Thank You Northern Voice 2010

Two of the three of us were able to attend a personal blogging and social media conference this past Friday and Saturday.  Northern Voice 2010. It was our first blogging conference so we have nothing to compare the experience to, but I felt the knowledge I came away with was valuable.

Uploaded on May 9, 2010
by roland

I also feel that this conference marks a turning point for Tara Cronica.  After it was all said and done we both left saying “we need to make some changes”.  However, there were many times we were relieved to note we were doing a lot of the right things too.  The three of us met Friday evening and excitedly threw ideas around.  It is always so much fun when we are able to get together and drink brain storm.  I love it when the Tara girls can all be together. It’s so energizing!

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from Choconancy1

I spend many, many hours a day in front of my computer.  I have to for work, but I also admit I do it for pleasure too.  Some days it feels obsessive and my husband often tells me to “step away from the computer”.  During the conference I have to admit I felt a bit old fashioned and out of the loop because I didn’t bring my lap top with me like most of the other attendees.  I sat with a notebook and pen and took notes the “old school” way.  It was kind of nice really.  It gave me the opportunity to be more in the moment.  I looked the speakers right in the eye while they spoke.  I glanced around the room and checked out what people looked like, what they were wearing, noticed them basically.  What I also noticed was that most had their heads down looking at their screens and at times furiously typing while the lecture was on.  Some were Google-ing a name the speaker had just mentioned for more information, many were tweeting about what the speaker was saying (likely between others in the same room) and some were writing blog posts.  (Really? You can’t wait until the break to do that?)  I know we are a society of multitaskers and we have become pretty good at doing several things at once, but sometimes it feels really great to just stop and focus on one thing at a time.

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from kk+

Call me old fashioned, but I loved not blogging at a blogging conference.  I like the face to face human connection.  It’s funny that it took a conference on social media and blogging to remind me of that.  For all the lessons learned this past weekend (and the great lunches too) thank you Northern Voice 2010.