As you guys know, I was in New Orleans last week for a blogging conference where my blogger mentoring program was hosting a session. For those who are interested, the session went really well despite my atrocious public speaking skills and thankfully for those who attended, I only spoke for a grand total of 5 minutes, 2 of which included announcing raffle winners and then later on, dismissing the session.

I’m pretty sure public speaking is a skill I should work on. And thanks to the conference, I have someone who offered to help me. Conference perk #1.

Conference perk #2 is free stuff, of which I managed to accumulate with efficiency. I didn’t pick up any t-shirts (most of them don’t fit over my humongous hooters anyway and the ones that do have writing on the chest. I actively avoid shirts with writing that go just across the chest) or other odds and ends that would just gather dust. I did pick up some cool shit including what’s pictured below: a blogging book, a blog planner, 2 Starbucks gift cards, a Google Chromecast, Kansas City seasoning that is apparently really good but makes no sense as a gift at a conference in New Orleans but whatever, some sort of portable lithium phone battery, and a little holder thing for your phone when it’s charging and you have nowhere to place it. 

Can’t go wrong with free shit, amirite?

While I learned a whole lot about blogging, particularly Pinterest, and I’m crazy excited to start implementing some of the strategies I learned, and work on two new collaborative projects, it’s much more interesting to find out what I did outside of the conference.

So let’s get to that. Besides sleep deprivation and drinking gallons of Guinness, perk #3 is getting to sightsee. Here’s a rundown of the highlights:

• Bourbon Street is probably the single most disgusting place I have ever been. Not the behavior of the people, because I definitely saw worse in Cancun on Spring Break in college (my behavior on that trip is for another time). No. It is the most vile, smelly, filthy street in the history of time. It’s what I imagine the inside of a sewer is like. Every morning, they have to HOSE THE STREET DOWN because it’s that disgusting. I don’t even want to know the amount, or types, of fluids that seep into that street each night. That said, it’s definitely an experience and I’m glad I saw it first hand.
• There’s a church near Jackson Square (with a statue of Andrew Jackson that led to an interesting discussion about Abraham Lincoln and his horse riding abilities) that is one of the oldest churches in the US, and the site of a 1987 papal visit. Outside the church is a whole bunch of men and ladies doing tarot card readings. It’s an interesting sight.
• Thanks to a ghost tour that focused heavily on vampires, I now know the proper way to kill a vampire should this become an issue. It’s a pretty specific skill set and if the tour guide is right, we should be way more worried about a vampire apocalypse than a zombie one. Fortunately, I’m prepared now, and that’s comforting.
• I participated in some traditional New Orleans activities like riding a cable car, listening to jazz music, eating beignets and jambalaya, watching part of a Saints game, and walking around part of the Garden district which involved a lot of getting lost and maybe also a convenient store that sold beer, tablets, had a working humidor, and a fried chicken bar. Because of course it did.
• I got to see Ann Rice’s house. And Nicholas Cage’s old house which was a stop on the ghost tour and really, some of the most disturbing shit I have ever heard in my life occurred in that house in the 1800s. I did not get to see John Goodman’s house which made me sad because I really, really need to know where Dan Conner lives.

But the best part of the conference was the people. Attending a conference with a focus on financial bloggers is weird since I’m not a personal finance blogger, although many of the attendees are close friends from my days when I did write about money and it’s always nice to spend time with them. It’s an intense 4-5 days and when I leave, I feel the same sense of sadness that I felt when I left sleepaway camp or when a year of college ended. The friendships are not like any others I have, and if my non-finance blogger friends went to this conference, too, I don’t know that I’d even be able to leave.

However, in addition to seeing old friends (and missing the ones that couldn’t make it), I inevitably meet new people who up the awesomeness quotient tenfold. This year was no different. Not only did I get to meet one of my blogging heroes, Jeff Goins, but I met some others who defy adjectives. No joke, when you can talk to someone who can make you cry laughing with a story of shipping an alligator head from New Orleans to Utah and then seamlessly transition to talking about physics and Hemingway, you know you’ve struck gold (and, just in case he’s reading: Hi, Nate!).

And that’s how it was for most of the conference. Meeting and talking and socializing and laughing and having a great time with some fascinating people, not knowing if you’ll see them next year or if you’ll keep in touch or if you just need to soak up every minute and file it away your memory box. It’s a bittersweet feeling, but an amazing one nonetheless.

One blogger told me that I’m basically the only one who goes to the conference and never talks to anyone about blogging; I just talk to them about them. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

If I had to sum up FinCon14, it’d be this: Come for the information. Stay for the people.

Linking up with Liz (no confessions this week so no linking up with Kathy but you definitely should and I have selflessly provided the button for you)

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