SoFabCon: Worth a Cancelled Flight & Lost Luggage

Sitting at the Dallas airport Friday’s with my pal Kerri @_themaven, we toasted our SoFabCon adventure about to begin. I was fortunate enough to win the trip from the conference because of this post and was so excited for the adventure. Fifteen minutes later and the American Airlines mobile site said our flight was cancelled. A large airplane to Northwest Arkansas grounded because of lighting storms and tornado warnings. Other flights cancelled all around us and we were filtered to one line…ONE…to reschedule our flights.

We waited over an hour in that line and ultimately were booked on two different flights. By 9pm we both finally made it ( 5 1/2 hours later than our scheduled arrival) and our luggage was not there. We filed a claim, and were off to SoFabCon, where we had missed the first night’s event.

The next day the sessions began and I slugged around wearing my dirty clothes and underwear, hair only half done. THANK YOU Conair for being a sponsor so I could have my hair done properly, and Rimmel for the lovely eye makeup. You have no idea how much I needed it to feel human after over 24 hours without luggage. Seriously, thank you.

Kerri and I actually ending up taking a ride over to Target in the afternoon and I was able to pick up this lovely black and white striped blazer to go with my dirty but oh so comfy Lee Jeans, and I looked a bit more professional FINALLY.

When our luggage did finally arrive, the Heavens parted. Don’t we look happy?!

Anyway, enough about our drama and back to the actual conference. As my post title reveals SoFabCon14 was worth the stress. I have some social anxiety…so big conferences can be overwhelming, and this one was not.at.all (plus I stuck to my own conference tips.)

Social Fabric is small blogger community, like a family, so I definitely felt much more comfortable in the environment. At just a few hundred attendees, I kept running into the same people over and over, and actually truly got to know and networked with Collective Bias staff and bloggers. The conference budgeted in time for sessions, for rest, for networking, for visiting the brand sponsor salons, all of it in one hotel. No rushing around to multiple locations, no needing to choose between a million and one sessions (there were only two sessions per time block) and I actually learned a lot. Seriously. I’ve already come home and implemented a ton.

And speaking of what I’ve learned, you’ll just have to wait until next time. I’ll be breaking this up a bit because there was just so much wonderful info to share…about SEO, monetization, social media enhancement, and how some of the big dogs do what they do successfully.

I highly recommend working with Social Fabric, and attending this conference in the future. And its definitely given me a taste to attending more intimate conferences where I get a bigger bang for my buck.

Which conferences have you gotten the most out of? Which would you recommend I attend in the future?

Disclosure: I received the trip to SoFabCon after applying to win a full paid scholarship. I was not required to write a post about the event, but am doing so because I want to. All opinion are my own as always.