Chicago did itself proud as host city for Travel
Blog Exchange ‘09, rolling out the welcome mat for a small army of enthusiastic
travel bloggers and making our first travel blogger meet up a rousing success.
Debbie, Kim, Maren, Carrie, Shanna and the rest of
the TBEX team and sponsors did a great job with this first effort. I can’t wait
to see what they do for an encore!
Check out excellent TBEX recaps by Jessie Voigts at
Wandering Educators and Nancy Brown at What a Trip, or take a peek behind the
scenes with the hard-working conference team with Debbie Dubrow at Delicious
Baby.
I’ll use my space here to post a few of my
impressions, what I might like to see at future TBEX meet ups, a few
post-convention notes and thank yous.
Kim, Maren and Debbie managed to pull together an
amazing group of speakers, sponsors and attendees to give us a great
opportunity to meet face-to-face with folks we’d already come to know online,
meet new colleagues and participate in forums more closely tailored to our
interests and needs as travel bloggers.
Even more amazing? The fact that the TBEX team
fielded enough sponsor support to offer this event to travel bloggers for the
dirt-cheap price of F-R-E-E!
Hats off to ExploreChicago.org, BootsnAll Travel, Vail
Resorts, Home Away, TravelPod, Savvy Navigator and Gogo Inflight Internet for
sponsoring the conference.
The folks at Gogo gave us a special discount code for
inflight Internet service to pass along to our readers. If you’re planning a
trip via air before the end of August 2009, be sure to check to see if Gogo is
available on your flight. Use this code 158FLF7365 for a sweet 50 percent off
one-time use of Gogo’s service. Check out Donna Hull’s post at My Itchy Travel
Feet for more about redeeming this offer.
I enjoyed talking with Savvy Navigator’s Jeff and
hearing about a bright spot for the travel industry as more states allow gay
marriage and many of those newly married couples seek gay-friendly honeymoon
destinations.
The team at explorechicago.org made our travels a
lot easier by offering extended concierge service during the conference and a
ready supply of suggestions as we planned our trip to the Windy City. I used
their Twitter-based advisors @explorechicago to help me select a hotel for the
post-conference part of my stay, to find some great things for me and Tim to do
in Chicago, for the tip about free night at the Art Institute the first night I
was in town and for some live advice about the best walking route from the
Sheraton to the Art Institute.
I haven’t even had a chance to really go through the
incredible backpack of swag we got at TBEX, but I already know I’m all about
that offer of a free beginner level language program from Rosetta Stone! I can’t
wait to see what else is in that bag.
The conference itself was most valuable as an
opportunity for live networking and a way to learn what concerns I shared with
other travel bloggers. I’ve been at it for a year now, and it can often be
tough working alone—especially when you’re trying to learn so many new things
as quickly as you can, while still offering readers quality content and
maintaining your own enthusiasm for blogging.
I’ve always
wanted to become a regional travel writer, and I’ve found blogging offered me a
unique opportunity to redirect my writing career away from stories about local
businesses for local print markets with ever-shrinking freelance opportunities—if
they even managed to stay afloat. It appeared to me that even writers with
seemingly solid print gigs needed to learn new media skills as more and more
content moved online.
I found the TBEX sessions about working with PR
people and video especially interesting as Midwest Guest’s audience grows and I
consider what I need to “take it to the next level”.
I’ve read quite a few post-TBEX comments and posts,
and it looks like there may be some sort of consensus growing around a couple
of my own TBEX wish list items: a longer stand-alone conference (vs. a one-day
lagniappe to BlogHer), as well as sessions about SEO and monetizing your work.
I also filled out Kim’s survey and suggested that building in a “travel
experience” (a river tour in Chicago would have been a great trip for all of
us, for instance) or some free time during future TBEX conferences so we can
explore and do what travel bloggers do best when they travel—collect fodder for
future blog posts!
The best decision I made about my time in Chicago?
Booking a few more days in the city so Tim could join me and we could explore
Chicago on our own. Expect to see plenty of posts here about our Chicago
adventures in coming months!
© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved
I'm really glad you decided to blog about your travels because they're endlessly fascinating. :)
Posted by: gypsyscarlett | August 06, 2009 at 07:27 AM
Dominique, you were so smart to book a few extra days to explore Chicago. Wish I had done that because it's such a vibrant town with so much to see.
Great recap of TBEX. I like your suggestion of adding a travel experience to the mix. Wouldn't that be cool to read blog posts about the same activity from so many different points of view?
I enjoyed meeting you and hope to see you next year. I've started my online Spanish class. It's way cool.
Posted by: Donna Hull | August 06, 2009 at 09:29 PM
Gypsy-Thanks for stopping by! I love writing about my travels, so I'm glad you enjoy reading my stories.
Donna-We enjoy Chicago, so it wasn't difficult to decide to spend the extra time there. I like to write about my travels, so it didn't make a lot of sense to travel somewhere--only to stay in convention venues the entire time and have nothing to write about when I got home.
I suspect if TBEX spins off as a stand-alone, I'll have to make a decision and attend just one conference next year...but I'd rather do one trip and have a more full experience than go to multiple conventions and have nothing to write about when I return home.
Posted by: Dominique | August 07, 2009 at 07:01 AM
Hey Dominique,
Thanks for linking to my TBEX recap.
For me, the best part of TBEX was being able to put a name with a 'real life' person.
Great meeting you.
What a Trip!
Posted by: Nancy D. Brown | August 07, 2009 at 05:33 PM
It sounds like a great conference and learning experience. I hope you'll share some of what you learned with me!
Posted by: Becks Davis | August 08, 2009 at 08:08 PM
Nancy-It really -was- great to be able to meet everyone face to face. Hopefully we'll all be able to do it again next year!
Becks-I'm thinking its time for coffee again soon! :)
Posted by: Dominique | August 08, 2009 at 08:33 PM
I'm so glad that you were able to join us (but bummed that after all this time conversing on-line I was too busy worrying over details to have a real F2F conversation with you)
Hope to see you again soon
Posted by: Debbie Dubrow | August 08, 2009 at 11:38 PM
Debbie-Yup, TBEX was short and sweet! Y'all did such a great job, and I really appreciate that. I especially appreciate you taking me under your wing early on (your post-BlogHer08 list of women travelbloggers was one of the first things I came across when starting the process of seriously starting a blog...first place I commented on the subject and the "tribe" quickly adopted me and urged me on as I started my blog a year ago).
Hopefully next time won't be quite so hectic and we can all spend a little quality F2F time.
Posted by: Dominique | August 09, 2009 at 09:34 AM
d - it was SO Great to meet you! and wish we'd had more time to talk. i love that you had more time in chicago and am so glad you had that!
thanks for mentioning our recap. :) can't wait for the next one! but hopefully we'll see each other before then - we live in the same state!
Posted by: jessie voigts | August 10, 2009 at 11:45 AM
Jessie-I'm glad Tim was able to join me for a few post-conference days in Chicago. Amazing city...and I've got a lot of Chicago stories planned for coming months.
I'm thinking we should definitely try for a Michigan travel bloggy meet.
Posted by: Dominique | August 11, 2009 at 08:56 PM