EVO '11: A Weekend of Inspiration, Sharing and Friendship
Photo credit: Justin Hackworth
Last week, I spent three days in beautiful Park City, Utah at The Canyons Resort to attend EVO ’11, my first-ever blogging and social media conference. The full name of the conference is “The Evolution of Women in Social Media”, but everyone calls it “EVO” for short. The focus of the conference centers around how women use the power of social media to build their blogs, brands and businesses to connect with their readers, custormers and clients. It’s a non-stop, high-energy weekend filled with topic-specific panel discussions, hands-on workshops, networking, parties, learning and sharing. I loved every minute of it.
Photo credit: The Canyons Resort
EVO was created by Jyl Johnson Pattee and Rachael Herrscher, two of the most dynamic, intelligent and creative women I have ever met. Jyl is the co-founder of Mom It Forward™, an online social media community for women. Rachael is co-founder, CEO and publisher of Today’s Mama™, also an online social media community for women. Jyl and Rachael were the emcees for all the keynote presentations as well as the opening and closing night dinners, and they are just as engaging on stage in front of a huge crowd as they are speaking to you one-on-one.
Although the conference had a schedule, everyone was free to customize their conference experience so they could do as much or as little as they wanted. Since this was my first conference, I chose to attend the opening night dinner, three keynote speeches, one breakout session and two hands-on workshops. I get tired just reading that! All these activities were spread out throughout the weekend, so I never felt rushed and had plenty of time in my schedule to network, regroup and rest. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to people from different industries and backgrounds talk about how they use social media to grow their business, promote their brand and connect with their customers and fan base.
Photo credit: Justin Hackworth
I have so many adjectives rolling around in my head to describe the breakout session and two hands-on workshops I attended: eye-opening, informative, fun, engaging, inspiring, amazing, the list goes on… On Friday morning, I learned the basics of how to partner with and work with a brand and listened to the intelligent and passionate Alecia Dantico educate us on how to effectively work with an agency to get the most out of working with a brand.
That's The Canyons resort way down there. *gulp*
Friday afternoon, I took a beautiful (and slightly terrifying) first-time-ever gondola ride up a mountain to Red Pine Lodge where four of the most talented and inspiring professional photographers gave us insight into creating beautiful photographs, both technically and artisically.
MeRaKoh and her husband Brian Tausend encouraged us to slow down and experience what is happening around us before taking a picture, and we were challenged to capture a story in each of our photographs.
MeRaKoh
Photo credit: Justin Hackworth
MeRaKoh's husband, Brian Tausend, who taught me how to shoot in Manual mode.
The immesely talented Diane Cu and her partner, Todd Porter of the well-known blog White On Rice Couple reminded us that a camera is just a tool for capturing images and that our eyes are the camera first. They challenged us to discover our visual voice and to think about what message, mood and story we want to convey in each of our photographs.
Diane Cu
Photo credit: Justin Hackworth
Todd Porter
On Saturday afternoon, a large group of us headed to the gorgeous Waldorf Astoria hotel for lunch and a food workshop hosted by Bush’s Beans. There, Diane and Todd taught us the basics of food styling and food photography, and chef Jeffrey Saad gave us a fun and informative cooking demonstration before we broke into smaller groups to re-create the main course we ate at lunch. To say we all left the food workshop on a high would be the understatement of the year. It was beyond fantastic and Bush’s Beans was incredibly generous to sponsor it for us foodies.
Photo credit: The Canyons Resort
Recognize this guy? Jeffrey Saad was a contestant on Season 5 of The Next Food Network Star and is the host of United Tastes of America on The Cooking Channel
Upon arriving at The Waldorf Astoria, we were greeted by servers offering beautiful and delicious drinks.
Diane in styling action. Her talent and passion for her work blew us away.
A food photo I took using Manual mode. {Food styled by Diane & Todd}
Speaking of sponsors...EVO had some pretty amazing ones! Pepperidge Farm sponsored lunch on Friday, Bush’s Beans sponsored a fabulous party at Park City Mountain Resort on Friday night, and Together Counts sponsored a delicious BBQ up at Red Pine Lodge on Saturday night for our closing party. Some other wonderful sponsors included Aveda, Nature’s Path, Sesame Street, Southwest Airlines, and Huggies, among many others, all of whom generously filled our swag bags to the brim.
Bert & Ernie in the Sesame Street suite!
The Wishing Tree in the Huggies suite: guests were invited to write a wish for all babies on a card which they tied to one of the ribbons suspended from the branches of the tree. Huggies then matched every wish made with one package of diapers donated to a local Salt Lake City diaper bank.
I’ve saved the best part of the conference for last… As much as I enjoyed every aspect of this year’s EVO conference, the best part of my conference experience was meeting so many wonderful, talented and creative women. I have known several of them through the friendships I have formed with them on Twitter, but meeting them in person was the highlight of my weekend. Take a look:
Photo credit: Justin Hackworth
(L-R): Kelley & Alison
Photo credit: Justin Hackworth
The talented Helene Dujardin of Tartelette . I was thrilled to have been able to meet her for the first time. I've admired her food styling and photography ever since I started blogging.
I was so busy socializing all weekend that I didn't get as many pictures of my new friends as I wanted, but I don't regret it because I enjoyed every minute I was engaged in conversation with them. Be sure to check out their wonderful blogs because there are some seriously talented and wonderful women behind them. I feel blessed to call each of them my friend.
Cookin' Canuck by Dara
FoodieCrush by Heidi
Aggie's Kitchen by Aggie
The Whole Kitchen by Jenn
Completely Delicious by Annalise
Use Real Butter by Jen
Two Peas and their Pod by Maria & Josh
How To: Simplify by Jen
With Style and Grace by Lisa
I have to admit that I was slightly apprehensive about meeting people at my first conference. I’ve read several negative posts about how some conferences can get “clique-y”, making it hard for first-time conference-goers to establish new connections. Not at EVO. The one thing that stood out to me from Day One is that there was a total absence of ego at this conference. Everyone I met was genuine, sincere and interested in each other. I was touched when I would meet or be introduced to someone who reads my blog or has heard of my name. The entire conference was permeated with positive energy, fellowship and an abundance of generosity of knowledge.
On Sunday, July 10th, I wrote this as my status update on my personal Facebook page: Leaving EVO Conference enriched, inspired, joyful, grateful and fulfilled. I left feeling this way because of the abundance of generosity that so many people showed to each other. We were asked by Diane Cu and Todd Porter at our food workshop to “pay it forward” and help at least five people by sharing our knowledge, so I want to leave you with some of the most important lessons I learned at this year’s EVO conference:
- Be authentic and unique. We all have something important to tell the world.
- Do what you love and do it well.
- Find your creative voice and own it.
- Don’t take yourself too seriously.
- Have fun.
- Pay It Forward--share your knowledge with others who are just starting out.
Now go be creative!
Photo credit: Justin Hackworth
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I enjoyed chatting with you on the bus to the Bush's Beans Party. Your recap is awesome!
Flavia, it was such a pleasure to meet you in person. You did such a wonderful job of capturing Evo and all that it offered. I truly hope our paths cross again sooner than later!
This is a wonderful post, Flavia. You captured the flavor of the weekend so well. It was such a pleasure to meet you in person. You have such a gently nature about you that is so wonderful to be around. I look forward to when we meet again.
Gorgeous photos! Love the Bert and Ernie!
Amazing recap. YOU were one of my gifts that I took away from EVO. A pure joy. Loved these words, so true. "The entire conference was permeated with positive energy, fellowship and an abundance of generosity of knowledge. "
What a beautiful post, Flavia! Reading your words this morning makes me miss Evo so much...it feels both like it was yesterday, and like it was so long ago. I'm so glad we got to meet and talk and swap stories last weekend, and I hope to see you at Evo next year!
I love this post - the photos are absolutely gorgeous! I'm so glad you loved listening to Alecia at the brand panel - she is fantastic. :)
Great meeting you!
Oh my Flavia! This is my most favorite recap of EVO! Since I am a newbie on the blogging scene I am soaking all of this in. It really sounds like a wonderful time!
Beautiful post Flavia. Evo was such a happy place wasn't it? It's the only conference I've been to (other than Food Blog Forum event) and honestly, my experience last year was just as positive as this year. The ladies that run it really have a great vibe and I think it just spreads.
I'm so so happy to have met you in person, I'm glad we had some time together but I feel it really wasn't enough!! I look forward to getting to know you even more...and hopefully meet again in person soon. You are a sweetheart. Please help me with my Italian! :)
Grazie!