Hey there!  Hope you had an excellent weekend!  I just got back from FitBloggin in Portland, Oregon.  It was AMAZING!  It totally fits with my theme of #SummerofFitness! This was my first time at a blogging conference and let me tell you it was WORTH the time and money.

Here’s a rundown of what went down, what I liked and didn’t like.  If you want the cliff notes version, check out these three things:

IntenSati

Zumba

LiveBlogging for Reebok

What Went Down

Here’s what went down at FitBloggin!

Thursday night-  Arrival, registration and meet people!

• This was my first chance to meet other bloggers, brands and just generally get my name out there.
• I met a ton of great people here, including some bloggers I’ll definitely follow and hopefully some that will follow me! 🙂

Friday-  The real stuff begins.

• We started the day with two workout classes:  Reebok Cardio Dance and Zumba.  These were MY sessions!  I was psyched to rock it out with Cardio Dance and Zumba.  Cardio Dance was actually IntenSati, which is a little bit more like kickboxing with affirmations.  It was actually a lot of fun and it was something on my list to try so I’m excited we got to do it!  Zumba was AMAZING!!  I LOVED it!  The instructors were all awesome and the energy in the room was out of this world!  I was particularly excited to have Gina from The Fitnessista teaching a song.  I love the videos  on her blog so it was super fun!   And she is super nice!  OH!  And I almost forgot to mention that I got to go up on stage with BrooklynActiveMomma and krump it.  Hell yeah!!!!!!
• We got down to business with the blogging sessions.  I learned so much about getting paid as a blogger, things I need to do to drive traffic to my site and improve my page rankings and creating a media kit!
• I attended my LiveBlogging Session!! Heck yeah!  Check me out on Fitbloggin’s site and find out more about Picking the Perfect Shoe!
• I met more bloggers and had a blast!  I was exhausted by the end of the day though!

Saturday- I was so tired, I just had to sleep in a bit!  But once I got going, it was Day 2 of networking, schmoozing and learning!

• Holy moly!  I tried CrossFit.  I was incredibly nervous for this workout because CrossFit just looks really intense and the girls always look jacked.  Well, I have to say it was not that bad and the instructors were pretty awesome.  The main instructor, Matt, was incredibly motivating and he is a recovering attorney like me so we had that in common!  It was actually kind of similar to my workouts at The Fhitting Room and As One.  I just wish it was a little bit longer so I could’ve gotten a little bit more of a workout.
• Free time!  Heck yeah food trucks.  Check back for more deets on that golden nugget.
• Afternoon sessions.  I think the most valuable sessions for me was How to Make Money Blogging and How to Create a Media Kit.  Seriously answered my burning questions in life.  Erica from EricaDHouse is a blogger I read and she did a great job presenting How to Create a Media Kit and she kept it real!  Also, she was super friendly.
• Saturday nigh- Goodbye reception!  This honestly would’ve been a lot more fun for me if 1) I wasn’t dead tired!  and 2.)  I didn’t have a 6 am flight on Sunday.  C’est la vie.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like

Overall I rate this conference A+.  I loved, loved, loved it!  Although I still see some room for improvement for next year, which I will be sure to attend.  Here’s the Hot list and the Could Get Warmer List.

HOT

• Zumba-  Hell yeah!  I LOVED this!  This class was like an ice breaker itself.  The energy in the room was amazing!  Everyone had such a good time.  I think there should be two Zumba sessions because it was such a great event!

• The Sessions- Especially “How to Create a Media Kit”, “Getting Paid versus Paying Blogger Dues”, “Making Money With Your Blog” and the “Writing Lab Workshop”.

• Having some time off to explore the City.

• The sponsors!  Awesome sponsors, awesome swag, awesome energy!

COULD GET WARMER

• A lot of the sessions I wanted to attend overlapped.  For instance, “Improving Your Blog through SEO” and “Getting Paid versus Paying Blogger Dues” were at the same time.  I felt like a lot of the informational sessions overlapped and the more discussion based sessions (aka “When You Have A Lot to Lose” and “Tackling the Taboo of Therapy”) also overlapped.  Similarly the workouts were all back to back.  I would have appreciated spreading things out a bit so the information sessions didn’t overlap and I could maybe spread my workouts out a bit more with one in the afternoon and one in the morning so I wouldn’t be so exhausted after the classes.

• There were A LOT of newbie bloggers who could have benefitted from a basic blogging session that discussed things like: Blog Design, Writing, Basics of Using WordPress/Blogger, Top Plugins to Have and Why, *How to Get More Followers*

• As far as the sponsors go, it would be great to have more formal information on how the attending bloggers could work with them in a paid capacity.  I love all their swag but we were all there to learn how to grow our business and I think having more of that connection would be beneficial.

Again, these are all suggestions I have, I still thought the conference was amazing!

Also, I want to give a shout out to the following bloggers I met and were super nice!  Hey guys! 🙂

• Andrea@IRunForDonuts
• Dani@RunDaniellaRun
• Kelly@NoThankstoCake
• Amy@ItsAllAboutheJourney
• Sarah@WillRunForPasta
• Lindsay@RunWithTongs
• Laura@JoyfulShimmy

Also, my two sponsor ladies!

• Katie from Taffy Activewear
• Melissa from Jaybird Headphones

Coming Up on MyOwnBalance:

• Check back tomorrow for tips and advice for attending blogging conferences!

• Vacationing in Portland- Check out my weekend!  I’ll tell you what we did, where we ate and where we stayed!

Readers, did you got to Fitbloggin?  What did you like?