I went to the first financial blogger conference this weekend. I met a lot of people and learned a ton. What does this mean for you? A better website is likely to be coming down the pipeline. Here are a few other ideas I had while I work to put them together:
- Twitter Changes Everything 1 – I think that Twitter changed the conference in an unexpected way. There was a level of accountability for the panels. One of the panels tried to justify payday loans and another person said that they want people who don’t pay off their credit cards. I understand that’s how these people make money, but the reaction on Twitter was awesome. I realized that I wasn’t alone in being surprised by this.
- Twitter Changes Everything 2 – My wife was following the conference from a couple of thousand miles away and knew more than I did about many of the things that were going on. She was effectively everywhere at the conference.
- Best Lazy Learning Idea – I think you should buy the books from Mike Piper of Oblivious Investor. He’s got a series that focuses on covering a topic in 100 pages or fewer. When I tweeted that I’d like to read his book, he came and found me. Don’t know how he did it, but I’m giving some time to read Can I Retire? over the next few days – though I probably go get through the book in a couple of hours if I focused on it.
Money Writers:
- Brip Blap discusses rapid early acquisition of tech adaptability.
- Digerati Life explores non-traditional ways to retire: retirement scenarios to consider.
- Frugal Dad asks who’s making your lunch?
- Generation X Finance asks can you afford to have kids in this economy?
- Million Dollar Journey posts what is a pension adjustment (PA)?
- My Dollar Plan explores can stores set minimum credit card purchase amounts?
- The Sun’s Financial Diary presents easy ways to trim household costs (part 1).
- Money Smart Life continues his interview series – Bible Money Matters.
Top PF Posts:
- Free Money Finance looks at five ways your job costs you money.
- The Smarter Wallet shares how to make tasty homemade chips & fries: give them some zip!
- My Journey to Millions explains why I am not a big proponent of revocable living trusts.
- Darwin’s Finance wonders should Americans with no kids be able “opt-out” of school taxes?
- Len Penzo dot Com blogs my 12-year-old daughter shares her secrets for saving [making] money.
- Finance For Youth says focus on the issue at hand, not the big picture.
- Don’t Mess With Taxes on how to avoid federal budget catastrophe.
- Bill Eater offers 6 ways to get the most for your money when buying [kids] toys.
- The Simple Dollar shares saving pennies or dollars? Making your own clothes.
- Money Ning gives 11 tips for packing a healthy, frugal lunch that your kids will actually eat.
It was great meeting you at the conference.
You’re so right about Twitter. It really is a game-changer. (And you’re right about Mike Piper too. Super nice and uber-intelligent).
Hey Lazy, It was great meeting up at fincon. Seems the twitter factor is in fact huge. Farnoosh honed in on that as well! Gotta check out some of your links, looks like good reading :)
Hey LM – Great to meet you in person. I see the Pats won on Sunday, so you must be pretty happy.
I didn’t get to meet you during the conference, but Twitter was a HUGE tool. When I was introducing myself to people, they kept saying “I saw you on Twitter”. I got the book too, and I can’t wait to read it!
Briana, I didn’t get a chance to say hello to you either, but I saw you and love what you are doing. I wish I was so focused on personal finance at age 20. I wouldn’t be surprised to see you start a new website in 10 years: 30 and Retired :-).
I was pretty jealous as I was reading on Twitter everyone meeting each other!
Glad to hear you enjoyed the conference! I’m a big fan of Mike Piper’s investing ideas as well.
It was so good meeting you. I have to remember to come by and stalk you more often…in a lazy way, of course.
Sandy, you can actively stalk me all you want ;-)
Since I read your blog before having my own, it was great meeting you!
Actually, I didn’t use twitter much until I saw the tweets on the fincon screens. I’ll be using it more too!
It was an amazing conference. Twitter is always my go to source for info on everything, and I avidly followed the hashtag all weekend so I could see what I missing (since I sadly can not be in three places at once).
Hope you are recovering well. :)
It was great to meet you at the conference and chat over dinner! I hope you do end up enjoying the book. :)
It was great to meet you after having read your blogs for years and having worked with you on a variety of projects over the last couple of years.
I was the supposed “Twitter expert” on the ask the experts panels, and even I didn’t anticipate the effect that Twitter could have on a conference and on a panel session. You’re right about the accountability it brought to the panel. For a while there I thought people were going to rush the stage and put the payday loan guy’s head on a pike as a warning to all other payday people. I noticed he left shortly thereafter.
Peter, the feeling is mutual. I had no idea you were so tall.
I might have a few other projects for us to work on in the next weeks/months.
It was great meeting you at the conference. You are definitely right about the power of Twitter. I can’t even count the number of fincon11 tweets that we sent during that panel!
The Twitter thing is an interesting take, Lazy Man.
The conference was super. But I am beginning to wonder if conferences in the future might be set up differently. We should get like-situated people in a room and have them talk about specified topics amongst each other. The presentations were all good. But the material put forth at the presentations can be found after you get back home. The chance to meet people is time-limited and thus offers much higher value proposition.
Rob
There was an opportunity for that with the breakout sessions. I don’t know if anyone took advantage of them. Also, I don’t Phil wanted to have “dead time” with nothing going on. Personally, I liked having the things to do, but you are right – you felt like you missing something if you didn’t show up. In a lot of cases, I think you were – the presentations were good as you mentioned.
I think a lot of people got to meet each other. I didn’t get a chance to connect with you, but then again I said that about at least 30-40 people after the conference.