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Highlights from ProBlogger Event 2013 #PBEVENT

Posted By Darren Rowse 21st of September 2013 ProBlogger Site News 0 Comments

Images by Helen H and WonderWebby

Note: the Virtual Pass for PBEVENT 2013 is still available for purchase here.

It is hard to believe but this time last week, we were in the midst of our fourth annual Problogger Conference on the Gold Coast in Queensland Australia.

Darren and Tsh

It was an amazingly emotional, nerve-wracking and yet exhilarating couple of days – and by the end of the event we knew that we had created something pretty special.

People weren’t just talking about their plans for their blog. They were talking about how the event had inspired them to make bigger changes, and think on a much larger scale. It’s almost unthinkable that this is the same event I created in 2010 in a small hotel on the outskirts of Melbourne.

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Four years ago we had just under 150 attendees, all packed into a single room for a full day. We had 5 sessions, 6 speakers (5 men and 1 women) and attendees were around 60% male. We had dodgy wifi, packed everyone in (there was not a spare seat in the room) and while we had the excuse of only 6 weeks to plan the event it was fairly basic on many levels.

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This year we saw just under 450 people attend. We ran 3 streams simultaneously with a total of 31 sessions of teaching. 3 of our speakers were from the US (Amy Porterfield, Tsh Oxenreider and Trey Ratcliff) and two thirds of our 30 speakers were female. Not only that – this year 84% of our attendees were women!

Our attendees went into something of a frenzy of activity during the two days – they tweeted over 13,000 times on the #PBEVENT hashtag and they posted hundreds of instagram images too.

You can get a feel for the event from this news segment that was on the local news (not sure why they decided to caption me ‘Craig Rowse’).

We held the event at the amazing QT Gold Coast (one of the most instagramable hotels I’ve ever set foot in) and had some great support from Tourism and Events Queensland, Virgin Australia, Kambrook, Yellow Pages and some great sponsors in our Bloggers Market Place.

Friday night saw us hold a fun networking party that featured fire twirlers, Aussie animals (including snakes), Life Guards, photo booth, Austin Powers and much more. We also had special guests – including Aussie Actor and Singer Clare Bowditch, Samuel Johson from Love Your Sister and Aussie rules footballer Jonathan Brown.

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The overwhelming feedback from attendees this year was that it was our best event yet. While we know there are ways to improve we’re particularly excited to see bloggers implementing things that they’ve learned, collaborating and already asking what we have planned for next year.

Want to get a feel for the event from an attendee perspective? You’re in luck – attendees from this years event have been writing a mix of posts, both sharing tips and their experiences. Here are the highlights from the many posts that were shared on our facebook page.

Tips + Takeaways

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Changes

One thing I’m most proud of is how it helped people. Martine Oglethorpe said that the two days “summed up what a lot of us were thinking – “the importance of living in the now. Of not settling for something that doesn’t create memories. Of not letting the ‘haters’ beat you.”

Here are some of the ways it helped attendees change their perspective.

  • Janina Lear: As I have been blogging for around 5 years now I found that I know more than I gave myself credit for so rather than learning much new I came away feeling inspired to do more and to keep being authentic
  • Kellie Alderman: For me, it helped to crystalize, in my mind, how best to shrug off the legacy of legacy media and find a way of bringing what I love to do into a venue where people are going to be looking for it.

Community

I think Trevor young gave one of the best summations of our industry

It became obvious at the Problogger event that many serious bloggers in Australia are becoming fully-fledged content creators, community builders and mini-media enterprises in their own right – they shoot video and/or photos, some produce audio content via podcasting, and most are hyper-connected across social networks. They are telling stories that resonate with their audience, growing their following organically through word-of-mouth not only through their blogs but also social networks, and building their brands in accelerated fashion.

I agree – and I believe that the Aussie blogosphere is pretty unique with the sense of community. Here are some more incredibly kind words attendees had to say:

  • Dannielle Cresp:  It’s like being surrounded by hope and believers. I feel like I have a force field of people who have my back around me now. And even a few days later, this couldn’t be more of the truth. We all need that force field.
  • Pip Lincolne: If you hang out with the right people, all kinds of possibilities present themselves. Ideas spark all over the place and you can feel yourself being grounded and growing like a vine, all at the same time.
  • Kathy, from Yin Yang Mother: Problogger taught as much about making a life as it did about making a living. They didn’t speak of success as much as service. Of getting offline, which would seem to run counter-intuitive to being well-known online. Of collaborating and cooperating rather than competing. Of community rather than markets. Of win-win rather than take-all.  Of creating first, giving second, selling last. Of passion before profits (literally and always).

All up – it was an amazing couple of days on the Gold Coast (the highlight of my year in many ways) and since coming home I’ll admit to wondering around the house feeling a little lonely after having so many amazing bloggers to hang out with. I guess we’d better start planning for next year!

Looking Forward

Speaking of next year – our team is already making plans for 2014 and hope to build upon what we did this year.

If you’re interested to hear more about our plans you can add your email address below and we’ll make sure to send you an update when we have that information ready to share.

Grab All the Teaching from PBEVENT Here

This year we recorded sessions (audio) at PBEVENT and have collected up all the slides used during the two days. These are available as a Virtual Pass which is now available for you to purchase and listen to at your leisure.

Pick it up in the next few days and you’ll also get an invitation to join a live Q&A call with myself and my team in the coming weeks as well as a webinar with Jonathan Fields.

Thanks

The theme of this year’s event for me was one of realising what a lucky person I am. I am particularly grateful to have an amazing team work with me to produce PBEVENT. To Jasmin, Justine, Laney, Liz and Nicole – I’m indebted to you each and thankful for your hard work. Thanks too to Shayne for his advice, encouragement and support.

To our support team of room producers, social media team, volunteers, ushers – your positivity and spirit were infectious and helped make this a smooth running event in many ways.

To our speakers – both international and Aussies – I love this year’s line up. As I said at the event you not only were informative and inspirational – you are good hearted people who left us all better for the opportunity to hear you.

Lastly to our sponsors (particularly Virgin Australia, Yellow Pages, Kambrook), Venue (QT Hotel) and other partners (particularly Tourism and Events Queensland) – I appreciate the value that you added, the effort that you went to to be relevant and fit in with what we planned.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. I am very happy to see that everything went as planned from attendees to a strong line up of speakers who gave very informative speaches. I am looking forward to be part of 2014 plans. Thank you Darren.

  2. Awesome round up Darren. I’m so appreciative of the huge effort that goes into producing such a world class event. Can’t wait for next year.

  3. Great wrap Darren. I feel like I’m there again :)

  4. Awesome Wrap Darren! It truly was a world class event – and after being at conferences here and overseas with well over 1000 delegates, the fact that the food, speakers, schedule, entertainment and WIFI (the thing makes or breaks a conference) were all perfect (bonus points for icecream van) was a testament to the hard work of your team. Thank you so much for your hospitality – it was an honour to chat with you on stage and it was so nice to hear the speakers all speak so highly of you at the dinner on Saturday! And great to see some top bloggers around the world asking about and commenting about #pbevent. Thanks for mentioning my post! I finally got Day 2 up! One week later ha ha.

  5. Thank you – again – for being so generous with the content and with sharing the posts. Hoping to make it in 2014!

  6. Thanks for featuring my comment in your great wrap up of a wonderful event Darren.

  7. Fantastic summary, thank you. Makes me all the more jealous I wasn’t able to attend. Sounds like it was a very grounding experience for many with a lot of simple sound advice to ‘just be’ and live (and blog) authentically. Looking forward to seeing the plans for next year and being able to attend!

  8. Excellent post. it seems that you have enjoyed a lot in this event. :)
    Thanks

  9. Great summary post Darren – it was lovely to meet you and in hindsight, I’ve no idea why I had doubts about getting tickets. I guess I can blame my introverted side! Really had an amazing experience, can only say positive things about the entire event. And thanks for giving me credit and using my photos here – that was certainly a nice surprise this morning! :) – Helen

  10. Excellent!
    This event is so amazing, i’m really jealous with you.
    Hopefully i can join the next one.
    Thanks for your sharing.

    Stephan

  11. Great Post, i like this blog ProBlogger its so wonderful , thank s:)

  12. We can’t say it a simply an event; it must be called a compete training with imparting all possible knowledge of all the aspects of blogging and internet marketing. Really lucky are those who attended such an awesome event. We living miles and miles away from the venue just hope to get it maximum reports in days to come to learn as much as possible. Hats off to Problogger.

  13. The event looks awesome! Good going ProBlogger! :)

  14. I wish the video were longer… )

  15. Excellent coverage of the event you did in this post and very judiciously covered what you need to do and training part you left as a previlege for those who attended the event. Smart move but I hope a few glimpses of training we would be receiving from the blogs of those who attended it.

  16. Agghhhh! Where was this when I lived in Brisbane?? Any ProBlogger events coming up in Thailand?

  17. You are indeed a genius in this industry, i cannot believe what i have just seen here. I remain loyal sir.

  18. Always interested to go one of these conferences. Hopefully Problogger can come to Singapore.

  19. Excellent coverage of the event you probably did during this post and really judiciously lined what you wish to try and do and coaching half you left as a previlege for those that attended the event. good move however I hope many glimpses of coaching we’d be receiving from the blogs of these United Nations agency attended it.

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