Mark your calendars. The MN Blogger Conference will take place Saturday, September 10 and registration opens Wednesday, August 17 at 9 a.m. We are happy to announce that once again the Minnesota Blogger Conference will be free to attend thanks to the generosity of our sponsors Allina Hospitals & Clinics and TopRank Marketing. (Note: We will release tickets in waves this year–the first wave will occur at 9 a.m. on Wed., Aug. 17).

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!

After getting input from past attendees and meeting with our core planning team of highly-engaged bloggers from our community, we landed on a list of topics to cover at the 2nd annual MN Blogger Conference.  Then we looked around our space locally to see who could speak well to these topics. For the last week we’ve been reaching out to these leaders and are happy to share this first glimpse at how the agenda is shaping up.

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.

The Midtown Exchange Building in Minneapolis will be the venue for the 2011 MN Blogger Conference.

The Minnesota Blogger Conference will host its second-annual full-day event this fall for bloggers from across the state as they gather to network and learn more about blogging tools, platforms and strategies. This year’s event will be held the second Saturday in September, the same weekend as last year, and lands on 9-10-11. 

Although we had a great time in St. Paul last year, we’ll be trying a new location on the other side of the river – the Allina Commons in the Midtown Exchange Building in Minneapolis. 

The building is centrally located, is home to the incredibly diverse Midtown Global Market and has easy parking. We are grateful to Allina Hospitals & Clinics for being a major sponsor of the event and hosting us at their headquarters. The conference space has a great feel to it and includes a large meeting room and many small rooms for breakouts. There is also ample space for networking. 

Allina Hospitals & Clinics is hosting the conference at their headquarters, known as the "Allina Commons."

Mark your calendars for September 10^th – we hope you’ll join us. We plan to open registration mid-August, so stay connected to us for more info on Twitter (@mnblogcon) and Facebook.