As an event planner, it’s always hard to come to grips with the idea that nothing is definite when you pull together a first-time event.  So, when Stephanie Buckley (aka The Park Wife) called and told me that we had been offered the opportunity to have a meetup for the Arkansas Women Bloggers at the Museum of Discovery, I was excited, a little nervous, and very curious about what the end result would be.

Luckily, putting the event together seemed to evolve fairly easily.  The Park Wife lead the charge, along with Katie McManners from Museum of Discovery and Julie Kohl from WillowTreeCreek Farm.

Our advertising spread via word of mouth and our Facebook page for the most part, but we also had the added bonuses of a nice preview article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and an excellent early morning appearance by the lovely LaTonya Richardsonon KATV channel 7. We ended up with 44 bloggers and bloggers-to-be in attendance at the meetup.

A Chatty Crowd

Stephanie was a champ at approaching businesses for support, but many of our sponsors came to us, which was very exciting. Misty Willbanks and Petit Jean Meats provided turkey, ham, and summer sausage for our lunch, plus a whole ham to give away.   Boulevard Bread provided 5 different kinds of bread, Kroger provided fruit and vegetable trays, and Cupcake Crazy provided 120 beautiful, yummy cupcakes. We also had a lot of great support from our member bloggers, who provided great door prizes including locally grown food, gourmet dog biscuits, eco-friendly candles and soaps, and a signed cookbook from The Pioneer Wife.

The meetup started off with blogger speed dating, lead by Julie.  This gave everyone a chance to get to know several people in the room.  It was so fun to watch everyone match faces with blogs.  Several times I introduced myself: “Hi, I’m Fawn.” The response was, “Oh! you’re Instead of the Dishes!” It was like attending a secret society meeting where everyone had code names.  It was also interesting to see different types of bloggers mixing.  The author-blogger chatting with the fitness blogger, the surgeon blogger with the mommy blogger, and the foodie blogger with the lifestyle blogger, all chatting it up.  Overall, it was an incredible group of women, many of whom were brave enough to come out to our meetup despite the fact that they didn’t know anyone else there!

Speed Dating Bloggers

Next on the docket was lunch.  While we munched, we were treated to two mini-talks by seasoned bloggers (see pictures in post below).  The first talk was from LaTonya Richardson on finding your blog niche. She made us all laugh as

she invited us all to work hard at just being ourselves, because no one else can do that better.  So, so true. Kyran Pittman finished out the “formal” part of our program with a chat about avoiding the numbers game for blogging.  Turns out Kyran speaks just as well as she writes, and certainly she is the poster child for making HUGE things happen as a result of a small blog. Huge Thanks to both of these ladies, who added so much value to our afternoon.

Finally, our elegant hostess, Katie McManners, let us all in on future plans for the Museum and touted MOD Voices guest blogger perks such as behind-the-scenes hard-hat tours of the upcoming expansion project.  Museum of Discovery will be completely re-doing their “You” over the next year, and I’m sure they’ll be paying attention to their numbers. That’s ok, though, because their enthusiasm for being an integral part of the community is outstanding, as is evidenced by their invitation to host our inaugural meetup.  Either that, or Katie didn’t realize what an unruly bunch us bloggers can be.