Last weekend, James and I left the kids with his Mum and headed up to Manchester for the weekend, to attend the BlogOn MSI bloggers conference. I had a ticket to the launch party booked, and I had my slides ready – I was, gulp, scheduled to talk to a group of bloggers about WordPress. I felt pretty prepared, and I had a good idea of what I was going to wear, who I wanted to talk to, and what I wanted to convey during my talk.
Well… best laid plans, and all that.
On Saturday James and I dropped the kids off early and headed to Manchester for some “us time” before the BlogOn festivities kicked off. We went for lunch, and then to the cinema to watch Guardians of the Galaxy 2. It’s awesome. I may have even cried a tiny bit. Once we were done skiving off we headed to the hotel to check in, bumped into Tim, and then nipped out again to Nando’s for some food before the launch party. There was a speakers goody bag waiting for me in the hotel which was such a lovely touch, full of things to help me survive being a speaker!
Paladone were hosting the BlogOn launch party, and it was pretty cool. They had a range of their games for you to try out, as well as different fun bits & pieces, like glass stickers and novelty straws. I really enjoyed the Stay Tuned game, where you had to play a tune from a card and then other players had to guess, but unfortunately it was a bit loud in there to play properly.
Around 70 bloggers were there which made it a nice crowd to mingle with, in a few different rooms. Next door to the #PaladoneParty was an ultimate hen night thing, with around 30 hen parties combined into one giant party with strippers and all sorts, it was a bit bonkers!
The next morning we headed over to the Museum of Science and Industry for the conference itself, which was a really fun day – if tiring. I went to Colette’s session on YouTube planning which I really enjoyed – it definitely made me think about things that I hadn’t considered before. For days out that I like to vlog I will definitely plan a bit more beforehand to make the editing a bit easier afterwards!
I was speaking during the second session, after lunch. Unfortunately I wasn’t too pleased with my performance – we had some technical problems where all the audio from next door was coming out of our speakers, so that had to be sorted out before I could start. It happened again part way through the talk too – although they had stopped using the mic, all their music played full blast which interrupted things. The volume went down after a minute and I just had to try and talk over it.
As you can imagine, starting late and being interrupted was a bit off putting – and I was down from 45 minutes to about 30. I had to skip parts of my talk, including asking the audience some questions and being a bit more interactive, and also most of the introduction. I kicked myself afterwards because, thanks to trying to rush through everything, I missed out some bits that I really wanted to get across, and I know I was flustered and it wasn’t as good as it should have been. I’m a bit annoyed at myself for that, to be honest. But some people did say it was ok and I’ve had a couple thank me, so it wasn’t all bad.
You can download my slides at the end of this post, and I hope they are helpful. I’ve added more detail in the presenters notes so please do download them and have a read – there is more info there than I managed to get across in the session I think!
Once my session was over it was time for cake and wine. I definitely needed the wine after that comedy of errors. I spent the 3rd & 4th sessions chatting with people, checking out the brands, and playing in the board games room – which happened to be the only room where the air con wasn’t broken down.
It was soon the end of the day and once closing statements were done we said our goodbyes, collected our goody bags, and headed for the lift, exhausted. The goody bags were epic, and I also had a team bag so I got to go home with four of the fab canvas bananagram bags which are basically the best bags ever for shopping. I also had a few tombola prizes and a raffle prize in my case, as well as bits & pieces from the brand stands. We brought home a lot of stuff:
So there you have it, another BlogOn is over. And, technical wobbles aside, it was pretty awesome.
My favourite thing about BlogOn isn’t the sessions, the brands, or even the epic goody bags. It is hands down the people, and the atmosphere. It is always so friendly, and full of so many lovely bloggers who are happy to chat to the weirdos like me they know from the internet. I always come away having met new bloggers, too – and I have a few new blogs that I’ve discovered and will definitely enjoy. It feels great to be part of the BlogOn team, especially now that the Community Fund is a thing – we raised over £1.5k to help fellow bloggers in need, and that is fantastic.
Here are my WordPress slides, enjoy! Any questions, feel free to give me a yell at hello@zoecorkhill.co.uk – or check out my work website and contact me via there. I’ll be on holiday for half term, but will try to get back to everyone who contacts me once I’m back at my desk!
Slides from my WordPress talk at the 2017 Blog On MSI conference.
Covering the topics blog appearance, site speed, security & plugins.
Such a shame that so much technology wasn’t quite performing as it should. I hope you don’t let it put you off, because you have an absolute wealth of knowledge and you do get it across really clearly and in simple terms we all understand. I don’t even use WordPress, but I’ve helped no end of people purely because of things I’ve picked up from you and never seen in real life!
It’s always lovely to see you, thank you for coming – see you in September! 🙂
You are a wonderful speaker and blogger. You have endless patience and no question is a silly one. I love your sessions.
It was lovely to finally meet you and spend some time with you! Such a shame about the technical issues. I know what it’s like to have to rush through a presentation, especially when you have put so much effort in to cramming as much useful stuff into your slides as you can. But I’m sure your audience will have understood and that you probably came across much better than you think you did. 🙂
You were fab. It was so great to finally meet you and learned a lot from that session. It was difficult under the circumstances, but you pulled it off xx
A great session, I have just checked out your slides and made some notes to make some changes, you have such a wealth of knowledge thank you very much for sharing!
You did really well, I’ve attended one of your talks before and it was fabulous!