Arkansas Women Bloggers at Museum of Discovery

Saturday, the Arkansas Women Bloggers hosted a lunch/mini-conference at Arkansas’s Museum of Discovery in Little Rock. It was during lunch time and so we got some yummy light lunch goodies with Petit Jean Meats, fancy bread, and cupcakes. CUPCAKES.

Cupcakes make everybody happy.

So we ate and I got to see a lot of my LRTweetup friends like Amy, Kerri, Sarabeth… okay I’ll stop too many too mention but I saw a lot of people I knew.

Latonya gave a talk on finding your voice through your blog. Her advice is to be yourself and keep writing. She said that no one else can be you better than you and that imitating someone else will only make you second rate. I thought for a minute all this talk about being yourself was going to end up with a big group hug. She mentioned that with practice you’ll figure things out. Yeah she said you were going to suck (okay she didn’t actually use the word “suck” or maybe she did) but she said that they might not be that good until you get your groove.

About this time, the phone rang and Katie McManners just picked up that phone and hung it up again. OH YES SHE DID. She does work at the Museum but I did have a good old laugh at the girl just barely picking up the receiver and hanging it up. Then they called back. She picked up the phone again and said “we’re busy”

Don’t mess with Miss McManners. She will cut you!

Speaking of cuts, she has a sassy new short hairdo.

Then Kyran from Plainting Dandelions spoke about building an audience and stats. More specifically, the numbers don’t always measure success. She did confess that a lot of people are interested in stat numbers (i.e. how many people read your blog) but that there are different ways to value your blog. She did mention that she managed to get a gig at Good Housekeeping and her memoirs are being published in 2011 based on her blog even though she ONLY! was getting 50 hits a day. (only 50 hits… okay.. hmmm… wait). She did point out that not all the positives of blogging are monetary: enjoying the process itself is a positive and the friends you meet via blogging is a positive.

There were also door prizes. No I didn’t win one. But they were pretty cool prizes. Honestly, I wasn’t aware of door prizes until after the speakers started and so I didn’t check out the shelves of prizes. I do know that there was a big ole HAM over there.

I met new people. I reconnected with .. err “old” people. It was a lot of fun.

Then I went Christmas shopping in Little Rock.