Sunday 22 June 2014

My inspiring weekend at BritMums Live

I am inspired. I am invigorated. I am full of ideas. I am excited.  Why? Because I attended BritMums Live this weekend, a two day conference for the blogging community. This is good not only for my blogs but for my spirit in general.

As well as some wonderful keynote speakers, the days are split into lots of sessions with a variety of talks to attend on anything from podcasting to design, accounting to using your blog for change.  The latter session I attended on Saturday morning and, having already spent half an hour in tears, listening to Benjamin Brooks Dutton talk about Life As A Widower, I then spent another 40 minutes in tears listening to four speakers passionate about helping children. 

One of the speakers of whom I am a huge admirer was Camilla Batmangelidgh. Camila is the founder of Kids Company UK, a charity passionate about supporting vulnerable children in inner-city London. She's a larger than life figure, always dressed colourfully flamboyant.  I was a bit star struck when I was fortunate to speak with her afterwards. I told of of my blog and thanked her and her charity for the wonderful work they do and recounted the times when I worked in corporate when I arranged several volunteering days working with Kids Company.  A couple of the days involved painting murals on school buildings to bring some colour to the kids lives. We also painted a quiet room in one of the schools, with flowers and trees, whilst on another outing we helped organised art and cookery workshops. The people I worked for were privileged, most went to public school, they earnt a lot of money and lived in a bubble. I wanted to take them out that bubble and show them a different side of life. Half way through our volunteering days, a representative from Kids Company would explain what the charity was about and why these children needed their help. Some of  my colleagues were very moved; I honestly don't think they realised people lived like this in London, just a few miles from their bubbles. 


I was excited to hear Camila speak of a campaign to be launched next week called 'See The Child, Change The System' to bring about a change in children's services.  More about the campaign in a future blog.

Other highlights of BritMums Live included meeting Sarah from The Puffin Diaries and Vicki from The Boys Behaviour who together founded The Adoption Social. It's so lovely to meet people in real life, people who I 'know' well from SocialMedia Land.   The Adoption Social was up for a Brilliance in Blogging Award and although they didn't win, I think they should be extremely proud for being a Finalist. They have done an amazing job spreading the word about adoption.

I read a lot of adoption and fostering themed blogs but being at BritMums reminded me there are many other excellent blogs on other themes. I'm going to make time each week to get to know some of these other blogs and hopefully, in turn, I'll gain a few new readers who didn't previously know a great deal about adoption.

Another plus point from the weekend actually happened at home. I thought Missy may play up quite a lot with me not being there Friday and Saturday. I had talked to her about the weekend quite a bit, where I was going, what in was going, what time I'd be back so she was well prepared. I asked her to give me something of hers so I could think about her whilst at the event and she picked out a lovely photo of herself. I'm not a mum who has to give daddy a long list (or indeed any list at all), he's more than capable and it turns out they had a great time together. In fact I came home on Saturday to find they'd been strawberry and raspberry picking and had made two jars of strawberry jam! 

So, I now have a long to-do list filled with things to do for my blog and I can't wait to get going.  You'll find me at my desk tomorrow with a cup of tea and strawberry jam on toast.








12 comments:

  1. Great to meet you too! So glad everything was OK at home, what a lovely 'surprise' to come home to find all that fruit!

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    1. Thanks Vicki. I was mightly impressed with the jam. At least this weekend showed me I can spend a few more hours away from Missy knowing she is calm.

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  2. Camila is incredible, isn't she? I can't wait for the campaign to launch. I too came home with a renewed motivation for blogging and work. I normally head to All Bar One, but I just had to get home and get started last night!

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    1. And I thought your talk was excellent too. Made all the better by the tiara :-)

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  3. Glad you had a wonderful time and so comforting to come home and find the family have been enjoying themselves too.

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    1. Thanks Coombe Mill. It was a huge relief to find they'd had a great time.

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  4. Pleased to know you had a great time !

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  5. So glad you had a lovely time. I was sad not to come again this year. I went a few years ago and was the on,y adoption blogger there so it must have been wonderful to all meet up. Am hoping to come next year when Pip is old enough to leave and the house is all completed. So glad you've got lots of ideas.

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    1. It would be great to see you there next year Gem, more adoption bloggers the better :-)

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  6. I am gutted I missed this. Glad you had a great time.

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