Never underestimate the power of women having coffee.
One year ago today, Elisa Camahort and I finally met at a cafe in Palo Alto. And thank goodness we did. I’d been mulling the idea of a conference for women bloggers, discussing it at home, but I wasn’t sure it would fly. I thought the idea required a consortium, a team, a posse -- not one woman -- for even a road test.
The second Elisa and I started swapping stories about blogging, I thought, “YES! This is what I’ve needed—good advice and feedback from a great woman.” I invited Elisa to join me and, thank goodness, she loved the idea. Soon after, she met the amazing Jory Des Jardins, and Jory became our third co-founder.
The idea caught fire with many other women who blog, some of whom joined the advisory board for the first conference (read our 2005 archive blog here). Four months later, BlogHer Conference 2005 sold out with 300+ attendees, national press coverage and sponsorships by Google, Law.com and Yahoo, among other companies. Today we're looking at a huge 2006: We're happy to tell you all about BlogHer Conference 2006, BlogHer's role at the SXSW conference in March, and how the new BlogHer Network works, powered by an incredible group of women, new voices we've met whom other people have too long ignored and excluded.
Which brings me to the most important point: One year after Elisa made me laugh so hard I spewed coffee on both of us, we're still laughing and our well-caffeinated trio has grown to dozens, even hundreds of women who are working on a shared mission: To create opportunities for women bloggers to pursue exposure, education, and community. Thank you.
Let's keep moving. The forums are open--tell us your vision? There's much more to come.
Note: I'm closing the comments on Surfette so that we can have any conversation here. Thanks.
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