I loved the first case studies presented at BlogHer Business, and the BlogHer 2009 Women in Social Media Survey was really interesting too, but by now I’m getting a little disgruntled.

  • Two hours and ten minutes of continuous talking from stage is too much. I was unable to focus after 90 minutes.
  • After two hours and ten minutes of continuous listening, it’s really disappointing to walk into the hallway and find no coffee and no snacks. I had to walk a block and a half to raise my blood sugar. (Mind you, I got excellent coffee and snacks once I got there).
  • The keynote conversation currently going on isn’t about blogging, it’s about how you can still sell stuff during a recession. And it’s going to last a whole hour. Also, the BlogHer program states that “”Sponsors do not pay for or influence session content” yet this keynote speaker (Lauren Zalaznick of Women@NBCU (iVillage etc) represents a company that’s an investor in BlogHer. So I’m paying $600 for non-blogging related keynote by a sponsor of BlogHer.
  • The current session will go on for 2 hours and 45 minutes before the next break.

People are starting to look rather bored in the audience. I suspect I’ll find BlogHer regular more fun – it starts tomorrow.

Update: The Tropicana case study is also about a promotion specifically conducted on the BlogHer website and on iVillage, which is, of course, also an investor in BlogHer. Great.

6 thoughts on “not so great aspects of blogher business

  1. Jill Walker Rettberg

    @buzzmommy I agree! Not enough breaks in general. I whined a bit on my blog here: http://jilltxt.net/?p=2402

  2. Melissa

    Good points. My behind hurts from sitting for so long. I think that a more breaks would really help break up the sessions and allow our minds to wander a bit so that we can focus on the amazing amount of information once the next case study starts.

  3. Jill Walker Rettberg

    I was glad that they gave us an extra 5-10 minute break before the final round-up! But yes, the case studies are so information rich that a bit of mind-wandering would have been very valuable!

  4. Elinesca

    @GraceD read this: http://tr.im/ub8u #blogher09

  5. Mir

    As someone who has attended every BlogHer Business conference thus far (all three of them), I’m raelly sad to see how many folks were turned off by this year’s version. (For the record, I wasn’t thrilled with it, either, but I have loved the conference in the past and hope they will return to a format more like they used to do.) Anyway, I’m still hoping that this year was an anomaly, and that people will give it another chance in the future.

  6. Jill Walker Rettberg

    I do feel encouraged to hear that it was different in previous years. Maybe I’ll keep an open mind about attending next year’s – but like this year, it’s only given a single (maybe a half) day in conjunction with the main BlogHer conference. I’ll wait to see the program.

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