water taxis are really nothing but boats, calling them water taxis just added to the excitement for me. It’s the little things, y’all.

There was a little bit of a walk between the taxi drop-off site and our hotel (we had a great experience staying at the Doubletree Hilton) and on our journey home we passed a psychic office. Since getting a psychic reading was on Abby’s list, we popped in. Abby, Cuyler and I all had readings – Danielle however voiced her opinion that paying someone $30 to tell her what’s going to happen in two weeks is ridiculous. Danielle is probably right.

Sponsors

The 20Something Blogger Summit was generously sponsored by some awesome companies. These brands went above and beyond to make sure the event was a great experience for the attendees. A big THANK YOU goes out to:

 Murphy-Goode Wines who sponsored the opening party at Crimson which included a photo booth and fabulous viking hats. Sadly, it did not include any resisling or muscato wines (my favorites!).

Lenovo set up a lounge for attendees to recharge their tech equipment and to try out new Lenovo products. I am a die-hard Mac fan so I might not have gotten everything out of this room that I could have. Lenovo is looking for your opinion, though, and has $4,000 worth of goodies for the person who can best help them reach 20-somethings. Entries are being accepted through September 14th, so hop on over to their page and share your ideas with them! 

Gap knows that the way to our hearts is through our stomachs and wallets so they brought the Pico de Gap taco truck by on Sunday along with coupons for a free pair of Gap Jeans.

Vapur anti-Bottles are one of my new favorite things and every attendee received one when they arrived on Saturday morning. This nifty product is like a capri sun packet for water (or whatever else you want to put in it). The packets expand when liquid is put inside and roll up for easy storage in your bag when empty. They’re dishwasher safe and can be frozen. Personally, I’m a big fan. Look out for an Incredibly Fierce giveaway of these bottles coming soon.

Vera Bradley gave every attendee a free duffle bag on the way out of the event.

Overall, I had an INCREDIBLE time and am definitely looking forward to next year’s event.