Saturday 25 September 2010

The One with the Online Conference




Motherhood has brought about a whole new set of events in my life. 

Blogging being one of them and with blogging has come my association with British Mummy Bloggers (known furthermore as BMB - even though I blog I'm not the worlds most natural typist!)

So with an eye to increase my "traffic" (get me with the jargon), improve my content and make a bit of cash from this writing lark, I put my name down for an online conference, arranged through BMB, with a media company called Glam all about advertising on your blog.

Advised to log on 10 to 15 minutes before the conference started I duly clicked the link on the e-mail and from then on I was transported to a world I had no comprehension of before.

Various screens flickered in front of me. I clicked where I needed to click. Agreed where I needed to agree. Then I was taken to the screens of the presentation.

There was a small box showing volume and microphone and I remembered the e-mail said to un-click mute before the session started.

Now call me naïve but I thought that was so we could hear the presentation. I also thought it would be a recorded voice track to go along with the slides.

But I was wrong!

It was live. Completely live. All singing, all dancing live. I could hear Clare from Glam and all the other attendees and they could hear me. I just had to talk at the screen.

You may be reading this thinking “Duh woman I use this kind of technology everyday in my glamorous world” but this bit of kit was a revelation to me.

Of course being heard had its pitfalls!

For a start I was chomping through a huge portion of leftover spinach and ricotta cannelloni, which didn’t go unnoticed.

Then the boy woke up and wanted his lunch, so as proceedings got underway I was feeding him chicken and sweet potato gratin (if it’s got a cheese sauce on it, it’s a gratin).

Then Oscar rose from his slumber and miaowed constantly at me until I managed to secure his silence with a dish of milk!

The boy, now fed and watered wanted to play, so was pacified with a bright plastic toy and then the quietening miracle that is fromage frais!

Still through all this, I managed to make notes, follow what was going on, ask questions and generally get enthused about the whole project. And importantly it made me feel human again and not just Mum. This was proper grown up stuff. We learnt about Leaderboards, MPU’s and Skyscrapers. We talked about niche content, budgets and the difference between a PR agency and an Advertising agency. For a whole hour I didn’t think about nappies, baby food, formula or the best highchairs to buy!

Whether anyone noticed the pestering cat, slurping baby, Italian food munching chaos that is lunchtime in my house I don’t know. Maybe they were too polite to say?

Or maybe, just maybe, I can now do all these things whilst also maintaining a reasonable air of professionalism?

It seems motherhood has brought about a whole new set of skills with it too!


1 comment:

  1. Pretty darn cool, I say :)
    You'll have to give us the download.

    ReplyDelete