Downtown Chicago. My second day here and I have yet to have a slice of famous Chicago pizza. Something is very wrong with this picture.
Fortunately, all of that is going to change around 7pm tonight when pizza is delivered to the swag-bag stuffing team preparing for the onslaught of grabby hands and shakin’ booties at The People’s Party! BlogHer may start tomorrow, but the party starts tonight at 8pm in the Sheraton Chicago X ballroom.
July is one long month. Both for those of us that attend the BlogHer blogging conference and for those that do not attend but endure all of the pre-BlogHer chatter. All around, it’s safe to say that by the end of the weekend, we’re all tired of even thinking about blogging.
In fact, that’s exactly how I got in trouble last year. After throwing The People’s Party and experiencing a long day of meet-and-greets and sessions, I dragged myself to the elevator for some brief escape in my room. I could hardly see straight, let alone think straight, which is generally bad news for first impressions. Unfortunately, my self-preservation wasn’t quick enough:
As I approached the elevator, a beautiful blonde was waiting with what appeared to be her husband. As I had plastered all sides of myself with stickers that said “Velveteen Mind” (so as to make it exceedingly easy to recognize me and therefore encourage people to say hi), the woman noticed who I was and said, “Oh, are you Velveteen Mind?” She smiled as though she recognized me, which was lovely, however all I could think about was how tired we all were. Therefore, my response to a woman who was obviously a fellow BlogHer attendee was a faux covering of my stickers with my hands and an eye-rolling, “Yes! And man, aren’t you exhausted? I just want to pretend like I’m not even a blogger at this point and go to bed.”
It was meant as commiserating with a fellow attendee over a wonderfully packed weekend, but it came out as, well, snotty. Like I didn’t want to be recognized. Oy.
She responded in turn with a throwing up of her hands a la “oh, well don’t let me bother you, Miss Fancy Pants” and started to turn away. Politely, but still turn away. Total disaster. Which I tried to clarify, but not before another blogger joined us and apparently immediately recognized the blonde.
That is, recognized the blonde as Lisa Stone, co-founder of BlogHer.
Yeah.
Needless to say, there really was no salvaging that first impression, regardless of who she was, and that’s how it goes at BlogHer. You have the exhilarating experience of meeting people you read and the inevitable faux pas slips of meeting people you read but don’t necessarily recognize.
So you just roll with it. That’s BlogHer. You roll.
Particularly because most of those little slips you make? No one even notices.
Tonight is The People’s Party and it’s all about rolling with it. From 8:30pm-11pm, we create an environment for you to mix and mingle, dance and drink, and frankly do little else. We’re the warm-up act to the big event and you are all welcome to come warm your keyboard-weary hands around the glow that is one crazy happy festival of crazy happiness, as Kirtsy referred to us.
We can’t wait to see you tonight! And if you are home? Know that we missed you!
Now then… Let’s Go Crazy!
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