I’m sitting at the hostel now just killing time before I take the train back to O’Hare, so I will do a very simple recap on my trip and experience to the Windy City and my first blogging conference.

First, about Chicago:

• Chicago loves revolving doors. I found out it’s because of the wind. You can’t have banging doors and glass breaking on a regular basis. I guess that makes sense. I have a slight phobia of revolving doors. I am afraid of missing a gap and crashing straight into one of the ‘doors’ or miss the part where I exit and just keep going round and round, forever.
• Pedestrians matter not. I have almost been knocked down twice even when I was crossing when the little white man tells me I can. Apparently the law of the concrete jungle applies here (so Seattle is NOT a jungle). Aka, pedestrians jaywalk whenever and wherever. Very decadent.
• They eat hot dogs with tomatoes and the relish has an unnatural green to it. I stuck to mustard and onions.
• Giordano’s is the name of an Italian restaurant and not a clothing store (which is the case in Malaysia and Southeast Asia, except it’s called GIORDANO, without the aprostophe and S). The deep-dish pizza is AMAZING. Best pizza I’ve ever had, hands down.
• People working in the service industry here are not as friendly. They are not downright rude but most of those I’ve met are not as friendly as Seattle waitresses et al. Maybe it’s just the overall Chicago “I’m coo” attitude, I dunno. Just an observation.

Now, about Blogher07 I’ve made some of the concerns I have known at the Unconference at the session about future Blogher events so I won’t reiterate all of them here:

• A conference is what you make of it. I think for someone who has never been to a conference comprising of mostly women, much less for someone who has never been to a conference, period, she will feel immediately that it is like the first day at an all-girls boarding school, or maybe at an all-girls high school get-together. The anxiety with having to approach strangers, to make small talk, to talk about yourself because blogging is so personal, is very palpable. You almost don’t know what to do or where to sit, and those who seem to know what they’re doing, will stick with others who do. But gather enough courage to approach just ONE person, and you will have made enough headway to survive the rest of the conference rather well. It is really up to you to make the effort to get in there and mix it up, make friends and be heard. I understand this is not an easy thing for some - it is certainly not for me - but I GOT THROUGH IT. And even made some really cool new friends.
• I felt the sessions on global voices, the representation of the attendees were not global enough. The session on Blogging: A voice for silenced communities, they really should’ve had someone who had actively been silenced in the past to share their experience in their fight to be heard. It’s not easy I know to get someone to talk about these things, esp. someone from another country, but I’d suggested a video link for future conferences, which of course, is not cheap. I can think of so many Asian women and men bloggers who are more than willing to come to the US to talk about how it is to STILL live under a authoritarian regime and where blogging means having to face the threat of imprisonment and sometimes even torture on a daily basis, and not just general dissent or exclusion/inclusion.
• I felt there were too many tracks to choose from. Perhaps three would be good, and make the conference a three-day thing and an Unconference on day four. I was often torn between Art of Life and Identity tracks. Maybe just Art, Tech and Biz, or Tech/Biz, Art and Society.
• I felt the keynote on the last day should not have been a political figure (we had Elizabeth Edwards, wife of 2008 presidential candidate Senator John Edwards) esp. not when campaigning has already begun. It did not feel right.

I think the rest of the areas of improvement are not so important to me, but I’m not fussy.

Okay, have to run, plane to catch and everything. I hear there are delays en masse but it’s good to just check in and be done with it, right? See you guys back in Seattle!