Well hello again everyone. It has certainly been awhile since I have blogged! January passed so quickly this year, and I was thrilled to have had the opportunity to attend two amazing conferences back to back. First up was the Alt Design Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah. Then I attended the What If Conference in Cabo San Lucas, which is a conference for artist-preneurs. This could not have fit more perfectly into my travel plans…Alt Design Summit was January 18-20 & What If Conference was January 22-26…leaving us a day to check out Sundance Film Festival before heading to What If in Cabo…stay tuned to my next post to find out about that second leg of our trip.
The Alt Design Summit was amazing! It was an inspiring two days filled with the top lifestyle & design bloggers as well as other fabulous creatives. A highlight for me was to hear Ben Silbermann, the founder of Pinterest, as one of the keynote speakers. I LOVE Pinterest! Pinterest is website & app that acts as a visual pin board where you can create boards & then start pinning images from around the internet so you can create collections of everything that inspires you. Pinterest’s mission statement is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.” Ben was a very interesting speaker, even though he started his presentation with telling us that he was not really a comfortable public speaker…he was truly awe-inspiring! Ben talked about the importance of surrounding yourself by people who inspire you & to bet on yourself because no-one else will. He shared his story with us and shared his opinion on why & how people succeed. In his words, “People succeed because they don’t stop & eventually something breaks.”
Ben always felt that the things that you collect said so much about who you were as a person…and so the idea & inspiration to build Pinterest began. Ben talked about Pinterest as the place to plan the most important projects in your life…and it’s so true, we are seeing more & more brides planning their weddings using Pinterest. I think this is an amazing resource not only for brides but for everyone. I have been using Pinterest now for several months, and you can check out my Pinterest from the link on the sidebar of my blog. Pinterest has exploded…it is no longer just for sharing beautiful photos, it is the best tool on the internet to discover, collect & plan all of your important projects, or simply the pull together all the things that you love.
Ben also talked about Pinterest’s goal to not to keep you online. It is their mission to inspire you to go out & DO the things that you love….and this is truly amazing! Ben shared his love for human discovery stories…about discovering things you would have never searched for. Pinterest has become THE most beautiful place to discover things that you love. Ben shared this…”Discovering things about the world helps you discover things about who you are.” All I can say is thanks Ben, you are an inspiration to all of us!
I could go on & on about the rest of the amazing speakers that presented at Alt. Some of my favourites were Bri Emery from Design Love Fest (one of my favourite design blogs), Danielle from The Jealous Curator, another wicked blog, Victoria from SF Girl by Bay, Camille Styles, Jasmine Star, the fabulous wedding photographer who talked about the importance of your personal brand & rocked it, Anne Sage, the editor & founder of one of my favourite online magazines, Rue Magazine, as well as Cassandra Lavelle of Coco & Kelley who were all simply amazing! Alt truly knows how to put on a fabulous conference. Each day we saw 4 one-hour presentations that each had 3-4 speakers as well as our key-note speaker(s) over lunch. The speakers were concise with their presentations & truly shared such inspirational stories & strategies to build your personal brand, to grow your blog readership & to follow your heart & most importantly to Keep It Real (thanks Jasmine!!), which simply put means to follow what you are passionate about.
There were also industry people from HGTV, Martha Stewart Magazine, Chronicle Books, Better Homes & Gardens at Alt. It was a great place to network with the industry leaders within the blogging & social networking world.
Not only were our days filled with inspiration, Alt also had the absolute best ‘gift’ bags for attendees of any conference that I have ever been too…seriously, you would not believe the amazing swag that each attendee received from this conference. Unbelievable!! To top it off each night they hosted parties. So much fun! This next instagram photo is a picture of one of the amazing gifts that were given to every attendee at the conference by Cargoh. Cargoh is a curated online artist & designer marketplace & they gave out a unique handmade item to everyone at Alt. WOW!!!
We finished Alt on Friday January 20th, then my cousin Jane (& travel companion for both conferences) along with 4 of our new friends from Alt enjoyed an amazing day at Sundance Film Festival & then flew to Cabo the very next day.
Here are some pics from our amazing day at Sundance. Talk to you soon. -Jen oxox
We stopped for lunch at Zoom, which is Robert Redford’s restaurant on Main Street in Park City. It was a lovely place with delicious food & cold beer.:)
Next up was the Sundance Music Cafe, which was a sweet venue showcasing exceptional live performances of new, emerging and established talent. We were so lucky to actually get in without a VIP pass. Thanks to our new friend’s Alison & Michelle who talked us into the venue…All 6 of us got in & stayed there for the afternoon and got to listen to the fine performances of A Fine Frenzy, Jenny O., Josh Kelley as well as John Forté and friends featuring Natasha Bedingfield, Ben Taylor & Sergey…needless to say, this was an epic afternoon!
Here we all are…Alison, Jane, Michelle of On My Own Blog, Robin of RobinMiller.us & the Clevergirls Collective, Lisa & me…living it up at Sundance…plans are already brewing for Sundance 2013…;)
After hanging at the Music Cafe all afternoon, we walked up the Main Street to Sundance House which was tented venue set up for the festival as a place to warm up for a bit, grab a quick bite, or a beverage of choice and relax with friends….and of course enjoy more live music and/or dj’s…
Here’s Lisa at our last stop of the day which was an Irish Pub that was packed….again we enjoyed even more live music & then found a table to grab some great pub food…then back to Salt Lake City to grab a few hours of sleep before getting up at 4 am to catch our flight to Cabo…stay tuned for my upcoming post about the What If Conference .
