7.15.2008

BlogHer Bound

Social anxiety, you can kiss my butt. I am really looking forward to BlogHer!

Firstly, I am speaking, on an absolutely amazing panel: Blogging About Our Children With Special Needs. It's on Saturday at 1:45, and you'd better be there. My co-panelists are goddesses of special needs parenting writing: Susan Etlinger, Vicki Forman, Kristina Chew, and Jennifer Graf Groneberg.

Two short high school stories outline how I feel about the company I'll be keeping:
I loved being on the swim team, because I was pretty good, and won a lot of events. I started to think that maybe I should take the sport more seriously. Then we went to a swim meet at a high school across town, and one of their swimmers shut down our entire team. She swam the 500 freestyle -- that's twenty pool lengths -- doing the incredibly strenuous butterfly stroke. That girl was Janet Evans.

I also daydreamed about being a singer in a ska band. (Not that I could sing.) One day, as a bunch of us sat outside the ASB office eating our bag lunches, a friend casually trilled a line from The Special A.K.A.'s "Girlfriend." Her voice was like an electric current. I exclaimed, "Dude, I didn't know you could sing!" She laughed nervously, put her head down, and went back to her lunch. That girl was Gwen Stefani.
The different between then and now is that I already know about the world-class talent of my co-panelists. Speaking with them will be an honor.

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I'll also be selling Can I Sit With You? shirts and books and giving away stickers during the BlogHer Swap Meet, Saturday at 12:15 - 1:30, in the Olympic Room (second floor). I get to share a table with Minnie, who may sign her story in your copy of Can I Sit With You? if you ask nicely. I might also have a nine-year-old assistant helping me hawk those wares.

P.S. If you're not able to come to my panel but so wanted to, here's what BlogHerista Elisa Camahort had to say:

[Panel] recordings will all be collected by our partner ListenShare, and then distributed via iTunes etc. We should get links within a couple of weeks of the conference and will post accordingly.

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4 comments:

  1. Go girl! Have fun and say the stuff we all need you to say. Your voice is not alone and it is nice to know, neither is mine.

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  2. you are on fire... and I am an idget for not going to BlogHer.

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  3. Jennifer my dear, BlogHer is not cheap. The BlogHeristas have done a great job in offering BlogHerships and creatively including those who couldn't otherwise afford to go. But if I hadn't been invited to speak, and wasn't local, I don't think I could have justified it, budget-wise.

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