BlogHer Conference

Women's blogs branch out
Conference turnout expected to double

BlogHer is many things to many women. It's a community, a conference, and since May, it'san advertising network. The second edition of the conference will be Friday and Saturday in San Jose. Camahort said Friday's sessions are sold out, and organizers are expecting at least 700 on Saturday, more than double last year's turnout.

Both men and women are welcome, but only women will take the stage as speakers, panelists or discussion leaders.

"We're focusing on what women are accomplishing," Camahort said.

BlogHer was born in early 2005, when Camahort and co-founders Lisa Stone and Jory des Jardins got fed up with males in the blogosphere asking, "Where are all the women bloggers?"

The question became a rallying cry.

The answer? They were everywhere, but it wasn't always that easy to find them.

Yes we are everywhere! And for the second year in a row, and with me in the Bay Area and should be one of the lucky one that can attend, I won't be. They will not hear my pleas to move this event to another weekend. Both times have been planned during my younger son's birthday weekend and priorities in life you know.

Perhaps next year I will luck out.

But for those of you lucky enough to go, please share with us how it went. And I'll post links here of sites that blog about the conference.

Of course, you can find all the info at BlogHer.

Irreverent Musings...

A Good Reason to Support Invisible Unicorns

I spent the last week as staff member at Camp Quest, a week-long summer camp aimed at the children of atheists, agnostics, and other varieties of non-believers. The experience was all varieties of nifty due to a fantastic assortment of staff, kids, and programs.

A good article about the camp is Camp: "It's Beyond Belief", the somewhat awful subtitle and inaccurate statement that we teach children that there is no god not withstanding.

Friday Link Love - Special Brush Fire Edition

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.

~ Samuel Adams

These blogs have sparked brush fires in my mind this week...

In Debt-Free and Financially Fit: How I'm Digging Myself Out of This Hell Hole, $1 at a Time, your hostess Debt-Free Renee describes her situation: "In debt way too long. It's time to get out. This is my story." In addition to her own fearless self-examination and true stories of stressing, spending and saving, she also has an abundance of links to personal finance and other resources dedicated to helping readers in "facing fears, losing debt and improving finances." Definitely worth a read for those who want their paycheck to go toward their life - not their creditors.

In My Open Wallet, "Madame X," an anonymous single New Yorker in her mid-30s, tells the world how much money she makes and what she spends it on...and how much of it she saves. Talk about gutsy.

Her well-written and well-researched posts explore how she budgets, her quest to buy a home, her financial goals and ambitions, and anything else that relates to money (like, what is amortization, anyway?) Check it out to meet - and be inspired by - a real-life working woman whose net worth is most definitely on the upswing!

I laugh out loud - with relief, mostly - reading Overexcitable, a lively and sharp blog that endeavors to make the working world safe for women geniuses, or as the blog's author Jo Jo more eleoquently puts it, "Why blog? Lofty aim: reduce prejudice against gifted/high IQ people by daily exposure to one such individual. Humble aim: stop annoying family and friends."

By turns, brilliant, bold and self-effacing - and occasionally all at once - she explores the loneliness that comes with being labeled "gifted," the importance of living an authentic life, and the freedom that comes from creating your own rules. If you're gifted, you'll be grateful for a soulmate; and if you believe you are not - at least in the way it's conventionally defined - and tend to find those who are gifted to be profoundly irritating...take a walk in these shoes. There's plenty of compassion to go around.

Friday Link Love - Post-Independence Day Edition

This week's BlogsByWomen recommended reads:

If you like storytelling and personal narrative, check out Schmutzie's Milkmoney or Not, Here I Come. This blog has a crisp, clean design that lets you concentrate on her wonderful writing. Get yourself to a comfy chair and read about chips and chocolate milk for lunch, composing haikus about friends, the pros and cons of living near a meth house, and why pirates can leave the yard. Where's her book, already?

Did you know only 5% of bloggers are over 50? Ou est les Boomers?

Boston-based journalist Rhea is one of the few Boomer voices in the blogosphere. Lucky for readers, she's good. Really good.

At The Boomer Chronicles, she's created a fun, fast-paced and fascinating blog full of bite-size tidbits on topics ranging from funky alternative jobs (including baking pound cakes, opening a plant rental business or being a "How's My Driving?" 800-number-phone-answerer) to retirement planning to the up side of being a Grup. Whether you're a Boomer, Boomer-adjacent, or just hate the word/concept/zeitgeist of Boomer, you'll find something cool.