Digital Parents Conference – day 2

Day 2. Nothing like having your alarm go off before 5.30am so you can get ready, do makeup, make lunches and get out the door at 7am for the conference. And I love that my alarms always wake retro daddy first who then has to yell out ‘Corrie, Corrie, turn off your phone and get up’. And he has to do it a few times. I was dealing with a lot more nerves on the 2nd day because I knew I was getting up on a panel after lunch.  I always say beforehand why did I sign up for this and then when it’s after I’m all like ‘wow that was great I’m so glad I did’. Funny that.

So I arrived, grabbed my coffee (very important, I live on coffee), hot breakfast and new people came to sit at our table which I always love because it’s great to meet new faces and find out their story. Cindy came and sat with us and turns out she is the Cindy Luken behind Luken & May the cookies. Cindy sold the business and has a new business luk beautifood and the products are gorgeous – they smell and look beautiful and it was great to chat business, blogging and mum stuff. That’s the great thing about a conference with lots of women – you talk everything! And Cindy let me know about Pedestrian TV and finding interns if you need a bit of help with your business/blog then you can help a uni student with their work experience. I had never heard of it before but it’s a pretty awesome website.

First session of the day ‘The Myth of having it all’. Moderating was the very funny Penny of Working Mums Masterclass and on the panel we had Karen Andrews of Miscellaneous Mum, Sophie Bone the owner of Big 4 Bellarine and Kerri Sackville of Life & Other Crises who always has everyone laughing. They talked about their stories and how they came to where they’re at. Penny pointed out that mothers now choose to leave the workforce with more information. And despite goverment policies and support the same number of women leaving the workforce to have their families is the same as it was 10 years ago. But there has been a real upsurge in the number of women who are creating their own businesses from home.

We watched a great little video from an episode of The Project but there was a bit of eye rolling from everyone about the title of the segment ‘mummy wars’. Why do they do that? Say its a mummy war? It isn’t really. I have friends who work and friends who stay at home with their children. We’re still friends. And it was great to hear from the guys in the audience because men never get asked can they have it all? That is so true. Men would love to spend more time at home with their children too but there are pressures and financial responsibilities too. It’s hard for a working dad and it was great to hear from the dads.

Kerri talked about how women relied on their mothers groups and once upon a time it was tough if you didn’t get along with yours but now with the internet you can just find a blog just like you. And connect. Hello, why did I set up this blog? Because the mums around me at the time didn’t love craft, being at home, baking and just raising a family. The panelists were then asked what would they tell their daughters/daughters in law – Sophie said ‘stand up and be counted in anything you do’. Kerri wanted to teach her son to respect women and her daughters to have good and healthy relationships. That was a great session and kick off to the day.

Next up was working with brands. Moderated by the lovely Lorraine of the Remarkables and the speakers were Alex Brooks of Kidspot, Melissa Gassman of Digital Parents Collective and Joy Toose of World Vision. This was something I know a lot about and went to support Lorraine. It’s great to hear questions from people who want to work with brands or are starting out. One of the key things out of it was do it if feels right. Woogsworld also said don’t do it if it gets too hard. We’ve all had at least one post that has been ripped apart or a huge chunk of marketing stuff has been written in. The thing to remember is that you are the boss, it’s your blog and you set the terms of the blog posts. If it still doesn’t work then better to say no. We are always asked early on if we want to do a post or with work a certain brand before we are even put forward. Yesterday there were a couple of brands put forward by the Remarkables and I said yes to 1 brand and no to 2 just to give you an idea.

After a jump on the Springfree Trampoline (only because you had to jump on it and be photographed in order to win one) so I was doing it for the kids! We ducked into the session on Media Kits and Journalists. We had a media training day with the remarkables last year and it was great to hear Lisa Lintern repeat something that really stuck with me – nothing is off the record. Lisa gave some great tips on what to do when you get a call for an interview and I think they were great for anyone. I’ll share them in another post because they were really great.

Lunch for me was light. There was some wine tasting going on thanks to De Bortolli but I was staying right away from that table. One little glass and I’d be talking about everything and anything on the panel coming up so best to stick to the soft drink.

lunch was 2 hours but all I could think about was my panel after lunch and making sure I said what I wanted to say, didn’t overshare and wasn’t too quiet up there. It was only the last 5 minutes before the panel that my heart was racing and I was getting all fidgety. Nerves. Thankfully I was on the panel with some pretty funny people like Woogsworld, Reservoir Dad and Glowless and talking about something I know a little bit about – negative comments, online trolls and haters. Shame I know about it. I basically said I don’t read the stuff that is written about me on other sites. If I wasn’t making money or growing my blog I wouldn’t get any negative comments. My motto is keep being fabulous. I don’t worry about the haters otherwise I’d ignore the lovely readers. And I know one of my trolls and I could have said exactly what Glowless said about hers. They just know too much and were once friends. Sad but true. When it comes to your blog and facebook page, YOU set the tone of your page and it’s up to you what you accept and don’t accept on the page.

The session almost ended when Clint aka Reservoir Dad needed to duck to the loo. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t! But we kept talking. If you ever need a funny guy at your next conference, he’s your guy! Anyway I managed to say bye to a few people, grab some afternoon tea and duck out to the car where retro daddy was waiting for me with my favourite little guy. It’s a really long couple of days and with Sunday coming up I couldn’t do the dinner afterwards but after hearing about all the fun I might have to next year.

and I spent the night working through a few days of washing which is always fabulous! I will never ever escape the laundry in this house. Ever.

But it was great to wake up Friday (end of the working week) and just get back into my mummy wardrobe of jeans, tee and a cardy and get back to the school run and usual life.

I must admit though by lunch time I had a bit of the PCB – post conference blues – as there was no buffet style morning tea, lunch or afternoon tea going on and no one to talk to.

 Next week I’m going to do a big post on my top tips for blog conferences, why you should go and the key points I got out of it and am going to put into action! Don’t miss it……….I’m off to get ready for our quilting day tomorrow……………….