A Blogging Guest Speaker... Who me?

So, tonight I carpooled up to SF with Lea McIntosh and Diane Phillips to attend a Bay Area Wedding Network meeting. Tonight's BAWN was special... I was more then an attendee, I was one of the featured guest speakers. My topic: Blogging.

If you want to start a blog or need some blogging tutorials please visit www.BestWeddingBlogs.com

The event was held at the Flood Mansion. For those unfamiliar with the neighborhood some of the steepest hills in the city are adjacent to the mansion. We arrived early and wanted to go to Union Street to grab a nibble and just hang out until the meeting began... But the steep hills and Lea's shoes were not a good mix, so the only solution to get us down the hill and back up again?

You got it. Lea called for a cab. LOL I couldn't believe we were taking a cab for 3 blocks.

We first went  to Spuntino, a small Italian cheese and specialty food shop. The staff was warm and friendly and the cheese? Oh my gosh! The Cave Aged Marisa was phenomenal. Seriously my new favorite cheese! We got some drinks and crackers to go with. I will definitely go back again the next time I'm in town.

Next we stopped in at La Boulange for some Macarons de Paris. I got a few, ok 5, to test. 

Our destination was The James Leary Flood Mansion. A big thank you to Gwen Helbush and Marie Rios for inviting me to be on the panel of guest speakers. I love encouraging others to blog so this was a great opportunity for me to talk to a large group of people all at one time.

The Crowd

The Goodies

Cakes by True Confections & chocolates by Coco Delice Fine Chocolates

Cake Coquette meets DK Designs

Before

A special thanks to MetMedia Creative Digital Video & Multimedia and Everything Audio/Visual for helping me to get set up with my presentation. Jonathan took the slide images I sent him and got them all set up into a power point presentation for me. And Everything Audio/Visual took care of the microphones we used during our presentations. Also a special thanks to Alan Helbush of, Where To Start, Inc. Technology Solutions, for running my slide presentation while I was talking so that I didn't have to :o)

During the Presentation

The topics for the evening were: websites, blogging and social networks. I talked for 15 minutes about why to blog and what a blog is. I hope the information was helpful. Several people told me after it was so that was good to hear. Among other things I tried to demystify blogging and tried to help the audience embrace that a blog is an opportunity to meet new people and to show them what you do, not an imposition that just takes time.

Afterwards we made a quick stop...

Ketchup, a study in light...

Always wanting to improve the quality of my blog pictures I have been learning how to manually adjust the lighting on my camera. Here the best image came from turning off the flash and overexposing the shot. Cool huh? Learning more about lighting while waiting for my grilled cheese sandwich. LOL