Okay, we’re getting to summer time and conference season is upon us. If you’re serious about growing your business, be it your Etsy business or overall handmade/creative business, then you’ve probably heard that attending conferences can be very helpful for learning and growing as a business person. It’s time to start thinking, if you haven’t already, about what business conferences for 2015 you might want to attend.
However, if you’re like me, for a variety of reasons you can’t travel to as many conferences as you would like to, so you have to pick and choose the ones you attend in person and spend your money on very wisely. So far this year I will be attending two business conferences this summer (and hopefully one or two more later in the year).
I picked the conferences based on areas I want to grow in professionally so the conferences I have selected to attend thus far are BlogHer (because I want to grow as a blogger and improve this website and blog for my site visitors), Podcast Movement (because I want to improve my podcasting skills and make the Etsy Conversations podcast even better than it is today), and Maker Mentors (because I want to grow and improve as a crafter, hone my crafting skills and improve and grow my crafting business).
So that’s my rationale for the conferences I have chosen to attend this summer.
How about you? What are you doing to improve yourself and your business? Are you attending any conferences?
No I know business travel is all deductible but that said, I don’t have very deep pockets so all that travel does add up which is why I also look for conferences that at least have a virtual component. That saves not only on travel expenses but also on lodging and food expenses. The down side is that I miss the one-to-one interactions that are so valuable at live conferences, but the upside is that I still get to learn.
If you’re a blogger, podcaster, or crafter with a crafting business then I would highly recommend all three of the above conferences and not just because I am attending (and by the way, if you attend any of these I’d love to meet you in person or virtually) but because they have either very proven track records of high value and high quality or the speaker lineup for the newer ones are solid successes in their own fields, and people I think I can learn a lot from.
BlogHer 2015 will be held in New York, NY from July 14th-18th, 2015. Podcast Movement 2015 will be held in Fort Worth, TX from July 31st-August 2nd, 2015. Maker Mentors is an online conference and will be held from May 14th-16th, 2015.
The BlogHer conference has been around since 2005 (though I just discovered it in December 2014 and this will be my first year attending the conference); Podcast Movement started last year and I attended and in a word, it was great! Maker Mentors is brand new this year and is the first live online conference for creative business owners.
I’m really excited about BlogHer because I attended a Meetup here in San Francisco where one of the founders spoke and after hearing her talk I just knew that I needed to attend BlogHer in order to grow as a blogger. In fact, I so believed it would be helpful that I also signed up to be a volunteer at the conference! I’m also excited about volunteering because it will help me to really get to know and meet other attendees, especially since I am such an introvert.
Not only will this be my first time attending the Maker Mentors conference but I am also mentoring at the conference next month. The Maker Mentors have brought together a pretty nice lineup of creative business owners to create this virtual conference experience for creative-preneurs.
NOTE: I will not be speaking at the conference, I will just be a mentor for attendees. This means that me, and other creative business owners will be available in the virtual chat rooms for attendees to ask questions to and get advice and input from. I believe there are about 50 mentors that will be available to attendees for the duration of the conference.
And if you can’t make it live, don’t fret… All of the content will be recorded so you can access it anytime.
As a mentor for this conference, I was provided a code for folks who want to sign up and get a $50 discount off the registration fee. That discount code is “CONVOMEVIP”.
You can learn more about this online conference here – Maker Mentors.
Please note: If you choose to sign up for the Maker Mentors conference using my discount code, I will receive a compensation fee for the referral. Thank you in advance, if you do! 🙂