So, this is the second part of my Cybher debrief and the last post ended just before lunch…
Lunch was…well, how do I put this? I found the food to be pretty mediocre. Some bland sandwiches, crisps in jars and not much else. The sandwiches were okay but they didn’t seem all that fresh and I was all that keen on eating crisps out of a jar that literally hundreds of other people had put their hand in. I know it’s not about the food, but I had hoped for better, given the price of the ticket.
During lunch, I had a mill about, got myself measured by the ladies at Freya and spoke to some people, as well as getting a sneaky peek at the rooms of the hotel, thanks to the lovely Laura (The Mummy Life), who let me use her loo and charge my phone! We were late down to the next sessions, which wasn’t too much of a problem as I wasn’t that into any of the sessions on offer straight after lunch. We went back into the main room and did a bit more milling (as well as me, furiously picking the brain of Jax, who is my new guru, about homeschooling!
I noticed, at various points throughout the day that the atmosphere at Cybher seemed very subdued compared to the atmosphere at last years Cybermummy and I do have a theory about why this was. Last year, from the moment we arrived, we had dozens of brands, vying for our attention, giving away freebies. People (myself included, to an extent) seemed to go into a bit of a frenzy for seeing how much loot they could collect, most of us had to decant things into smaller bags or leave things with the coat check to enable us to carry on. I also know several people who went to barely any sessions because they were too busy being courted by PRs.
This is by no means a criticism of either CybHer or the attendees, I would hazard a guess that Sian’s exact intention was to strip away the commercial maelstrom of last year and focus on content, which I admire greatly, but it did seem to affect the atmosphere. The content of the sessions was a vast improvement over last year but people didn’t seem as excited as they did at Cybermummy. Everyone loves a freebie, I guess.
As I said, I managed to miss the session straight after lunch, but for session 4 I attended ‘Is There a Book in Your Blog?’, which I found really informative, I love hearing about Violet Fenn’s site and thinking about niche writing. The final session was ‘Revamp Your Blog for Under £50’ with Peggy Poyser, which I think was my favourite session of all (did anyone else find it really cute they way she said about three sentences then said “Oh, I’m French, by the way. That’s what the accent is”!). Peggy gave us some brilliant tips and I think I’ve thought about the content of her session the most since the day, spending ages looking at complimentary colour swatches and background patterns!
All in all, I’m glad I went to Cybher, it was a great day which had far more positives than negatives and the whole Cybher team did an amazing job. When I got home, I told Husband that I probably wouldn’t be going to any more blogging conferences, as I didn’t think I had anything more that I could get from them…until I got my hands on a ticket for BlogCamp London that is!
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Really interesting to read your thoughts, I’m thinking about a blogging conference next year but it’s such a lot of money that I need to think carefully.
I was lucky that I managed to pay for the ticket with money made from advertising on my blog, but it was still a lot for what we got. I’m interested to see what the Blog Camp event in London will be like, given that it’s free.