Am I a social pariah? Sitting at a table surrounded by empty chairs I waited with bated breath to see who would be joining my little world... the rest of the ballroom was starting to buzz as flocks of brightly dressed party goers were flooding the room searching for their place for dinner...
I had chosen my space carefully - the tables were branded and I wanted to connect with a specific brand rep whose products I love, so I'd skipped past tables that I could have easily gotten lost at and sat down beside a chair marked reserved... waiting for my chance to meet the brand rep and hopefully learn something more about them, connect and share a meal... Small talk with the only other table occupant - learning about her blogging, her secret weapon for delivering great sponsored posts and sharing a bit about our lives and families - both of us staying positive, watching and waiting for the brand reps or anyone else to join our little party of two... neither of us confident enough in ourselves to just own the table and our lack of competition...
The buzz in the room quieted as people dug into their salads and poured their wine, and we resigned ourselves to being outcasts... standing and walking around the table to get the communal dressing for the salad and the basket of rolls... halfway through eating, a third person joins our table...
"Hi, I'm John"
Beth and I introduce ourselves and John proceeds to ask about what we blog about and why we're at SoFabCon... he thanks us for taking the time to be there and showed us the latest addition to his sock collection that he'd been gifted with. I learn he's from North Carolina originally, but here in Bentonville now - we talk about the Carolinas and make other small talk...
Then he got up... I whisper to Beth "Do you know who that was?" "John Andrews, CEO of Collective Bias had sat down and shared a meal and conversation with us... it was a turning point ... one that I had been searching for throughout the first twenty four hours of the conference... The CEO of Collective Bias had chosen to sit down, share and chat with us and now was on stage to kick off the 4th Birthday Party for Collective Bias - a company that has grown to 92 employees and made huge strides in bringing brands and bloggers together in innovative and powerful ways and I knew then that I was rededicating myself to ensuring this blog worthy of a place in the SoFab/Collective Bias family!
Over the next few weeks I'm going to be tweaking the design, going back to my roots and trying to post more content - more stories, more recipes and more of me!
I also want to thank my friend Rebecca for co-hosting a fabulous talk today on storytelling - which inspired me to write this post and my new friend Beth for sticking it out with me at our table of two... I know there's more to come!
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| John, Rebecca & Beth |
