I survived Nuffnang Blogopolis 2012!

Wow! What a great day Saturday was. My first blogging conference was everything I hoped it would be. Here are some photo highlights:

Noo and me on the morning of the conference
(had to get a Noo shot in somewhere!)

Very informative SEO talk

I love a goodie bag!

Morning tea

Delicious Twinings tea served in beautiful teacups

I attended Blogopolis for mainly two reasons:

1. To learn more about the Aussie blogging scene; and
2. To get out of my comfort zone and talk to new people.

And I achieved both.

Highlights for me were:

1. Walking through the door of the Wentworth Sofitel and not bursting into tears.
2. Meeting Lisa at Mum Of Adult Kids and having a buddy for the day.
3. Jeff Tan's informative presentation on SEO and web analytics. This subject has alluded me for a long time so I was stoked to be able to hear such a clear and concise talk on it. The information I learnt will be handy for both my blog and my studies.
4. Sitting on a table with some of the finest bloggers out there: Mrs Woog from WOOGSWORLD, Eden of Edenland, Kim from Allconsuming, Sarah from A Beach Cottage, Nikki from Styling You and Trevor Young from PR Warrior. 
5. The 'finding your voice' panel; I particularly liked what both Eden and Zoey from Goodgoogs had to say. That my blog can be a place for me to find myself, that it is a 'psychological experience', a place to exhibit my 'weird' if I want to. And I want to!
6. Mrs Woog's parting comments: That blogging is not a race or a competition; that Aussie bloggers need to unite and be nice to one another; and to have fun or it doesn't count.

So that is my Blogopolis 2012 wrap up. It is about all I can manage. I'm seeing double here! Got a filthy flu and can't think straight.

Looking forward to the next blogging function!

V.

The night before Blogopolis 2012

Can't believe tomorrow is the big day! Blogopolis 2012 is upon us. And I am excited! More so than nervous, which is great. Amazing.

I am currently at my sister's home watching my niece while her and her husband are at a dinner party. All is well so far - I have pizza, Diet Coke, chocolate and three episodes of True Blood to watch so not much actual baby watching going on to be honest. Mala's cried once but my sister insisted I not go in there unless she was hysterical. Little Miss M got herself back to sleep after about three minutes. Such a good bub that one!

I'm blogging and tweeting from this iBook thingie that belongs to my brother in law and keep pressing on the wrong buttons. It is a bit confusing. A bit similar to the anxiety dreams I have where I am trying to play the piano on a keyboard that has had all the notes moved around. I don't even know how to play piano in my conscious life but for some reason that is a reoccurring dream for me. Maybe I was like some famous pianist in past life.

Today I was supposed to blowdry my hair but never got around to it. I'm sure no one is going to notice the frizz (I hope!). And I need a haircut badly... maybe I can talk to Christina from Hair Romance about that. I really need a recommendation for a good hairdresser. I've tried 11 different salons in five years since I've been back from London and never been happy with any one of them. I'm so looking forward to hearing Christina speak. Eden Riley and Mrs Woogs are also high on my list. Crikey! There are so many actually. I feel like I'm going to be meeting real celebrities! 

Well excited.

For the breakout groups I'm definitely going to do SEO Analytics for Dummies. I seriously need to get a handle on that. This subject will also be relevant to my Advanced Web Design unit at uni when I finally get back to it.

For the next break out session I am undecided whether or not to do the Media Kit group or the Creating a Brand For Your Blog group. I need help with both, that is for sure. Maybe I can attend one and get the notes for the other. 

The third breakout session is a choice between Blog Photography and Opportunities Gained. Another hard choice. I'm thinking the latter might take trumps.

I only live about 10 minutes walk away from the venue so I won't have to get up too early but I still need to confirm my outfit and pack my tools for the day. I'm thinking paper note book, pen, iPad and iPhone and charger. Hope that is it. I could always run home if I forget anything, but that would be a pain!

I'm going to get into True Blood now. A little bit of Eric action is just what I need!


V.

Two sleeps to go and URL nightmares

What a busy bloggy 24 hours!

I've managed to create a new look for my blog, make little DIY business cards for Blogopolis and organise myself my own domain name. Stoked! THIS IS STILL NOT SORTED! YES IT IS AS OF 3:03PM!!!

The old .blogspot address still works but I can now be found at babblingbandit.me. How cool is that!? I was going to do a .com address but I love these new .me addresses. So appropriate for a me-centric little blog like mine. Love it!

I've attempted to make my blog look less of a weight loss lap-band blog and more of a general personal blog by removing the weightloss tracker and adding my trademark 'Vanessa' butterfly.

Below is a picture of the tattoo off my left hand. There's a bit of a story behind it. Long story short, when I went through my big breakdown of 2007/08 I basically lost any sense of who I was but the only thing I was sure of was my name. I wrote it over and over again in blue pen on my left hand. My initials that is. This was during a two month stay in a psychiatric hospital. I was one fucked up little unit! When I left the hospital I walked straight into a tattoo shop and asked the bloke to go over the biro with his tattoo gun which he did and now I'm left with this...

My tattoo

Butterflies are symbolic for me because Vanessa is suppose to mean butterfly and people have been giving me butterfly things all my life. When I did my initials on my hand I attempted to make the B of my surname look like half a butterfly. So when I was thinking of how I could personalise the look of my blog I made this little image below (red is my favourite colour) - two Bs for Babbling Bandit.

BB logo

What do you think?

**********

So after my depressing-freaking-myself-out post the other day I'm feeling heaps better about going to the big conference on Saturday. I've been getting around a lot of blogs and it seems that there are heaps of us out there who are worried about meeting people and just how everything will go. I think that now we've all got our worries out there in the open we should feel good knowing that there is nothing to be afraid of.

OMG! It is 3.14PM and my blog just dropped out again. What is going on?

My biggest fear now is that my new URL won't work! Insania just two days out from the big gig. I thought it was going to be so easy but the domain hosting service I chose has turned out to be really crap. The service has been shocking! (Always do your research Vanessa!)

First time I tried to call I was on hold for half an hour before the line just dropped dead. The second time I was on hold so long I ended up having to hang up because it was time to pick up Noo and then finally at about 11PM last night I got through and the person just deleted my DNS hosting service I paid $18 for and switched me to email hosting (taking another $12 from my account) and I didn't even want a new email. I just want my own website address!

By this morning I was getting some dodgy looking message from Blogger about being redirected and so called the service provider back only to be told I needed to add the four Blogger ISP numbers even though I'm sure the chick I spoke last night did that already. Anyway I gave the numbers to the dude and he said "all done. You're site will be up and running in two hours". That was at 1PM! It is now 3.22PM!! And still nothing!!!!

I'm in a very exclamation mark type of mood! I swung from the excitement of seeing the BB up and running to back to fuck, what the hell is going on here? I just want it to work!

Ugh!! Got to distract myself from this madness...

So I went to my shrink (let's call him Shrink from now on) today and had another kind of all over the shop session talking about this and that and sex and relationships mainly but I also chucked in that I'm going to this conference and he thought it was awesome that I was getting out of my comfort zone. Everyone seems to think it is awesome, except my mum, because I told her that the attendees would be predominantly women and she thought, well what is the point of that? To mum, everything has to be a fucking opportunity to meet a man. For fucksakes woman!

I told Shink today the story about how my parents picked my VCE subjects for me to prepare me to become a secretary in order to get a job in an office to meet a man to get married and have kids. He was amazed. I mean this was only back in the early 90s not the fucking 50s!

They made me do secretarial studies and home economics. I wanted to do IT subjects (which I did as well) and graphic design.

Ah, whatever! 16 years of working as a secretary in offices in Sydney, Melbourne and London and I never went out with anyone I worked with!!! Too drunk probably! Married to the bottle, I was!

Well enough of that jibberish. I'm on a high this arvo. Such a moody bitch I am.

I'm actually going out for dinner tonight (cue woohoo sounds now) with my mate from London so I better go and think about what I am going to wear (from the fat clothes side of the wardrobe!). We are checking out Luke Nguyen's joint in East Sydney. To drive or not to drive? Parking is a pain in the butt over there. And crossing the city to get there for 6pm will be a nightmare. Whinge, whinge, whinge, whinge, whinge!

Ciao for now.

V.