Last week, I wrote a post about my goals for the upcoming Blissdom Canada conference I was getting ready to attend. When I was writing my post, I was quite nervous. I wasn’t sure what to expect or if I’d fit in anywhere, given how spotty my blogging has been over the past few years. On Friday morning, upon arriving at the Toronto Hilton to register, the nerves disappeared and I jumped in with two feet.
Following the advice of those who’d gone before me, I introduced myself to as many people as I could and I handed out the neat little cards which had arrived just-in-time from Mabel's Labels. With the exception of one "commerce track" session, I attended all "arts track" sessions and absorbed a lot of information. Not everything I heard applied to me but I took some good notes and will be looking through them probably over the weekend. The collection of business cards I acquired also needs to be reviewed.
Overall, I’d say that I really got a lot out of the sessions and very much enjoyed meeting so many wonderful people. The whole weekend was very organized and I was impressed with how everything kept on schedule. The only blip in the whole weekend for me was the registration on Thursday afternoon. In the generated schedule I printed from the website, it indicated that registration was open until 7 p.m. I didn’t get checked into my hotel until 5:30 p.m. and by the time I got over to the Hilton to register it was around 6:30 p.m. and I'd missed them. I was pretty disappointed but was also pretty pooped (I'd been up at 4:30 a.m. as per usual that morning) so I took my sad butt back to the King Eddy, grabbed a sandwich at Tim Horton's, threw on a Marc Maron podcast and had an early night.
There were things which surprised me about the weekend and some that didn't. I was surprised by some of the elaborate booths/display areas that the very generous sponsors had. I wasn't surprised that a lot of what they were promoting didn't interest me (not being a "mommy blogger" I don't have a lot of need for toys or diapers – but I took them all the same and will be donating them). Being able to have a professional headshot done was a wonderful surprise and I’m very grateful to Corel for that. The biggest surprise of the weekend happened when we were about 20 minutes outside of Kingston. I noticed a tweet that said I'd won a trip to Florida courtesy of Chevrolet Canada and Visit Orlando. At first I didn't think it was true but I was in touch with them this morning and it is true. Over the next few days I think I will get all of the details about the prize. I am pretty excited about it if I'm honest.
At the moment, I feel like I'm still processing the weekend and I suspect that I'll have more to say about it in the coming days.
1 comment:
Congrats on winning the trip! That is awesome!
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