I flew back from Las Vegas this afternoon and I’m finally at the point where I feel like I can write about my Blog World & New Media Expo experience with some sort of clarity.

First off, I have to say that the registration fee of $175 was well worth the money. The thing that pushed me to actually sign up for the expo was the fact that there was a sports blogging track (sponsored by SB Nation). After I saw that I was like I have to go to this thing or else I’ll totally regret it. And the fact that it was in Vegas was ya know very helpful. Vegas is so much fun.

For those that didn’t attend Blog World this year I feel sorry for ya. I met some great people and made invaluable connections — people that I probably couldn’t have met any other way. If you’re a blogger of any kind you should definitely go next year, I’m sure it’ll be even bigger and better next September.

I’m giving you the full rundown because basically this is my blog and I want to. So I arrived on Wednesday evening-ish and I found that my hotel, Renaissance Las Vegas, was just steps away from the convention center. This was perfect, it saved on cab fare and it was nice to be able to just go back to the hotel whenever.

Thursday was the first day and I didn’t spend much time in the exhibition hall which I kinda regret only because I missed out on a bunch of swag. I saw people with t-shirts, stickers, notepads, keychains, etc. There are tons of photos on Flickr.

Like I said before my main reason for going to this thing at all was the sports blogging sessions. I packed my “Who The Hell is Mel Kiper?” t-shirt in hopes of breaking the ice. It’s an NFL reference and if you have no idea what it’s about check out the Mel Kiper page on Wikipedia. Anyway, since I was the only girl in all of the sports blogging sessions I felt it necessary to prove that I knew what I was talking about. Thanks to Mel, well actually Bill Tobin, I met Jamie Mottram. Jamie works for Yahoo! Sports. He was incredibly nice and asked to take a photo of me and my Kiper shirt for his personal sports blog Mr. Irrelevant. Very cool.

Thursday night featured the Opening Night “Pajama” Party at the Hard Rock Hotel in The Joint. Seriously all you had to say to me was “free drinks” and I’m there. But the party organizers went the extra mile and added free food too. It was fun and a great opportunity to meet new people and do a little bit of networking.

>> to be continued <<