I’m going to take a break today posting about personal finance tips and tell you about a great conference my wife and I attended this past weekend. Jennifer and I decided to travel to the first Financial Blogger Conference (FinCon) held in Schaumburg, IL (Chicago area). My friend Philip Taylor (PT Money) from PTMoney.com decided that we needed to get all the financial bloggers together for a great big event to network and learn from each other. Well, PT did an outstanding job of organizing an event that is still being tweeted about 2 days after his closing comments Sunday afternoon. [search #fincon11 on Twitter]
Philip Taylor Hosting the Financial Blogger Conference
I was really excited that Jennifer decided to go to the conference. First, I knew it would be a great opportunity for her to learn more about blogging which has become a passion of mine and is now turned into a small business. Second (and most importantly), this was an opportunity for us to get away for the weekend and spend some quality time together. Thankfully, my parents agreed to come in town and watch over the kids for a long weekend.
The conference didn’t start until Friday night, so we knew we had some time to go see downtown Chicago since we were schedule to arrive in Chicago Friday morning. We decided to rent a car and drive to downtown. We were able to spend some time walking up and down Michigan Avenue enjoying all the excitement and city life. It’s much different than downtown Dallas. Chicago is a true walking city with many residents within the downtown area. Can’t wait to visit again!
Fun in Downtown Chicago
Alright, so the conference kicked off with a few of us joining our friends at PerkStreet Financial for Chicago style pizza. We then headed over to a social and speed networking event Friday evening. This event provided me an opportunity to meet many of the financial bloggers I’ve communicated online with for the past two years. There are really too many to mention, but I was pleased to spend time with several fellow Christian financial bloggers: Bob from ChristianPF.com, Peter from BibleMoneyMatters.com, Tim from FaithandFinance.org, Matthew from SoundMindInvesting.com, Matt from DebtFreeAdventure.com, Khaleef from KNSFinancial.com and FreeMoneyFinance.com. I also met Tom from CanadianFinanceBlog.com, Andrew from MoneyCrashers.comand many, many more great people.
The conference presentations and sessions took place early Saturday morning until around noon on Sunday. It was an intense set of meetings that provided great information for anyone starting out blogging or having years of experience. I listened to experienced bloggers and entrepreneurs talk about all facets of blogging and online business. Topics included search engine optimization, ways to improve writing skills, creating your own products, using email lists to connect and share content with readers, marketing/ways to make money online, podcasting, etc.
A memorable presentation for me was provided by J.D. Roth of GetRichSlowly.org. He kicked of the event with a great talk regarding the reasons why we blog. It was nice to hear J.D. share that his blog is based on helping people. It was refreshing and helped bring me back to the reasons why I started this blog 2 1/2 years ago- to help people manage their finances wisely and learn how to manage money according to Biblical principles. I’ve always had a passion for helping people in personal finance and I hope to always keep my focus on that with this blog.
I have pages of notes and still need to review many of them. My goal is to take some of the great tips I learned and create specific action items that I can implement here at OneMoneyDesign. I’m excited to continue blogging and bring OneMoneyDesign to a new level. It has also show me the importance of networking and supporting other bloggers so I hope to continue building on the relationships established while in Chicago.
Yes, I feel the conference was a great success and I know many others feel the same way as me. I’m already looking forward to next year! Thanks again to PT Money for putting together such a great event!
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