As a lot of you already know, I recently headed to the Windy City for The Blog Societies Conference from Thursday until Sunday. It was so much fun but also a total whirlwind at the same time. I learned so much in such a short period of time and left the conference with a few new friends and a lot of inspiration. Check out some more of my travel related posts.
The Blog Societies Conference Recap
Day one:
On Thursday I arrived in Chicago at 10:30 am. The festivities didn’t start until the evening so I had the whole morning to work on client work and prepare myself for the weekend ahead. I know that sounds lame, but this girl was a little nervous to explore the city alone.
One of my roomies arrive around 1 so we went to grab a quick bite to eat at a cool place called Eataly and then headed to get some blowouts at the DryBar. I’ve gone to a few blow dry bars before but never an actual DryBar location. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. Their prices are extremely reasonable too.
After we got our blowouts, we headed back to the hotel for the welcome party. The Welcome Party was at the Sugar Factory and was hosted by Vera Bradley. Not going to lie, I was pretty nervous. I am a bit of an introvert so when I first meet new people, I’m relatively shy. I have no idea why I was so worried in the first place because everyone was extremely nice and friendly. We ended the night at a rooftop bar and had the most amazing view of Millennium Park and the Bean. Unfortunately, we got out of dinner right as the Lollapolooza people had a mass evacuation from the concert due to tons of rain so we were walking around in the storm trying to find an Uber without getting trampled by the Lolla goers.
Day Two:
Day two started with some breakout sessions from 9 am – 12 pm. I attended the SEO, accounting, and Tailwind sessions and found them all to be beneficial. After the sessions ended, we were taken to lunch in a huge charter bus. Lunch was sponsored by Marc Fischer and we got to preview their new fall collection over lunch at the Boarding House.
After lunch, we headed back to the hotel for the branding suite aka getting tons of amazing swag and getting the opportunity to meet the brands and network with them. Once the networking event concluded, we had the evening to explore the city on our own.
A few of the TBSCon ladies and I went to dinner at Stella Barra – a super good pizza place. The dinner was filled with tons of girl talk and of course, pizza, wine, and dessert. After dinner wrapped up, we headed back to the hotel for more wine and girl talk and some face mask action.
Day Three:
Day three was the final day of the conference but probably one of my favorite days of the entire thing. We started off the day with breakfast with Charming Charlie. Immediately after breakfast, we headed upstairs to listen to some really amazing speakers.
All of the conference speakers were on this day so we learned more about pitching brands for travel, Rachel Martino’s story about taking her blog full time and her entire journey, and about contracts and FTC guidelines.
I definitely got hand cramps from feverishly taking notes but the content was too good to miss. The last talk of the day was a brand panel which was also very beneficial because we were able to pick the brands brains and see what they were looking for out of us as influencers. Then we wrapped up the conference with a little picnic overlooking Navy Pier. It was an absolutely wonderful time and I’m already ready to go back next year.
I hope you enjoyed reading my recap of my experience at the Blog Societies Conference this year. Stay tuned for next week because I’ll be sharing a Chicago Travel Guide on Breakfast at Lilly’s.
Your Turn:
Have you ever gone to a blogging conference before? What was your experience like? Please feel free to let me know down in the comments.
