I Go To Conferences. Here’s Why.
Mamacita says:Because I do a lot of writing for various businesses, and because I become very attached to “my” businesses, and because it’s extremely important to me to do a better-than-average job for them, I go to a lot of conferences. My clients trust me, and I want to do a GREAT job for them.
This is one reason why I go to so many conferences. At each conference, I learn something, and often many things, that will enable me to do a better job for my businesses.
The Master Teacher Steve Spangler and me, at Science in the Rockies – an awesome conference!
Steve Spangler Science
No one conference can do it all. Some conferences specialize in networking; others focus on the tech aspect. Some are more “social” than anything else. Some are mostly opportunities for brands to connect to people. At all of “my” conferences, I focus mainly on social media and connections, which, to me, are the most important of all. Remember, though, that I write about different things for different kinds of businesses, and I perform all kinds of services for my businesses; it’s just that social media and connections are what I focus on. Don’t forget that nobody can possibly know everything about anything! However, I strive daily to learn more and more about things I can do for my clients.
I’m leaving for The Combine tomorrow morning, and later this summer I plan to attend MixWest. These are both smallish conferences, but don’t ever judge a conference by its numbers! These two are among the very best conferences out there, hands down.
Excellent conference: The Combine
Excellent conference: MixWest
My briefcase is packed and ready, my alarm is set, and my email is full of messages about social media and connections. My clients are so interested, and I’ve got a sweater laid out because conferences are almost always cold. Or maybe it’s just that I’m so full of anticipation that I get shivery at the prospects – I’ve gone to conferences for years now and I still don’t know for sure.
Have all conferences been a rousing success for me? Interesting question. I have learned something supremely important at every conference I’ve ever attended, so yes. I’d call that a rousing success. Social media is what I was born to do, even though it didn’t exist when I was born, and nobody ever knows enough about anything, let alone a business that changes every week. A good social media liaison has to keep current, and a conference, full of experts and learners, is an excellent way to do that.
Panels of experts await!
As for those emails, and all the emails that will be waiting for me after the conference: I will answer every one of them, except the ones from that persistent Nigerian prince who wants me to cash a check for him in return for half of it. It might even be that one of those emails will inspire me to do even more for my businesses!
That’s the thing about my clients, you see. Each client I’ve ever had as been uniquely special to me. I’ve learned more while researching and writing for these companies than I learned in all the years of grad school, in fact. No university degree has ever represented as much hard work and actual knowledge than the research and learning necessary to work in social media. Remember: it’s not possible to write knowledgeably about a business, or anything else, unless one knows a considerable lot about that business. I use my clients’ products and services, and I like them. If I did not, I would not be able to represent them. When my clients profit because of my contribution, it’s a matter of great pride and thankfulness to me.
One of my favorite clients!
Freight, shipping, insurance, hospitals, digital signage, funerals, furniture, foods of all kinds, makeup, shoes, tattoo removal, yearbooks, counseling, plastic surgery, death, dying, marriage, children, parenting, teaching, crafts, toys, movies, pepper jelly, BBQ sauce, grilling, sewing, science, education, writing. . . and these are just the tip of my social media experience iceberg. If I majored in any one of these topics at college, I couldn’t have learned half as much as I learned in representing and writing for these businesses.
Sometimes I go to a conference to be a presenter; sometimes I go to a conference to be a learner. Either way, however, I learn. If one goes to a conference and pays attention at all, there will be learning. Ohhhh, yes.
That’s me on the far left, at BlogHer 2011. What a blast!
Excellent conference: BlogHer
As for this summer’s conferences on my calendar, I know that I shall meet some of the most awesome, knowledgeable people, learn an amazing lot of useful, fascinating things, and have a fantastic time.
I hope to see some of YOU there. That would be bloody awesome.
Dandelions, Wishes, and Fairies, Oh My
Mamacita says: I love dandelions. I will never understand why people will pay out the wazoo for lovely nursery-bred flowers to plant, and then pay out the wazoo for someone to kill the lovely golden blossoms that are already growing.
Dandelions: How are these not beautiful?
Is it because dandelions are so common, and grow so easily, that we take them for granted and prefer flowers that really aren’t all that much prettier but which are harder to grow, expensive, and are a bit less common? If dandelions weren’t sprinkled everywhere, turning plain green lawns into starry universes, common, easy, beloved by children, would they be more popular?
Whenever there are too many of pretty much anything, we tend to take them for granted and consider them less than first class. Take a look at our overcrowded classrooms, for example. But I digress.
If we examine each individual child flower, we will see that it is wondrously made, unique, adds to the quality of the universe, and is worthy of attention.
No florist’s creation will ever rival the Dixie cup with a few short-stemmed dandelions plunked down in it.
Nothing store-bought or paid-for will ever rival the dandelion even in its death, turned into a white fuzzy clock that will tell a child the time, according to the number of breaths it takes to blow all the fuzz away. And, of course, FAIRIES love to ride on the soft, fluffy achenes, granting wishes right and left. Every child knows that if you can blow ALL the achenes off with one breath, your wish will definitely come true.
How sad, to be a child without dandelions on the lawn, to have nothing but plain green landscaping that he can’t even play on because of all the chemicals, to have expensive blooms and blossoms that he can’t pick. How sad the house containing children but no Dixie cups of short-stemmed dandelions all over the countertops. My heart actually breaks over the thought of children living in a house where blowing dandelion clocks is forbidden, lest the seeds take root and ruin the “look.” No wishes or fairies dare come near such a domicile. There’s a big difference between a house and a home, and to people like me, who believe firmly in fairies, wishes, and stubby little bouquets in paper cups, a house has a green, chemically-treated velvety lawn, and a home has grass, sprinkled with tiny golden stars. And, if the children are especially lucky, lots of little purple violets, as well.
Dandelion clocks and wishes and fairies, oh my
I believe that dandelions are flowers, in the same way that those expensive hybrid roses are flowers, and every bit as beautiful, especially when they’re thrust in our face by a grubby little child, put in a Dixie cup, and placed where everybody can see and admire them.
Dandelions represent summer, and childhood, and the love of a little girl or boy for a parent, and a Dixie cup of stubby dandelions means more to me than anything delivered by the florist’s truck.
Put that Dixie cup on the coffee table between two cereal bowls containing floating periwinkle blossoms and catalpa blooms, and House Beautiful can go blow. I prefer the individual touch when it comes to home decor.
I also welcome the fairies. Heaven knows I can use all the wishes I can get.
What’s that? You’re afraid of the bees? Sissy.
Bread and Butter and Sharp Knives and ISTEP
Mamacita says: I used to cook and make butter with my students. I am reminded of those days whenever I run into former students from that class.
A while back, I ran into one of those former middle school student at Kroger’s. I recognized him right away, in spite of the beard, the wife, and the three little kids, but for the first time, I couldn’t remember a student’s name. This concerns me.
My mind’s eye could see him with the years stripped away, and I could remember where he sat and who sat on either side of him. I could remember things he did and said in class, and I could remember his handwriting and where he liked to sit in the cafeteria. I couldn’t, however, remember his name.
He said to me, “I bet you don’t remember me!” And I replied, “Of COURSE I remember you.” Because I did, even if his name was gone from my brain.
He said to me, “I will always remember that one thing we did in your class.”
I replied, “And which thing is that?”
“Remember when you read that olden-days book to us and they were always eating and making stuff from scratch, and you taught us how to make stuff? What I remember most was the butter. My kids and I love to make butter, just like you showed us in 8th grade.”
Homemade butter
The book was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy. It was perfect for a low-ability class of 37 14-to-17 year old students, all boys, who hated reading and honestly couldn’t see any connection between something in a book and the outdoors/ hunting/farming/mechanic/taxidermy/4H/cattle-raising lives most of them were already considered experts in.
Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
It was English class, but we cooked, and we whittled (GASP, how politically INCORRECT!) and we made sourdough starter and later we made bread with it, and we made pies and jerky and boiled candy (it’s just fudge or taffy) and jam. And about once a week, we made butter to go with our bread. I had a glass churn, but that was too complicated so we poured the cream into a big Tupperware thing and passed it all around the class and the boys shook it while listening to me read. I would read until the butter ‘came,’ and then the boys sprang into action. They poured off the buttermilk and squeezed the butter until it stopped weeping. They sprinkled just a little salt into the butter and kneaded it in. Then they all washed their hands and whoever’s turn it was that day sliced the bread and they all put napkins in their shirt collars and tucked in. We used KNIVES to slice the bread and to spread the butter. Heavens to BETSY.
I let my students wield a big bread knife!
I know that many of them were enthusiastic about this book because of the food, and they loved the food because all teenage boys love food, and also because these particular teenage boys were seriously hungry.
I loved those Laura Ingalls Wilder units. Other teachers criticized them because watching sourdough rise, and making butter, weren’t proper English lessons.
I maintained, and I still maintain, that anything we as teachers or parents do that makes learning come alive is a proper English lesson. Science lesson. History lesson. Math lesson. Life lesson.
I was sad when the principal forbade me to do this kind of thing any more. There really wasn’t time, anyway, what with all the ISTEP prep the boys needed to do. That was more important in the long run, right?
“Make your mark heavy and dark.” Might as well have the game as the name.
I ran into a grown man in a store yesterday who remembered those lessons and did them with his own children.
I’m sure he remembers and does the lessons required for ISTEP, too.
But I know for a fact that he remembers the butter.
