So Cybher, What Did I Think?

So it’s been a few days since Cybher and I’ve been thinking about what to write about it, I’ve finally got a little time on my hands so here goes….

Overall

I love blogging conferences for three main reasons,
1) I get a wee break away from my children
2) I get to catch up with friends and fellow bloggers and
3) I hopefully get to find out some useful information which will improve my blogging.

Cybher ticked all these boxes.

It was lovely to spend some time with my sister from This Mummy Loves as I haven’t seem her for ages, it was fantastic to finally meet the lovely Kara from Innocent Charms Chats and it was great to catch up with some familiar faces from Cybermummy last year and of course to meet some new faces.

I discovered that:
1) Apparently I have scary eyes and I should be a teacher as I have “the look”
2) Apparently nobody recognises me and I look nothing like my avatar on twitter (well either that or nobody follows me)
3) Apparently I’m very tall (ok so including my heels I was wearing I would have been 6’1″ so I’ll let them off for that one)

Goodies- I love the Cybher leather satchel we all received when we arrived, I opted for the blue one as it matched my dress and iPad case Of course it has now been stolen by MissB who is currently using it to carry her books around in The Palmers bag of goodies was very much appreciated as I have the driest skin imaginable (think mummy of the preserved Egyptian type). I also got Warhorse DVD and book from Disney which is fab as I love that film

The refreshment/sponsors lounge wasn’t too busy, there were plenty of refreshments available and we weren’t over powered with PRs and companies which was quite refreshing. I admit not all the companies were my cup of tea but there were a few I hope to work with in the future. Lunch was lovely, being veggie can always be hit or miss but there was plenty of veggie food and I’m a Brie addict so the Brie and onion marmalade sandwiches went down a treat

Sessions – my thoughts on the individual sessions are mentioned below. There were some areas I felt weren’t for me, I feel I’ve been overdosed on the whole follow/no follow issue recently so I switched off when this was being discussed. I know a lot of people found it useful though. I also admit that by the end of the day, hunger was winning so I ducked out before the end to go and get some dinner. The trouble with having young children is that I’m used to eating with them and so by 5:30 my stomach was screaming for food

Sessions

I attended the following sessions and this is what I thought about them:

Session 1: Nothing really appealed to me from this session so I spent the time drinking tea and chatting down in the refreshment area

Session 2: Imagery and Idea Generation for Bloggers on a Mission to be Brilliant with Jo Gilford
Unfortunately Jo couldn’t be there on the day but by the wonders of modern technology she still gave her talk. I found some useful ideas about using imagery in the blog and some great ideas for making my images prettier.

Session 3: Ask a WordPress Geek with Julie Hall
For me this was the session of the day. I felt I got loads out of it and I’ve been busy downloading recommended plug ins since I got home. As a WP self hosted blogger I’m often baffled by the amount of plug ins available so it was really useful to have some good ones recommended.

Session 4: if You’re Appy and You Know It with Biba To and Ryan Wenstrup Moore
I love apps so found this interesting as I’m always looking for new apps, I did already have a lot of the ones mentioned but found a couple that look good. Biba did great and I hope when MissB is 10 years old she has the confidence to talk on stage like Biba did

Session 5: Cheeky Chats with the Powder Room Girls
Now I personally went to this expecting a bit of fun and whilst the wine was appreciated, the session mainly consisted of them selling us their new web selling system which to be honest, if I’d known this was what they were going to talk about I wouldn’t have gone. The only “cheeky” part of the session was a game of vagingo which didn’t really work as there weren’t enough bags to go round so those of us at the back felt very much uninvolved. For me this was the worst session of the day which I got little out of.

All in all I had a lovely day and thanks so much to Sian from Geek is New Chic for organising it!