CyberMummy 2010

It’s been a busy week but I just wanted to post about the fabulous day I had at CyberMummy, the first conference for the UK parentbloggers, last Saturday.

First of all a huge thank you to Sian @mummytips, Susanna @amodernmother and Jen @jhowze for organising such a wonderful day, I can only imagine the amount of planning and work that went into it and I hope they are ready to do it all again next year because everyone had such a fantastic time!

Second, it was wonderful to meet so many bloggers, some of my most favourite bloggers that I’ve been reading forever and lots of new friends who I will love getting to know more through their blogs (I have hundreds of cards to go through, looking forward to an evening browsing blogs).

The day itself was simply awesome. The live bloggers have covered the exact content of the sessions so I won’t go over that here, but I did take away a few main points:

In the Content Session, Judith said ‘blogging is a form of empowerment’ and India Knight said ‘blogging has reclaimed domestic life and made it vibrant’, both statements I agree with wholeheartedly.

In the Audience and Stats session, both Belinda and Justine mentioned ‘utility’ or ‘problem solving’ – answering a question for your readers as a way of increasing audience, something I’ve been keen to move towards for a while now as most of my favourite bloggers do just that. However the info in this session was generally very basic and it would be good to run an advanced session on self-hosting, different platforms, why Google BlogSearch is so crap, whether Google prefers Blogger blogs to Typepad/Wordpress blogs, how to get links, and some SEO tips like registering and hosting your domain name with an American company if you want lots of American readers (which has a larger audience base) and registering your domain name for more than a year (Google gives more weight to domain names that are registered for longer periods as they are considered less likely to be spammy).

Personally I would like to see a session on creating community, it’s easy to feel that mummybloggers are pitted against each other a bit when we’re really not and if we all worked together (for example by improving each other’s links) etc I think we would have massive power.

Lunch was fantastic, I was on Nadine’s table (@businessmum) discussing the Blog/Life Balance and she was hilarious. There was much cheering going on and I’m afraid, due to me, the conversation inadvertently descended into talking about #fluffonyourmuff. Not really what I was hoping to be remembered for at the inaugural CyberMummy. [Edited: I forgot to say thanks to the lovely bloggers who gave me suggestions on how to find more time to use Twitter, next week you will see me getting to grips with scheduling my tweets and I have mentioned once or twice to my husband my need for a smartphone. Also Nadine is writing a book about finding time to write which I will be buying when it comes out and I would love to see her speak on this at the next conference.]

It was really hard choosing between the afternoon sessions. I suppose it’s inevitable at a conference but I would have like to have gone to both and will be checking out the liveblogged session of the one I missed.

In the SEO session, which was a very compressed session (I would have been keen to hear Charlotte’s full presentation) there was lots of useful information. I must track down how to get the appendix she didn’t have time to go through and I recommend that others may want to as well.

The Blog to Book session with Robin Harvie was a dose of realism. You need to have a unique proposition and a ready-made platform (in terms of your existing network of friends/fans) before publishers will consider taking you on. But I reckon publishing a book is not for the faint-hearted anyway so information like that probably wouldn’t put off a determined author anyway! Other things I took away: E-books are the future and self-publishing is an option for bloggers keen to get into print. There could have been more time given to the questions at this session as lots of people had their hands up, lots of bloggers keen to get a book published!

The keynote speeches were very emotional: @sandycalico and @Mum_TheMadHouse had me first crying softly and then blubbing noisily in the corner (thank you to the lovely blogger, Vicky I think, sitting next to me who gave me a tissue as I really thought I was going to have to go out, Jen was mentioning things I was too familiar with with my son and I lost all composure).

The pub quiz with Linda Jones was unforgettable! Our team did dismally but I loved the table I was on.

The sponsors were fab: @LeapFrog had some great new products on display and it was great to be able to tell the children what is new from them as they’re a favourite in our house. @Plum_Baby, the other favourite in our house, had some great new products and the children have all tried them and declared them good (high praise, trust me!) so they will be going to school with them for snack-time. KiddiCare had great carseat and stroller covers – wish I’d known about those when we went on holiday. Kodak were displaying cameras – I didn’t have a smartphone with me but a blogger at my lunch table won a camera as they were giving stuff away through the day on Twitter. I haven’t mentioned them all as I haven’t had a chance to dig out all the business cards yet, but they all had great information and/or products.

On a practical level it was really well organised, the sessions kept to time, the food and the staff at the hotel were fab, the little attention to detail (snacks at the quiz tables when I felt myself flagging, much like an overtired toddler) made all the difference. My only points of note are that it was quite cold in the venue so take a wrap/cardigan if you go next year and don’t carry much with you as there is a big swag bag given out, which would have been better given out at the end of the day or storage offered in a corner of the conference room somewhere (I did dump mine but I had to move it a few times). A mug shot of bloggers with their name, blog name and twitter id up on the walls would have been useful too, I missed a few of my favourite bloggers because I didn’t recognise them! Lastly, the conference could easily have been longer – Saturday morning to Sunday lunchtime for instance – as there was so much chatting to be done. Similarly, the speed networking first thing could have been longer as it was really, incredibly valuable and felt much too short. But, as you can see, these are all small details.

Lastly, the organisers looked so composed and elegant, I honestly don’t know how they did it. Thank you for such a fab day.

Can’t wait for the announcement as to when CyberMummy 2011 will be!

Here’s a round-up of all the CyberMummy posts.

Tagged as: cybermummy2010, cybermummy2011