Blurb

I flew into Salt Lake City on Tuesday, and after some plane issues (that sounded like a hacksaw through metal – ugh) we got in safely. It was a cruisey afternoon, after checking in I got out all my winter gear and decided to take the Trax (light rail/tram) the two stops to the City Creek Center, which is a shopping centre/mall but with outdoor bits to it. It was cold!! -6°C, which was the coldest I’d ever been out in.

But I got some food and finally found the tights that I had been looking for (who knew red tights would be so hard to find?!) and went back to the hotel for an early night. Wednesday I found the post office and decided that it didn’t look that far from the hotel so I thought I’d take the Trax one stop and then walk. This would have been totally pleasant had it not been -8°C at the time. My fingers hurt inside my gloves!

Eventually I got there, and had some issues with sending a parcel to Australia as I didn’t have a permanent US address and the price of postcard stamps is going up on a Monday. Not sure which, but definitely on a Monday. They seemed a bit frustrated that I wanted these international things, but as I’ve not been there before, I’m not totally sure how these things generally work.

In the afternoon it was time to register for the Altitude Design Summit, and to get ready for the Hello Social and for the first Alt event – the Wednesday night dinner!

Registering was easy and the people were nice. I got an Alt notebook and pen and there was some free hand sanitiser from Method, which was ace.

The Hello Social was at West Elm in the shopping centre, it was a mixer/ice breaker that was put on by a couple of the attendees who wanted to make the Alt first timers feel welcome. They had goodie bags and prizes up for grabs and there was plenty of time to meet some new people.

Lucky for me, the first group of people I met happened to be going to the same Alt dinner as me. There were lots of dinners, each hosted by a different sponsor and I chose the dinner hosted by Blurb Books.  The 3 ladies were from Target (USA) who were learning more about bloggers and the blogging community. They were really lovely and so friendly. We walked down to the restaurant early and waited in the warm for the dinner to start.

The Blurb dinner was great. The food was ok, but the chance to meet people and talk about our blogs in small groups, was just the perfect way to start the conference. I got to chat to Sam from Blurb about what I’m doing with this blog and some ideas that I have for the future. I gave her feedback on my experience with their books and how great it is to use.  (I got to make a book for Alt and I hope to be able to blog it for you soon!) I loved hearing about how their business is growing and about their different products. The magazines look so great!

I met so many lovely bloggers and got to hear their stories on what they do and why they do it. If you’re a blogger, you may know that it’s not always that often that you get to talk about your blog in such a passionate way and have people totally understand that and have their own story. I suppose it’s like any industry, when you meet your people, it just clicks.

As someone who is so prone to being overwhelmed by these things, it was actually really easy to handle and helped me feel ready for the first day of Sessions on Thursday having some familiar faces to say hi to. Sam and Brenna from Blurb were just the loveliest people, and made us all feel so welcome. I was glad to have chosen that dinner.

Day 1 of the sessions round up coming soon! Check my instagram @dannielle if you’d like to see pictures in the meantime.