The best keynotes and panels at Blogher 2013 Chicago are the ones that are authentic, personal and real. It’s not about the newbie sessions about SEO, marketing, analytics and wordpress, it’s the personal stories that rule. A lot of sessions are really American: emotional, women rule, over enthusiastic, humoristic, but still a lot of them have touched me.

For most bloggers this conference is about two things : networking with other bloggers and getting inspired by personal stories of successful bloggers. I got inspired too.

These are my Blogher ’13 topstories:
The storytelling duo White on Rice who make awesome personal video’s and photo’s about their own life and for culinary brands.

Mom-tuber Katilette who has made  a personal video every day with her husband and 4 kids, their channel is called Shaytards. They have more than a million followers on their channel, amazing! You see her sitting next to the other mom-tubers form The Mom’s view.

Ree Drummond from The Pioneer Woman blog, she is so funny and touching and her lifestory: from a city girl to a ranch-wife with 4 kids is hilarious. She now is a successful tv-maker for the Foodnetwork and cookbook writer and has over 400.000 followers on twitter.

De  founders van Blogher: Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page, Jory des Jardins, because they started Blogher back in 2005 and have created a big and beautiful network of bloggers.

Jenniffer Weigel from the Chicago Tribune because of her moving personal story about work-life balance, her life as a single mom, her work and her relationship with her son.

Jenika MCdavitt, who does psychology for photographers. Her tips are so spot on! She said if you write a comment or a bio use details, be specific and concrete. Describe a scenery, where were you, in what space, with whome, how were you feeling?  Always use the 5 senses in your descriptions, like the weigth of the camera, the scent, the one you who you are with.

Lisa Belkin who worked for 30 years at the New York Times and is now working for Huffington Post because she wanted to get into the evolution of journalism.

Tip:  the 12 winning blogposts of ‘The voice of the year 2013 community’
Beautiful personal blogposts of different women in the US. Worth reading! Got a lot of women in tears 🙂

More about youtube channels coming up, as I am really focused on video lately.