Following on from Monday’s exposé of Passover, I’m not going to tell you how many corners I cut for Passover. I told you how it’s meant to be and that’s what so many people actually do, whether you do some or all it is exhausting as it’s on top of all your regular cleaning and work. I’ve been trying to continue on with my regular website stuff; including sales and writing as well as adding in a conference the previous week.

The conference was great fun, run by Digital Parents I originally didn’t think about getting a ticket as I don’t consider myself a mummy blogger (I don’t consider myself a daddy blogger either but that’s a different story) so I didn’t do all the normal things I’d do prior to attending. It was only a few days prior to the conference that a friend offered me her ticket. Poor Vanessa has not been well and found she wasn’t up to travelling into Melbourne for the Digital Parents Conference 2012 (#DPCon12). I took a photo of her, stuck it to some cardboard and then to a ruler so I could take her with me, introducing her as my dancing partner people welcomed her and wished her well.

The conference itself started with an expo where you could drink as much coffee as you needed and then start viewing the sponsors’ booths. They were there to get as much exposure as possible and hopefully talk to everyone. I was not entirely in their target market so there were a couple of booths I didn’t take in fully but I did haunt the Dyson booth and hope to be lent a vacuum cleaner for testing which I’ll review on my other blog, Dyson has a reputation for good vacuum cleaners and I’m eager to see how it measures up to my current one. HardieGrantEgmont were giving away books for people to blog about and I managed to get two of the three books in the young adult range, the other was romance so I left it for someone else, most of the books were picture books or Enid Blytons such as The Wishing Chair so I left them as well, I do hope to get more books from them in the future. I mostly bypassed the Macleans stand and the Disney stand as they were targetting the pre-school market. Spent a bit of time hanging around talking to the Red Cross people, there was no-one there when I went but people followed me, I can’t give blood for a while as my iron levels are too low but I chatted with them anyway. I took Vanessa with me and introduced her to whoever I spoke to, including Darren Rowse of Problogger, he’s running another blogging conference in October and this is a must attend so I’m saving my pennies.

I spoke to as many people as I possibly could, I gave out business cards and accepted business cards. With 180 people in attendance it was challenging to speak to everyone and I didn’t manage it, next time I plan to speak to more. If you’re a blogger there are three conferences in Australia that should be on your radar, google them and check them out. Nuffnang in Sydney in June, Problogger in Melbourne in October and Digital Parents. I’ll definitely keep you posted on the books, I’m reading one now.