I’m REALLY thrilled to be finally telling the book blogger community about this! I’ve been tasked with organizing two of the panels at the BEA Blogger Conference this year. I’ve put together the topics, chosen a few speakers, and now I need help finding the last few people for these panels. That’s why I’m turning to YOU!
You might be the perfect person to join us on stage at the conference. Or, if not, you might have the perfect person in mind that you can nominate. Either way, I’m hoping you’ll help me out!
Each panel is going to be 40 minutes long. After that we’ll have 10 minutes of live question and answer, and then another ten minutes to linger, chat, and swap business cards.
I’ve created two application forms: one for each panel. You can either “apply” for the panel yourself, or you can nominate someone else and then I’ll get in touch with them to see if they’re interested. From there, I’ll read through all the entries and choose the people I think are best suited for this panel.
Whoever is chosen will receive a complimentary pass to the conference (Wednesday, May 27th) and BookExpo America. But you’ll be responsible for your own travel/accommodation if necessary.
Optimizing your WordPress Blog
This panel is aimed at bloggers who are on WordPress, have been there a while, but feel like they may not be using it to its fullest. We’ll go over how to make your WordPress blog the best it can be to attract followers and engage readers. From must have plugins, to SEO, to security concerns—we’ve got it all covered.
By the end of the panel, everyone who attends will leave with bucket loads of WordPress knowledge. They’ll probably just want to skip the rest of BEA and run home to work on their blogs (hardy har).
Who I’m looking for
So far I have one lovely blogger joining me on this panel, Cialina from Muggle-Born.net. I’m looking for one or two other bloggers to present with us.
You don’t necessarily have to be a total WordPress guru to join; you just need to be comfortable with WordPress, know your way around at least one of the topics we’ll be discussing, and be able to teach that topic to other people.
Here’s a list of things I’m looking for. Again, you don’t need to know all of these, but there should be at least one thing you feel comfortable enough with to teach it to someone else:
- What the best plugins are for book bloggers, why, and how to use them.
- How to search engine optimize your WordPress blog.
- How and why you should back up your blog.
- How to protect your blog from hackers, and why it’s necessary. I’m talking about specific steps you can demonstrate.
- What steps you can take on WordPress to increase your followers/reach.
Are you ready to present?
If you think you have what it takes, or know someone else who does, please get in touch by filling out this form:
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Going Beyond Blog Formatting
This panel is super exciting. It’s a 201 (maybe even 301!) panel that’s aimed at more advanced bloggers who want to take things to the next level. We’re going to be teaching actual coding during this panel! Isn’t that awesome? You’ll get to enhance and customize your blog by learning advanced formatting with HTML and CSS. We’ll show you how to create more dynamic post layouts and make those blog design tweaks you’ve been dying to do for months!
Who I’m looking for
So far I’ve partnered up with Hazel from Stay Bookish and Stephanie from These Paper Hearts. These two lovely ladies are prepared to kick some serious coding butt with me. But I think we could use one more blogger up there with us.
This panel is not specific to any one platform. All a speaker needs is strong knowledge of HTML and CSS. One of the goals of this panel is to teach everyone how to perform their own tweaks to their blog. That means inspecting elements, changing fonts and colours, creating their own blockquotes, and formatting posts in non-standard ways. So if you’re confident in your HTML and CSS skills, we’d love to have you!
Are you ready to present?
If you’re interested in joining, please fill out this form:
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This is cool. Makes me even more excited for BEA this year!
We’re going to work hard to make these panels super awesome! 😀
Wow, it’s so cool that you get to be involved in the planning process!! These topics sound so interesting too – I wish I could go to BEA. I’m thinking about going next year though!
Aww, bummer that you can’t attend this year! I’ll see you there in 2016. 🙂
Totally looking forward to the update on this event. Too bad I’m from Singapore 😀
Aw!
I’m hoping to make these panels super awesome. 🙂 🙂 The other awesome ladies and I have some planning to do!
This sounds amazing, Ashley! I would die if I had to speak to so many people, though, even though I want to do it. But that’s only possible if I could teleport.
Brb, I’ll go code a teleporation device.
Ah, I wish I could come, but I can’t afford it, because I live in Germany. =/ Maybe someday! It sounds like you have some awesome stuff planned that’s really going to be helpful to bloggers. 🙂
Yeah plane tickets are really expensive!! 🙁
I really want to go to the Blogger’s Conference at BEA, but I highly doubt that I’ll be able to go because it’s during a school day. Why can’t it just be on the weekend or something? *pouts* Those panels seem wonderful, though, and I hope you find the right people to help you with them. If I do go the conference I would be most excited for the coding panel. I don’t know much about HTML or CSS, but I’ve worked a ton with the Arduino language, Python, and a little bit of Java, so I really love coding.
I’m sorry you can’t attend, Anna! It would have been wonderful if you could. If only you could take the day off school. 😀
The year I decide to miss BEA is the year the BBC sounds awesome. Figures!
Are you still looking for people? I might have a couple in mind for you 🙂
We have all the speakers now, but thank you. 🙂