Seeing that I was practically glowing upon my return, a real life friend asked if I got a good swaggy haul from the event. No, it was not that kind of thing. I mean, they gave us a nice branded laptop sleeve with a few Yahoo trinkets inside, but there was so much more to summit than swag.
I passed my bag on to Melanie, a local Motherboard member who was unable to make the trip, all while reassuring her that it wasn't a big deal that she missed out. I was crossing my fingers behind my back, you know in the way that makes it okay to lie, because really, the summit was fabulous.
We not only received a copy of The Yahoo Style Guide, we had a chance to pick the collective brains of its editors. The style guide is a thick paperback compendium of what one needs to know to write for the web. It's a must-have for any blogger that wants to go pro, though undoubtedly some of the lessons will disappoint: go for SEO-friendly titles instead of the clever turn of phrase ones, keep posts to 300 words. No wonder I'm where I am today.
Other informative sessions included the skinny on Yahoo! properties including Shine and Flickr, which I plan to start using thanks to the Pro Membership they gave us and my waning love for Whrrl (I wish they hadn't gone all location-based, society this and society that).
We saw an impactful presentation on cyber-bullying and got a chance to speak informally with a Nate and Victor from the Yahoo Accessibility Lab, which was really cool. Also, it made me feel guilty about every picture I've ever loaded without a description. Actually, I'm not even sure how to do it on Blogger; it's nice to know that Yahoo aims to make their content accessible to people with different abilities and physical challenges.
For a thorough recap of the sessions, check out Kimberly Coleman's Posterous blog. She took great notes and posted them all before I'd even packed to come back home.
Kudos to Amy Heinz, Jeanne Moeschler from Yahoo, as well as Stacy Libby and Nicole Rodrigues from Voce and the many "Yahoos" that made the Motherboard Summit such a wonderful event!
Yahoo covered my airfare, hotel and meals for this summit, but did not require me to write about it. My participation in the Motherboard is voluntary and unpaid. Okay, sometimes they send me lovely flowers. My husband never does.
Preparing for an "unofficial summit session" with Anne-Marie Nichols, Vanessa Druckman, Jennifer Perillo (provider of the sweets), Jessica Rosenberg and Ilina Ewen. I'll add links in later!
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