Posts Tagged ‘nutshell’
Dear ConAgra, Invite Me To Dinner
If you live in bloggingland like I do, you have heard about the dinner ConAgra did for some food bloggers. The New York times wrote a scathing article about it (however, I have yet to see one article in the New York Times that actually talks highly of bloggers). Basically, in New York (I think the location was their first problem. I can see this going over way better here in Chicago), ConAgra put a dinner on at a restaurant. They said it was a night out with a celebrity chef. For dinner, they had lasagna. It ended up being a Marie Callender frozen lasagna. Once told, some of the bloggers there were mad. In a nutshell, that’s what happened.
ConAgra invited foodie bloggers (now, technically, I could be considered a foodie blogger due to my cooking blog. However, foodies would actually turn their nose at somebody who recommends buying a can of pasta sauce for a casserole which I do all the time.). That is #2 where they went wrong. The bloggers they chose weren’t a good fit. You’ve got a busy mom blogger who has a food blog — heck yeah I’m going for a dinner. If I’m busy growing my own organic veggies, not so much a good fit. They also opened this up elsewhere, because people got invited from all over. Bloggers were able to bring people and/or give away tickets too (#3 of what they did wrong. As a blogger, I would have been a little upset to have misled my readers. They lost control of their invite list.) I also didn’t hear if there was any swag given away either. They also didn’t have an alternative menu for those who didn’t eat meat. Lastly, I can’t tell if they ask if anybody had dietary restrictions. (I add this because on of the posts I read complained about his wife being allergic to food dye and this could have been really bad).
Now, you may be wondering why I am an expert on this. Well, I’ve been invited to one of these dinners myself. Last year, I had dinner at Ben Pao that really was Wanchai Ferry. Did I throw a hissy fit on Twitter for my 25,000 followers? Heck, no. I actually used the coupons in my swag bag and I’ve bought Wanchai Ferry since. I thought it was a great idea and I didn’t mind having to drive to downtown Chicago (they covered the valet parking) and getting a free dinner with my husband. If you click the link above, you’ll find that we thought it was funny and would happily do it again. So ConAgra, I’ll happily have you send me some dinner 
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Helping Out and Updating
We had an awesome weekend this weekend. My sister and I promised my mom about 2 years ago that we would paint her living room and hallway. This had not been done in about 30 years, so it was well overdue. We finally had a free weekend, so off to Green Bay we went.
My sister had taped everything, so we could start first thing Saturday morning. The weather held out for us (it was suppose to rain), so the kids could play outside. My mom also wanted ceiling fans put into the bedrooms, so Bill took care of that. He also replaced their outside light. Needless to say, it was a pretty busy Saturday! The paint color my mom chose looked brown on the paint chip, it even looked tan in the paint can. However, once we got it on the wall, it ended up looking like the color she already had (just fresher and newer now!). That was a tad bit disappointing. After we were done painting (and letting it dry), Bill realized how old their outlets look. We ran to Menards real quick and got new outlets and trim plates. Bill hooked those up for them too! To finish off their new living room, Kari (my sister) and I bought new curtains and a new curtain rod too. We also rearranged their living room sofa sets. Now, they don’t have contemporary sectionals or even a sleeper sofas. Instead, they have just a plain couch, 3 chairs, and 2 endtables. All in all, I think we were able to freshen up the room and bring it into the 21st century!
I also fixed up their flower garden. This was a project I started last summer and half of what we planted didn’t come back this year. I again went to Menards with my mom and we picked up some new plants. With some help from my dad (he dug the holes), I planted to the new plants and am crossing my fingers they take this year. It has rained since we left, so that can only help them!
That, in a nutshell, is how we spent our weekend. How did you spend yours?
Related articles
- Choosing The Right Sofa (mythoughtsideasandramblings.com)
- Seasonal Changes (mythoughtsideasandramblings.com)
- Time Flies When You Are Having Fun (mythoughtsideasandramblings.com)
Izeafest – Day 2
We learned on Day 1 that we had to get there bright and early to make sure that we got a plugin for our laptops. Without that, day one didn’t have a lot of blogging or twittering going on. Well, at least not from me. Day 2 started with a keynote speech from Merlin Mann. I have to say that it was one of the best keynote speeches I have ever heard. His speech was about “don’t be a dick”. Everything he said was true. He even asked the audience to disagree with what he said, but no one did, because he was right.
The next panel was Social Network and included Michael Brito, Sean Bonner, Etan Horowitz, and Lena West. This was another panel that really wasted my time. First, we had Lena West stating that she was too busy to actually do it herself. My first question was then why are you on this panel? Then she managed to offend half the room (google: Lena West and mommybloggers to find out why. Trust me, there was no
airbrush do over. The more she tried to explain herself, the worse it got). They pretty much said to use Twitter and Facebook. Umm, yeah, knew that already. Now, tell me how to use them to help me, because I really don’t get Facebook at all. There are also dozens of social networking sites out there — and nobody even mentioned them.
Next, there was Loren Feldman. I love Loren Feldman. He speaks his mind, and he makes awesome videos! It was almost breathtaking to hear what equipment he uses. We learned that you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to do good videos on your blog.
Next, we had the plug-in panel with Loren Baker, Jonathan Dingman, and Erik Hersman. This was definitely cool, because I learned I am using a lot of the wordpress plugins that I should be!
Last, there was the Blog Design Makeover Panel with Scott Allen,Matt Blancarte, and Christopher Schmitt. My only complaint with this is that they were very rushed. Also, the designs were nice, but way out of the price range of us normal bloggers.
In a nutshell, that was the conference. I have one more post about the IzeaHunt that we did, and that will pretty much summarize the conference. Would I go again? I’ll be honest — I don’t know. It is a lot of money. Did I learn things? Yes. However, does any of it help me to monetize? Not really. I really thing they need to have breakout sessions, and you can pick and choose what sessions to go to. That way, you can reach the middle ground bloggers and the beginning bloggers. What I found lacking was that none of the big name big money bloggers really told us how to get from middle group to up on top. Telling me what you are doing now really doesn’t help me all that much.
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