alt design summit: day one

Ah, here we are, day one of the festivities. I got up at seven this morning, about an hour later than I'd planned. I got my coffee in my to go mug and Zack drove me the 15ish miles to the lovely Grand America Hotel. One thing really nice about Alt Summit is that it isn't a huge commute for me. This makes me very happy.

Once there I received my fancy name badge and my S.W.A.G. (for you that aren't aware, this stands for Stuff We All Get, duh). I'll probably end up doing a separate post on the S.W.A.G. once Ive had a chance to actually look/use/play with it all. I was still pretty stoked to have my own name badge, I honestly felt pretty important.



Then I was on my way to my first panel of the day. It was on Successful Collaborations, and the fantastic, amazing and wonderful BRI EMERY was one of the panelists, along with Josyln Taylor, Victoria Smith and Danielle Krysa. It was highly informative and really makes me excited to incorporate some more guest posts into my blog for 2012. Plus, I got a little re-tweet from Bri herself, which may have been one of the biggest thrills of my life. No, seriously.



After that panel I went to another on how to incorporate ads and build relationships with sponsors. I'll be honest, I've never really wanted to have sponsors on my blog, but I would be open to the idea if it came about. I just have been to so many blogs where I'm overwhelmed with sponsors and giveaways and things like that and I'll be honest, I'm not a fan. Once in a while it's okay but the reason I read your blog is to read about YOU not about who you sponsor. Meh, I may be alone in that.

Then there was lunch and I have to say, the (what I think was a) pot pie was entirely toooooo good. Toooooo good to be a pot pie, yet, it was.



Third panel was something that I have been looking forward to since it went up on the schedule. From Blog To Book. Oh man, all I want to do is write and I figured I could gain a lot of perspective from this. There were many amazing panelists but the lovely Grace Bonney from Design*Sponge was the moderator. She gave a lot of good advice on how to work with publishers and agents should they tickle your fancy. It was my favorite part of the day. So much, in fact, that I took notes.





After that I was shot. None of the final panels really appealed to what I needed so I had Zack pick me up early. And I'm being a bad blogger gal by not attending the Winter Wonderland party. I'm so drained and shy, I know that's not excuse but I will be attending the sparkly parties tomorrow. Oh two more days of this. I wish I could do this every day. I've met a few very fun people, there are some I still haven't met and some I feel like are going to get creeped out I'm such a fangirl for them. I really wish I could do this every day (yep, that's twice now).

Thanks again to those who support!!