Rockstar panel notes

So as you know, last Friday I spoke at She’s Connected on the rockstar (without a band) panel. I have notes from it I’m going to transcribe because I have to feed the blog monkey something, right? May as well be this. I spoke last year as well. I find these conferences are great for many reasons. It’s great to know that not one brand in the room will deign to advertise with me and yet here I am speaking to these blogger newbs and telling them how it’s done. Whatever. On with it!

Prior to the panel they gave us three questions over email to mull over and prepare answers to and in true rock star fashion I wrote down my notes on my way in to town. First question being why do we deserve rock star status?

Donna, conference mistressmind called me a rockstar and “the future” when she met me two summers ago during the bender blitz of blogher in San Diego that was a dream vacay for this guy. I booked four nights and scrammed on over to the Hard Rock hotel (pretty rockstar so far if you ask me) and I ripped it up. If I wanted room service I’d press GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM in to my cheeky hotel room phone and put it on the company dime. Aaaaah. Anyway, that was a great experience for me and I believe my first conference. Blog industry is a money maker now it isn’t going away. It gives jobs to homemakers, hello, internet rules. Best invention ever, ever. Agree?

Notes time. I am a “rock star” blogger BECAUSE I keep it really really really real. Live tweeters in the room, that’s 3 really’s, one real. (Then everybody would be supposed to laugh ahaha).

I’m driven.

I make few compromises. (Then I elaborated/went on a tangent, these are just blurbs that get my talking points going).

I didn’t want to come in there being all defensive but I kind of wanted to make a few mommy blogger jabs to waken ‘em up you know. So I didn’t get to say this next line (pussed out):

Don’t wade through the internet looking to be offended all the time.

Mommy bloggers! – How do you see yourselves?

Don’t think about how you see me. Think about how YOU are viewed. You are a massive collective mobile unit, you are not independent voices. You are one voice. You need to be distinctive and step away from the mommy blogger cult. I AM SERIOUS. You’re watered down and over-saturated.

Ahem Cough. Then I visualized a stampede. Actually the few bold faced statements I made were met with smiles and eyes popping open, grinning and respect. Then I have a page dedicated to CAMPAIGNS that I’m not going to share because you don’t deserve to know my industry secrets for free I’ll just say that the better my Little Raymis do, the better I do. We all rise together. Build a network. It’s obvious. No brainer.

Okay, and then I wrote some chicken scratch extras which are imperative for page-flipping and going blank on the spot. How are your public speaking skills? Mine wane but whatever, it’s the message, not the totally unintelligible manner in which I deliver it OKAY.

I do what I want until people just let me. I think by this I meant just being a sh–head in general for forever on the internet gathering peeps for my audience along the way until maybe that very first PR person reached out to me and invited me to like every single music industry party in life ever. More rockstar reasons right. Oh the parties, oh the people, oh the stories oh the boozing. Just go look in my archives, easy.

Don’t always play by everybody’s rules. You guys (uh oh more mommy bashing haha)(YOU GUYS DO IT TO ME BIG TIME SO CHILL) moved into my territory. I stepped aside kept doing my own thing while the industry developed. We have conferences now. Tech talks. A whole bunch of how-to think tank stuff. Are we reinventing the wheel here people? No. We are simply spinning them. AAAND SONIC BOOM OWNED! Lol.

It is good to exchange ideas and share in our successes but we must maintain our savvy little secrets IMO. I called the rest of that thought in because people only half-listen I find and they’ll just listen to that statement alone. Like I got secrets but I am not telling you them. Builds suspense.

What I do that works for me will not necessarily work for you because you probably play it safe, which is fine, but then there’s hundreds if not thousands of play-it-safers. Newsflash: BORING. The future is FUN & YOUNG and I am just as scared as you. Tumblr? Get one. Though you probably already have one called a pinterest. SEE. It’s OKAY to make fun of stuff on the internet.

Then of course I mentioned how last year I said I wanted to be in Playboy by thirty and now well yeah, look! Plus I’m still 29. Booyah.

Zing bang pow! I got stuff to do. Later gents.