Lately we’ve been getting a number of inquiries from bloggers and potential sponsors/speakers on plans for 2012, so we thought we’d take a moment to address some of these questions. We don’t have official plans at this point to host another conference this year, however we are continuing to discuss it regularly and hope to have a decision within the next few months. Our decision is really pending a few things:

1. appetite from the local blogging community for another conference 
2. interest and funding from potential sponsors to make an event possible
3. reliable and willing volunteers to serve on the planning team and work

Stay tuned and we’ll be sure to clue you in when we have something firm to report. If you’d like to get more involved or are connected to an organization who is interested in sponsoring the event this year in a significant way (and we aren’t talking product samples, yo), please give us a holler.

Thanks -

Missy Berggren and Arik Hanson

What you need to know:

• Free parking  in the ramp next to the Midtown Exchange Building (courtesy of Allina) for those attending the event. Bring your ticket in with you and we’ll validate it when you check in.
• Lunch will be provided to attendees free of charge.
• Caribou coffee drinks, breakfast options and snacks will be available for purchase in our conference space.

Important information about your ticket:

• Tickets to the conference are non-transferable – meaning you can’t give them to a friend.
• If you are unable to attend, please email us and we will release your ticket to someone else who needs one.
• Allina is a secure location and needs all names of attendees submitted prior to the event. Drop ins will not be admitted.

How you can give back:

• We are happy to announce we’ll be featuring the Read Indeed charity for the conference this year. Read Indeed is a 501c3 nonprofit literacy organization and the vision of Maria Keller, a book-loving 5th grader who wants to make the world a better place—one book at a time. Maria’s goal is to collect and distribute 1,000,000 books to needy children by the time she’s 18. She has been collecting and distributing books since she was 8 years old—touching the lives of thousands of children around the world.
• If you would like to bring new or gently used children’s books to the conference we can help Maria meet her goal!

Picture perfect:

• Mandy Dwyer of Glimpses of Soul Photography has volunteered to take a limited number of professional headshot photos for attendees during the conference!
• The cost will be $30 and Mandy will be donating all of the money to the charity.
• This was a popular offering last year and we are grateful Mandy has volunteered to do it for us this year!

We’ve been holding onto one final spot on the agenda for just this purpose. Here’s the process:

• If you have an idea for a 45-minute session, please Email Us your idea and a brief description as well as three things bloggers can learn from your session. (Please review the current sessions and topics scheduled).
• You must submit ONLY for yourself and not someone else (and you need to be available to present at the event).
• We’ll take your submissions through the end of the day Monday, Sept. 5^th.
• On Tuesday, Sept. 6th we’ll take the submissions and run them by the MN Blogger Conference attendees for a vote via Survey Monkey (after all, who better to tell us what they want to see than then attendees themselves!). The idea with the most votes will be selected.
• We’ll announce the final session Tuesday evening!

Presentations must be limited to 1 to 2 speakers (no panels).

Need not be currently registered to submit for a session.

Off topic or otherwise irrelevant session proposals will not be presented for vote.

Lee routinely speaks internationally on Social Media SEO and Content Marketing and has participated in top conferences including ad:tech, Intel’s Social Media Summit and SES, where he serves on the board of advisors.

As a 14-year online marketing veteran, Lee has been cited by numerous industry publications and books including The Economist, DM News and ‘Marketing in the Age of Google’ by Vanessa Fox. Additionally, his first book, ‘Optimize’ will be published by Wiley in 2012.

See what Lee will be speaking about >>

• noon, Wednesday, August 24
• 4 p.m., Wednesday, August 31

At those dates/times - click here to register:

When the last batch is gone, you will be able to add your name to a waitlist. There will also be a few contests to win tickets around town.

p.s. have you checked out our Sessions page recently? Most of the session descriptions and presenter bios are up now!

The MN Blogger Conference will take place Saturday, September 10, 2011. We will be releasing tickets in waves (or batches) this year, to give more people an opportunity to attend.

• The first batch of tickets will be available at 9 a.m. on August 17.
• Additional batches of tickets will be released the weeks of August 22
  and August 29.

Tickets are FREE and we are thankful to our sponsors, Allina Hospitals & Clinics and TopRank Marketing!

Important details:

• There are a limited number of tickets for this event, so please only register if you are sure you can attend.
• Speakers, the planning team and sponsors do not need to register, as we will be holding tickets for you separately.
• Allina is a secure space and we must submit attendee names to security prior to the event. All attendees will be issued name badges and only those people officially on the registration list will be allowed to enter. If you cannot attend, you must release your ticket back to us and we will then give your spot to a person on a waiting list. In other words, you can’t give your ticket to a friend.
• An e-mail with information on parking, meals and other need-to-know info will be sent to attendees the week before the event.

If you have any questions please Email Us

More about our sponsors: Allina cares for the health of patients throughout the Twin Cities and Western Wisconsin, with a wide range of services spanning from wellness to illness. Allina is hosting this year’s Minnesota Blogger Conference at their headquarters, called the “Allina Commons” in the Midtown Exchange Building in Minneapolis. You may recognize award-winning Allina hospitals, such as Abbott Northwestern and United Hospitals. The Allina family of clinics, including Allina Medical Clinic, Quello Clinics and Aspen Clinics, have more than 50 locations in the metro.

TopRank Marketing returns this year as a sponsor of the Minnesota Blogger Conference as they did in 2010. TopRank supports companies with online marketing services. Bloggers can also learn SEO, content and social media tips and best practices from TopRank’s popularOnline Marketing Blog, which is currently #11 on the Ad Age Power 150 list and was named a Top 10 Social Media Blog this year by Social Media Examiner. The Online Marketing Blog attracts 100,000 visitors a month and currently has 43,000 subscribers.

We are extremely thankful to our sponsors, we simply would not be able to put on this event without them. You can find them on Twitter at @TopRank and @AllinaHealth - please join us in thanking them for their support of this year’s event.

Watch MNBloggerConference.com, the @MNBlogCon Twitter handle and the #MNBlogCon hashtag for registration information. We hope to see you at this year’s conference!

A panel of speakers at the 2010 MN Blogger Conference discuss if PR reps and bloggers can get along.

Of course, these aren’t the official session names, but you’ll get the idea. We’ll post full session descriptions and speaker bios soon.

• Theresa Thompson, attorney - Protecting your work and other legal considerations.
• Tim Elliot - Moving your blog from Blogger to WordPress.
• Kate Hopper - Writing workshop
• Kate O’Reilly (moderator), Stephanie Meyer, Jen Emmert, Meghan Wilker - Panel on building communities online and offline.
• Mykl Roventine - WordPress themes and plug-ins you need to know.
• Patrick Rhone - The book you want to write may already be on your blog.
• Julio Ojeda-Zapata - Mobile blogging
• Erica Mayer - Using video in your blog (i.e, vlogging)
• Mandy Dwyer – How to use photography effectively in your blog
• Paul DeBettignies – Networking to grow your blog

We are working through additional topics and speakers, as well as a few surprises up our sleeves. Don’t forget, registration opens Wednesday morning, August 17, at 9 a.m. It filled up really quickly last year, so make sure you are ready to register that morning if you hope to attend this year.

Additionally, we will be announcing the agenda and topics later this week!

Just a reminder that the date is set for September 10 — you can keep up with the latest news on twitter at @MNBlogCon.