I must’ve sat down at least half a dozen times over the last week with the good intention to write a recap of Blogalicious Weekend, the conference I attended in Miami just less than two weeks ago. But each time, there were a million things I wanted to write, so I started making a list to try to condense the highlights. The truth is I just couldn’t. The entire weekend was like a highlights reel, filled with brilliant women doing amazing things.
If you’re not familiar with Blogalicious, it’s a blogging conference that celebrates diversity in social media and is mostly attended by women of color. I was honored to speak on a panel about Latinas in social media, moderated by the fabulously talented Kety Esquivel and sponsored by LATISM and Que Rica Vida. Equally fabulous were my co-panelists: Veronica Arreola of Viva La Feminista, Aurelia Flores of Powerful Latinas and Deanne Cuellar of Media Justice League.
Additionally, I moderated a panel discussion about how Latina bloggers and marketers can work together toward common goals. The brilliant panelists, Carrie Ferguson Weir from Tiki Tiki Blog, Roxana Soto from Spanglish Baby, and Melanie Edwards from Modern Mami, did not disappoint the audience with their insights into how to position yourself and grow as a blogger as well as advice to marketers on how to approach Latina bloggers.
As you already know from last week, I hosted a cooking demo with the Kenmore Live Studio pop-up kitchen, where I made albóndigas. I loved cooking for a live audience; it was fantastically fun and I’m very much looking forward to doing it again soon.
But the biggest takeaway from the weekend for me was the importance of community. My friend Ananda Leeke, has come up with a great term for what I mean (and she’s writing a book about it, to boot): digital sisterhood. Ananda interviewed me as part of her project, and I hope you’ll listen to our interview as well as the others she did from the conference.
During the panel I spoke on, I was asked what I thought was the best case study of a blog success story. My answer was that I don’t think there’s just one silo blog success story that everyone should look at as a case study. Rather, there are many blogs out there that individually do something amazing. From forming a community with these women over the last 14 months since I began blogging, I have learned something from each of them, and each one of them has contributed to whatever my “success” is. And for each of us, “success” is something different. For me, success is when I get a comment or an email from a reader saying that one of my recipes reminds them of their abuelita. That is part of the reason I write here. To make cultural connections.
There was a lot of talk all weekend about owning niches and finding your community, so I wanted to share with you a short little list of ingredients that make up my tribe – one of the recipes I’m most grateful for ever coming across….