Edgy Mama: bunches of blogging parents to hit town for Type-A Parent Conference

Asheville is a great place to throw a conference, and this weekend’s Type-A Parent conference will bring in mommy (and daddy) bloggers from all over the country and beyond (one attendee came from Australia last year). Let’s put our game face on, Asheville, cause they’ll be writing about, photographing and videoing our mountain town and throwing it all out there on the Interwebs.

Local mom and super blogger Kelby Carr is the founder and organizer of Type-A-Parent, which is in its third year of bringing together those who produce online content so they can learn, network and have fun.

The con will be will be held June 23-25 at the Renaissance Hotel, and Carr says 350 folks are expected to attend. Most are not from Western North Carolina, although the opening keynote speaker is local inspirational writer Patti Digh (Life is a Verb). I presented at the first conference and was supposed to do so again this year, but scheduling difficulties intervened. That said, I will be there on Saturday to hang with the on-line influencers and pick parental brains for column ideas (I do it for you, dear readers).

The conference is sold out, but Carr says locals can still add their names to the wait list. She’ll try to approve some of y’all to attend, though it may be at the last minute. She plans to offer the con again in 2012, though details have not yet been announced.

“Each year, we work very hard to promote Asheville with this group of social media influencers,” Carr says. “Every year, these influencers spread the word about how wonderful Asheville is on popular social media platforms like Twitter, blogs, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and more. We also include scheduled time for attendees to explore Asheville, as well as a big chunk of time each afternoon/evening for attendees to walk around downtown Asheville, shop and dine in the local restaurants.”

So y’all be welcoming to the bloggers this weekend — those social-media moms wield power and influence (remember women make 85 percent of the family’s purchasing decisions — ka-ching!). To wit, there were 24,000 conference-related tweets and more than 100 related blog posts during the week of the 2010 conference.

Carr offers family passes, which allows couples to attend together at a discount (and, if they wish, get a 50-percent discount on bringing their kids to the accompanying KidCon). This year will also feature a track for blogging teens. I definitely want to talk to some of the power-couple bloggers — and the teens. I can see it now — Blogging Teens, the after-school special.

Anyway, you may have heard of this conference back when it was called Type-A Mom. Carr changed the name this year in order to be more welcoming to dads.

“Type-A Parent Conference is still dominated heavily by moms who blog (95 percent of this year’s attendees are moms who blog, in fact),” Carr says. “Still, I don’t want dads who blog to feel excluded. To me, putting up a ‘no boys allowed’ sign is immature and goes against everything we moms at our best excel at: community, supporting one another, and boosting other bloggers instead of pushing them down.”

The conference will consist of sessions ranging from how to monetize your blog to marketing your blog to powerful storytelling. Plus lots of parties and events where bloggers can connect with each other and with big brands who want to woo them (some of the bigger sponsors include Dodge, Ovaltine and WilsonArt).

“We are doing a unique and interactive monetization power session that will feature a panel of agency representatives to talk about the challenges of working for bloggers with pay, as well as some examples of success stories,” Carr says. “Then the attendees will break into small groups to brainstorm ideas. The whole concept is that at the end, everyone will walk away with workable options for monetizing their blogs.”

So whether or not you’re attending Type-A Parent or just are a Type-A Parent at heart, be on the lookout for visiting bloggers this weekend. And tell them I say, “Thanks for coming, y’all.”

To learn more, visit www.typeaconference.com.

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