Blogst Conference 2013

Hello everyone! Wow, this was an amazing weekend! I've been to the Blogst conference for DaWanda and had an absolutely fantastic time!
Have you ever heard of Blogst? It's a conference for bloggers who want to get to know more about topics like photo editing, SEO, social media, DIY, cooperations, etc., but most importantly, it's an amazing networking opportunity.
The conference was again lovingly planned and organized by Ricarda of 23qm² Stil and Clara of tastesheriff who carefully chose clever, charming and interesting speakers and acquired great sponsors who help financing the conference and provided awesome goodies for everyone.
DaWanda was one of the sponsors and since I was super sad about having missed buying a ticket before the conference was immediately sold out, I was even happier when my team leader asked me about coming with her for DaWanda, yayy!

The conference took place in Essen at the Unperfekthaus where we had a whole floor for all the laughing and chatting ladies (and few gents), it sounded like in a huge bee hive. :D
So funny, I felt a bit schizophrenic, like a double agent on a mission: I was mainly there because of my job at DaWanda, but of course I also met many Luloveshandmade blogger friends and am rather known for my blog than for my job at DaWanda. :) It was funny to try finding a good balance and connect both sides. :)
During the last few weeks, I have been planning our booth for this event and my job during the conference was taking care of it and providing the visitors with information about DaWanda, giving them funny sticky tattoos with DaWanda-icons for a competition and taking photos of all the lovely bloggers in our photo corner. :) Do I still have to make clear that I love my job? :) 
The hall was filled with inspiring people and on the right photo you can see the two founders and organizers of the conference. Thank you again, it was such a pleasure and I enormously appreciate the work you did! :*
Aren't our DaWanda photobooth props the prettiest?
It was so nice meeting all those great people, here you can for example see Johanna of Pinkepank and Julia of mint lametta. :) // Among all those great lectures and presentations there were some people which especially touched me and Juli of heimatPOTTential and VOLL TOLL was one of them. She talked about the relevance of blogging and how much it is an emeotional matter and that you should only blog about what you love in order to be relevant! She made a little video which includes what blogging means to some of her fellow bloggers, I'm also part of it. :) You can see the video at the end of this blog post. :)
In between, I took a little break to walk around. Being with nearly 200 chatting ladies is awesome, but can also be a bit exhausting. ;)
Lucky me, my hotel room was on the sixth floor and I had a breathtaking view! Too bad I didn't have more time, I'd have loved to explore the Pott a little!
Right photo stolen from Anna (Anna Sterntaler). :) After nearly one year, it was super lovely meeting my sweet blogger pal Katha of kathastrophal again. :)
Moreover, I also hadn't seen my lovely pal Vivi of Piepmatz for nearly one year and I was so happy about seeing her again! :) // Do you like Igor of Happy Interior Blog's sticky tattoo as much as I do?
Grrrrr with Fee (Fee ist mein Name) & Stef (Magnoliaelectric). :) // Vivi, Sarah (Erdbeerwald), Anna (Anna Sterntaler & DaWanda), Katja (Mädchen mit Herz), Stef & Nadine (dreierlei Liebelei).


The Backbube (= Baking Guy ;)) won our Instagram sticky tattoo challenge and I was sooo happy seeing Stef again. :*
These are our super pretty goody bags.
Lovely Bine (was eigenes) & Andrea (jolijou). :) Such a flattering moment: I felt so extremely honoured when Bine and Andrea showed my social media channels as example for a good virtual indie business identity. :) Yayyy!

Aren't they great, those DaWanda sticky tattoos?
The ladies from IKEA also had a booth were you could print out your Instagram photos of the conference and embellish stationery from their paper shop.
Photo stolen from Juli. :) :* // It was a super long weekend filled with laughter, chatting and tears (of joy and emotion) and a lack of sleep. :) On Saturday evening, there was a great party with lots of dancing and jerking around and on Sunday in the the afternoon it was really hard to say good bye! 
Wow, Christmas in the middle of November! After I came home, I unpacked all the great goodies (and my shopping scores from HEMA) and it was nearly overwhelming. :)

Even two days later, I still feel Blogst-sick and miss all the people so much! It's unbelievable that most of those 180 people only know each other because of the Internet and because of their blogs and that so many real friendships have developed out of those networking connections. Breathtaking! I still get gooseflesh when thinking about this!
I'm as happy as one could be and so excited about and thankful for all the opportunities that blogging has given me!

Thanks for this wonderful weekend, can't wait for Blogst 2014!
Lu

P.S.: What has really touched me to tears is the following video by Juli! Visit her blog to read her blog post for the story behind it!