Take Aways from BlogHer Food 2012
Last week I shared my overall experience at BlogHer Food 2012 and this week I'd like to share a couple of the take aways that stood out to me during the various sessions I attended. Overall, I came away feeling energized - creatively, intellectually, and entrepreneur-ially. So here's a of my big take aways from BlogHer Food 2012;
* Think about why you do what you do.
* Keep some personal projects, ones that aren't going to be posted on your blog.
* Surround yourself with colossal dreams.
* Back up your blog!
* If you don't already have photoshop or another paid photo editing software, go, download GIMP. Also, read the live blog of this amazing Post-Processing session - I feel like my editing skills just took a giant leap forward!
* When filming videos a good mic input is essential. Check out the live blog from the How to Shoot a Video on a Budget session.
* If you're blogging to build a business, at least to some degree, think about the concept of brand extension. Read the live blog from the keynote on on day 2 for more great tips about the intersection of brands and bloggers.
* Approach brands with ideas.
* Think about your own food roots when telling your story.
If you weren't able to make BlogHer Food and would like to find your own take aways, I would highly recommend paging through the live blogs from all the various sessions. I think it's pretty darn awesome of BlogHer, the volunteers, and speakers to make the info on these sessions available to all virtually - so make good use of the wisdom found in there!
With that, I'll leave you with a quote from Ira Glass that very much resonates with me shared with us by Molly Wizenburg of Orangette during the Bloggers As Storytellers session;
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”