I spend half of my time in the center of the universe, Brooklyn, NY; and there is plenty of opportunity there to attend some internet conference/event every day.

Most bill themselves as THE event to learn from ‘cutting edge’ ‘thought leaders’ of the internet or social media. And most cost about $500 or more.

So I don’t go to a lot of conferences, and the ones I have gone to because of a free pass somehow, have been underwhelming.  ( PodCamp notwithstanding )

But I learned about BakeSpace.com ’s TechMunch one day conference from Nichelle Stephens of the blog Cupcakes Take The Cake who co-hosted the event with Babette Pepaj, founder of BakeSpace and Techmunch

Photos by Jennifer of Savor The Thyme.

It was a one day conference for food bloggers that didn’t oversell itself. It was pretty humble about its goals, AND it had people I respected on the panels. And the panels made sense, they weren’t just to promote someone’s company.

Plus, the early bird sign-up was $75. ( FYI: one hour of therapy cost more than that in NYC ) And they were giving away a huge pile of KitchenAid products, which I happen to like.

Lots of ‘ands’ in this post.

The event was at the social media center of New York, The Roger Smith Hotel, and it was great. The room had a nice vibe to it, and I got to meet a lot of people whose blogs I had read or who I had met on Twitter.

At the beginning of the day, Nichelle told us that even those of us who knew everything ( like myself ) would learn something today.

And i did.  I learned some SEO stuff about how to use HTML tags for recipes to show up higher in searches. Shawn Dragaan and Josh Unseth of The JAR Group really know SEO and were good at putting it in terms we could understand.

There was a really good panel of PR people who showed us how to pitch traditional media, plus we talked about the dichotomy of being pitched by PR people while at the same time pitching ourselves as Subject Matter Experts  ( big Web 2.0 term there )

Plus there was breakfast, lunch, and Robicelli’s cupcakes, and don’t forget the KitchenAid items given away thru the day. We all got very nice gift bags and a Tupperware Quick Chef

I left thinking this was one of the best conferences I have been to. I learned stuff, it wasn’t just powerpoint slides of boring stuff. ( Powerpoint, ubiquitious everywhere, was not a big thing here )

I think I could be a panelist one day for a TechMunch, I could relate my experiences with posting High Value Content, Selling Ads, or producing video or audio for a blog. I could not be on the Recipe Writing panel, I break most of the rules we heard about yesterday.

The room was full of people I wanted to meet, I regret that I did not spend enough time beforehand looking at each person’s blog so I knew more about them when I did meet them.

And after a day at TechMunch, full of Robicelli cupcakes, I got to apply what we spoke about during the FTC Blogger panel. I went to hang out with my friends at Ford Motor ( full disclosure: Ford has provided me with their cars ) on the roof of their Manhattan dealership. what a fun day.

Thanks to Babette of BakeSpace and Nichelle of Cupcakes Take The Cake for coordinating.

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