I am still trying to come down from the high of being at the Dad 2.0 Summit. Writing about it is helping a bit, but it is pretty difficult to be around this much positive energy and not miss being able to talk to amazing person after amazing person. I met a couple of people in person that have inspired me in the past, one of them was Dooce, or Heather as I feel I can call her now since she was gracious enough to have a couple of conversations with me and I got to tell her about my wife having the same name as her.
I have met prominent video bloggers before.
Watching the pvp finals with @SwiftyiRL pic.twitter.com/fOyLHHiivC
— Logtar (@logtar) November 10, 2013
Swifty has 80K plus twitter followers and if you combine his youtube channels we are talking 100K plus reach easily. Sure it is the video game world, but sponsorship and views have kept this guy in the front of many people’s monitors. I did not expect him to be as down to earth and approachable as he was. No ego, just a dude enjoying his life and trying to motivate others to work out and play video games while having some fun.
It is kind of surreal to see people’s faces that you have seen on twitter or facebook walk right pass you. You obviously don’t know them and they don’t know you but it was interesting how approachable some of the biggest names were including Dooce. I introduced myself and thanked her because being in the blogging world 10+ years she has been a source of inspiration in many ways. She was gracious and we had a conversation.
The second day in the conference I waved and she actually stopped and asked me how things were going. She really owes me nothing as a fan but like so many of the big time bloggers I have met before she engaged me and was vary gracious. I was nothing but surprised when I hear rumblings of people not being too happy with the panel that she was a part of.
Evaluation of my performance at #dad2summit: "Mom blogger comes to take a shit in the middle of the floor at dad conference."
— Heather B. Armstrong (@dooce) February 20, 2016
This is when I start to lose my patience with people. I see this quite often, people really are waiting for a reason to be pissed. A reason to return their food and unload on a waiter that did not even cook the meal. I am sure some people have been blogging for 10+ years… or maybe not. I don’t know many people that like her made a career and newsflash people there is bad with the good. Blogging and being public is not easy, it has many lines that you cross in good faith and then are hurt by. Which is why I am so surprised when people that have that level of reach are still willing to talk to fans and engage at that level.
But really, it went more like this #dad2summit https://t.co/mETu1doQjN
— Heather B. Armstrong (@dooce) February 20, 2016
People that are so negative seem to at times be self important and not realize that when someone with experience shares a point of view, they are saying “hey this sucked, maybe you can watch out for it.” In the end I have had so many experiences that affected my blogging in a negative way that having someone point out the land mines is not a bad thing.
One regret I do have from the conference is that one line that I am having a hard time deciding on is how much of “tiny tyrant” my daughter, do I want to involve in this crazy world of blogging. I got some passing conversations but not a true engagement on that discussion which I think is important.
Interestingly enough the semi famous people that I have run into with a reach that is probably not as impressive as some of the ones I mentioned above; were the ones that walked right past as the avatar they wear online. I guess I will just swipe through those.
Word of caution though, don’t judge people until you have actually approached them and they totally blow you off. You are responsible for at least that first step. If you don’t take it, then the blame is squarely on you.
