The Hive

Confession: I didn't take a single photo while I was in Berlin for The Hive The European blog conference. What kind of blogger am I?! I guess when you're surrounded by professional photographers your desire kind of dwindles. Needless to say, I snatched these suckers up from Lindsey and Ashley. Thanks for being on top of it ladies! I describe the weekend as being so weird at how unweird it was. I mean, I stayed with two bloggers (Rubi and Anne) who I had never met in person and I hugged each one upon arrival and we giggled the whole weekend. Weird! But it's like I knew them! Blogging creates this certain trust because you see and/or hear their voice every day. I felt like I was meeting up with old friends. Old friends who know what I do for a living. Novel! The weekend started with a lovely lunch at Lokal organized by Ashley of Chasing Heartbeats. I've been following Ashley's blog for some time now so she was one of those "old friends."

Rebecca, Anne, Rubi, Alex, Emily, Ashley, Lindsey

Onto the conference. There was a wide range of classes to choose from including a keynote from Gabrielle Blair from Design Mom on The Business of Blogging. That woman has got some special DNA. Mom of 6 kids living in Normandy doing her thang. I'm grateful took time away from her fam to teach us her ways.

Ashley snapped this one of my bag. I did, in fact, bring my raffle ticket biz cards and joked that at the end of the weekend I would pick one and that person would win my friendship. And the winner is...jk.

Bloggers love stripes! 

Ashley brought her little Hazel for show and tell. What you can't see in this is that one eye is blue and the one hazel. She's a cutie.

Ikea gave these out these cameras to the speakers and somehow I scored one too. I have yet to try it but my curiosity will get the best of me one of these days. Below, this is Jeanette Lund from By Fryd in Norway. We were brainstorming up, uh, a storm. She's the best. Plus, she looks and acts like my sister-in-law. A lot. Like the resemblance is uncanny.

At the end of the conference I got a tour of the childhood neighborhood's of Juliane of Froken Skicklig from and Toni and Thea, the Sister Mag duo (their energy is amazing!) who were both born and raised in East Berlin. You go to 10th grade world history and don't learn the things they taught me that day like how the Berlin wall wasn't just one wall in all areas. At parts it was 6 walls deep. Today there's a section of town where it's been turned into a grassy area and in the summer time it's plastered with picnic goers and even karaokers. The irony! Berlin is a fascinating history and I wish I could take a class on it. 

My takeaways from the weekend...collaborate with talented people and work with companies on sponsorships. Europe is still figuring out the power of the blogger so I predict more and more work large companies will realize our value and will want to work with us. Wink, wink.

There's even a little video about the weekend including a short interview from moi. Eeek! It's mostly in German. Alessandra, an Italian blogger who I've been following and I was so glad to finally meet did a a great recap here. Traveling Mama showed her beautiful roadtrip to Berlin with Anja Adores and I'm With Leia. Elise's is really great too. I loved meeting Nynke from Amsterdam. She had great energy!

Thank you Lindsey from Lost in Cheeseland and Ashley and Sister Mag for the pics! Bloggers who I'm really glad I got to meet (finally!) are found here and more about our awesome apartment soon but check out Rubi and Anne's posts.