I was 30 minutes late for dinner. THIRTY. This is one of those things that only started happening after my kids were born. What kind of person shows up at a restaurant 30 minutes late?

Well, me, apparently. It was the night before my blog conference and some of us were meeting for dinner at the hotel. My children must have sensed that I need to bail on their evening routine early so they were doing their best to delay my departure. Mission accomplished.

Finally, I get to the restaurant and several women are sitting in a corner. That must be my group! We introduce ourselves by our names and Twitter handles. It’s kinda cool, I’ve Tweeted with some of these people but it’s the first time most of us have met.

We laugh, talk and tweet throughout the night. And it’s girl talk. The good kind. The kind where you laugh so hard, an embarrassing snort slips out. Like when we were discussing the upcoming conference and advertisers, one of the girls said she would run through the banquet room wearing nothing but spanx and tassels on her boobs yelling: “Brand Me! Brand Me!”

We howled. Throughout the night we kept referring to “Brand Me!” while shaking our imaginary tassels. By the end of the night, we’d branded ourselves the Tittylicious Ten.

I walked out of the hotel on cloud nine, thinking if dinner was that much fun, clearly tomorrow’s conference is going to be a blast. Once home, I read a tweet from one of the girls: “Felt like I already knew you all _ like we were having a reunion.”

Perfectly put.

The next day I went to the conference (I was on time!) and I learned sooooo much. The speakers were dynamic and my fellow participants were sharp and inspiring. Throughout the day the TT girls would steal smiles at each other, whisper “Brand Me!” or even do a quick tassel toss.

At the end of the day, there was a drawing for prizes. They called out the name of one of our T.Ten ladies. Me and another TT girl locked eyes and started doing standing tassel tosses. We were hoping the prize winner would do a celebratory Brand Me dance, but she was too busy doing a cartwheel. Yes, a cartwheel.

Like the fool that I am, I pressed the issue, yelling at her to do the Brand Me dance. She (smartly) refused. Then there was one last drawing. For a SONY Bloggie camera.

The woman called out “She’sWrite.” My heart dropped. Great. Since I heckled my friend into doing the Brand Me dance, I’m clearly going to have to do it in front of 100+ people. Just great.

I go up to the front of the room, get my prize, my TT girls are grinning at me, a handful are tossing their tassels, hoping against all hope that I do it… Naturally, I raise my arms in the air and shake my imaginary tassels. Brand. Me.

Walking back to my seat, I just shake my head and laugh.

I learned many, many great lessons from The SITS girls’ Bloggy Boot Camp, but my greatest take away was the importance of having a tribe, a group of bloggers who can be your sounding board and support you as you navigate the blogosphere.

I feel lucky to have found my tribe at SITS. Brand me a member of the Tittylicious Ten.

 

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What I Learned At Bloggy Boot Camp: Twitter, Tribes and Tassels — 42 Comments

    • Hey Rumpshaker! I love you too. Part of me wishes I would have met you earlier, but the other part of me is glad that I didn’t. Can you imagine if we were friends in high school, worse yet, college when we could drink legally? One of us would end up in jail. I vote that it’d be you, but I’d bail your tail out no prob. 🙂 Muah.

        • Ha! You’re right. That’s what would happen. We could be cellmates! I’d make you do your impersonation of the crazy chair. I watched that clip, btw, and it was hilarious. Though your rumpshakin’ was much better.

    • Yes that is fabulous and so are you with all of your wonderful accessories. I was coveting your earrings all weekend, I made a mental note to tell you, but honestly forgot until just now… 🙂

  1. Brand Me! Brand Me!

    I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in years. I had so much fun and I already miss you all so much. I’m so glad we all did dinner.

    See you soon!
    Xoxo

  2. I didn’t know you are a Chicagoane (is that how you spell it? Is that a real word?). How neat!

    Glad to hear from your perspective somethings to take away from the conferences. I wanted to go to this one. Perhaps next year. Off to meet the other TT girls 😉

    • Yep, Chicagoan. And yep it’s a word. Though I’m more of a transplant. 🙂 Glad you enjoyed the post, I messaged you where you could find out more about the informative side of the conference instead of my silly shenanigans. 🙂

  3. Ah ha! So that explains the dance you did when you won, very entertaining! So glad to meet you on Saturday and chat with you at breakfast. Hopefully us two crazed mama’s will meet again. Playdate perhaps?

    • Yeeeaaaahhhh (I’m cringing) that explains the dance I did. Most times I love my spontaneity, other times I’m like, really? Did I just do that? Yes, I would love to connect with you. There was so much more I wanted to talk with you about at breakfast, but I didn’t want to seem like Lotus Blu Mama hog. 🙂

  4. Why am I not at all surprised that Rachel and Jen are part of the Tittylicous Ten?! LOL

    I love BBC. Those SITS girls do everything they can to make a great conference. I’m planning to go to Dallas in May.

  5. Dinner on Friday night was one of the best evenings out I’ve had in a long time! Actually, the entire weekend was great!

    Now, with that cool new camera I want to see some of that great footage that you were taking at the wine party!

    By the way, check out the two pics of you & Abi on my flickr page. 🙂

    • Friday was a good night, a really good night. And honestly I’m not sure I should share the video of the wine party, especially considering the pics of me and Abi. 🙂

    • Hmmmm. Does this match my brand or no??? 🙂 Thanks for stopping by and you did a terrific job presenting, so much useful information that made me focus on finding more precise direction on how to strengthen my blog. And I love that you said chapstick does not count as makeup. That sounds like a fun t-shirt saying.

  6. I love your post. I feel the same way! I’ve been blogging a long time, and finally feel like I have people who understand not only what I do, but why I do it. I had an amazing weekend. Thanks for letting get all emotional at dinner Saturday night. Hope I didn’t soggy up your sammy. 🙂 Oh and you are welcome in The Compound anytime!

    • You are welcome to soggy up my sammy anytime!!! Honestly I loved the conversation, it was good to see and hear someone who I think is amazingly smart and charming be honest about feeling “less than.” Sometimes so many people get caught up in pretending that everything is perfect, I find that nauseating. I like my friends real, so any time woman, any time.

  7. I’m so jealous! I really want to go to a blog conference. I can’t believe there aren’t any conferences near Pittsburgh 🙁
    And I’m even more disappointed hearing that many of the bloggers that I read were all there together. Hmmppff. I’m so glad that you had a fun time. Now I’m going to go have a pity party for myself. Alone. Because I have no friends 🙁

    • Whatevs. You have tons of friends and are a very popular blogger. You are right, you should get to a conference because you’d love it. Maybe there’s some conferences nearby?

  8. Love the recap – sounds hilarious!

    I will be in Atlanta for the Boot Camp – all the way from Ireland – I will be there on business that week, so staying on for the conference too.

    Hoping to connect with some of my fellow conference-ers just as you did 🙂

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