launch blogger conference 2019 recap

I recently attended Launch Bloggers Conference in Oklahoma City, OK! This conference was for Oklahoma Bloggers and Influencers and it was a short day conference at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. I attended for FREE thanks to the generous sponsors of the day.

Over the past few years I’ve decided to really lean into my hobbies. You might not know it, but sometimes I had a hard time being interested in all things internet. For the first year of OKC OVER EASY, everyone called my podcast a blog, and I never corrected them. HA. Other bloggers reading this will understand how massively different they are.

So when I became friends with Marisa Mohi via Twitter, we bonded over all things internet. We even had an idea for a Haunted Oklahoma themed podcast called Local Spirits that never saw the light of day. (Free idea for any listeners out there, have a custom cocktail and tell a scary story!) Last year we went to the Megaphone Conference in Fayetteville and it really lit a fire under me to take this hobby a little more seriously. That’s the magic of conferences!

So from the Oklahoma friends who are a part of the Megaphone community, we planned for a day workshop that honestly turned into a legit conference with the help of Cassie + friends. It was so fun!

MORNING

We arrived bright and early to Kitchen 324 for breakfast and coffee before the day started. It was there that I learned about the awesome Foodie app that works as a level for when you are taking overhead shots of food! We drank way too much coffee and I had the scrambled egg and pastrami sandwich, while we talked all things blog.

I drove my car over to the Museum of Art (too cold to walk!) and we got the day started. Melissa from the Polished Habitat gave a talk on how to organize your blog (and life) with Airtable, and it left the rest of us wanting to sign up immediately. (I actually ended up purchasing Melissa’s eBook and set up my Airtable this week. Being a Project Manager by trade, all the metadata has me swooning) Marisa Mohi also gave a talk about how to structure an editorial calendar and it helped me focus on the roots of my blog and all the content the readers want to see. I like to talk about food + booze, travel and of course – pets. It’s just nice to sit back and see everyone else’s processes and learn from them.

LUNCH

Lunch was so fun! We took the OKC Streetcar to The Halls Pizza Kitchen, where they along with Visit OKC provided lunch for all the conference attendees. I even snuck some of their Quinn’s Burrata and a chocolate chip cookie. Hall’s personally is a go-to for me, so I wasn’t surprised with the quality and the staff being so welcoming and accommodating. I already knew :). After we finished our lunch, we made the journey back to the streetcar and made our way back to the MOA.

AFTERNOON

We were lucky enough to have a representative, Sam, from Mediavine, who talked about ad placement on our blogs. To be a member of Mediavine, you have to have 25,0000 monthly sessions on your website. I am nowhere near that number, but it’s a really fun goal to try to achieve. Hopefully within the next few years I can get this blog up to snuff so I can start to generate revenue. All this time you thought I was making money, when I really just run my blog for the fun of it, ha.

After Sam from Mediavine spoke, we broke out into our different niches. Mine was FOOD, of course, so it was fun to chat about keywords, recipes vs. restaurants, pins and pinterest, and all sorts of other fun nerdy blogging stuff. Then, we had our giveaways (I won some cool wooden coasters and earrings from CM Customs!) and we were free to tour the museum! We spent about and hour looking around, and then some more time chatting and planning the next blogger excursion. I think all of us wished it could have lasted a little bit longer.

So that was the conference! A big thank you to all the sponsors that put on the conference and allowed me to attend for free: OKC Museum of Art, Visit OKC, Halls Pizza Kitchen, Grandma’s Lye Soap, Cassie Celestain, CM Customs Inc, the OKC Streetcar, Head Country BBQ, McAlisters, Glacier Confection, Mediavine and Kize Concepts. So excited for the next get-together to come!