Possibly the second best part of being at Mom 2.0 Summit? Getting to spend time in the fabulous city of New Orleans! The conference itself was held at the beautiful Ritz-Carlton, which is about a block over from Bourbon Street, and right in the middle of the French Quarter. Victoria and I spent some time seeing the sights, and eating some seriously amazing food. 

After registering and getting our Mom 2.0 badges, we went to Deanie’s Seafood Restaurant, recommended by the front desk employees at our hotel, the fantastic Wyndham Garden Baronne Plaza, where we had some seriously awesome fried seafood. We were definitely jealous of the people around us who just ordered giant plates of fried catfish. Next time!

Late the following night, after a productive day of learning and talking to bloggers, we finally tried the famous Cafe Du Monde, where they only serve two things: coffee and beignets! The beignet is a deep-fried piece of heaven, the most wonderful thing you’ll ever eat. That is not a joke, people! The patio of Cafe du Monde is filled with people chatting and drinking their signature chicory-infused coffee. On this night, it was also filled with kids obviously coming from a spring dance, which was an adorable sight to see. The floor is covered in remnants of powdered sugar. We obviously got orders to go!

On our final day in New Orleans, we took a breather from the conference and had lunch at Domenica, Chef John Besh’s restaurant in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, just a block over from the Ritz. Domenica also gave us a little break from the non-stop Southern food. Instead, we feasted on fancy pizza and an apple and pecorino salad. We had the most wonderful waiter, Brent, who regaled us with tales of his Carnaval costumes and gave us tips on which parts of the Garden District to check out. Sadly, we weren’t able to use most of his advice, but I’ve tucked it away for my next trip to NOLA.

My final piece of advice if you’re heading to New Orleans? Walk, don’t run over to the Hotel Monteleone and visit the Carousel Bar and Lounge inside the hotel. It’s a real, live spinning carousel and the waiters will take care of you, not only with their fantastic drinks, but with their free Zappy’s chips, another New Orleans staple. You can sit back, relax, and enjoy your authentic New Orleans Sazerac.

Here at EdenFantasys, we love the mom blogging community! We work with many mom bloggers on off-site reviews and giveaways, and we think they are an amazing, dynamic group of women who are a force to be reckoned with. So, in honor of that love, Eden’s director of marketing, Victoria and myself recently spent three wonderful days in New Orleans at this year’s Mom 2.0 Summit, an “open conversation between moms and marketers.” At the end of every conference, it’s always good to reflect on what was learned in the hallways, panels, and cocktail parties. Here are my serious (and some not so serious) takeaways from this year’s Mom 2.0:

1. Mom bloggers know how to cater
I’ve been to many, many conferences and I’ve never been as well-fed as I was at Mom 2.0. Most conferences I’ve been to include two things: coffee at 8 a.m. and beer at 5 p.m. This was not the case at Mom 2.0: every day included breakfast, lunch and multiple snack breaks. It was like being on a cruise ship, but you know, not on the water. And with panels to attend instead of stand up comedy shows.

2. Bloggers are making it big!
It was very clear from the sponsors at this conference that blogging is no longer perceived as just a cute hobby, or the domain of people living in basements in their pajamas. The sponsors included companies like McDonald’s, IKEA, HP, and Microsoft, which means this is big business with big money backing it. We sat in on a panel featuring bloggers Erin Loechner, Maggie Mason, and Liz Gumbinner, and heard how they were able to acquire mainstream sponsors for their blogs, and in the case of Mason and Loechner, in order to fulfill personal dreams (all documented on their own blogs). Next time someone makes fun of you for blogging, just think of all the people who have made blogging their career.

3. The Bloggess is amazing!
One of the highlights for us at this conference was seeing our very own SexIS columnist extraordinairre Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess speak at her panel, Creating Versatile Content, along with Heather Spohr and Brittany Gibbons. We were especially thrilled when Jenny gave us a shout out for posting her recent article “An Open Letter To The Creepy Guy On The Internet.” and for being so supportive of her. She also mentioned us sponsoring her trip to Japan during her reading at the after party, sponsored by Tide Loads Of Hope. We love you, Jenny!

4. Sharing stories is powerful
While I had my blogger relations hat on for most of my time at Mom 2.0, excited to meet the bloggers I’ve worked with, emailed with or just seen online (like the awesome Roxanna from Everyday Treats, Brittany from Mommywords, Kim from Livefromthe205, Leslie from Peeling Mom Off The Ceiling, Anissa Mayhew and Robin Plemmons from Aiming Low), I was also seeing this event as a blogger and as someone who’s been blogging for many years, sharing my life and stories with a few strangers, and anyone who happened to come across my page. Being at this event, watching bloggers on the stage, made me realize how powerful it is to just tell the truths about our lives. And not just mom bloggers, but the rest of us out there, just putting it on the Internet, and connecting with others, making people feel not so alone, or making them laugh.

5. Media is changing, and we are at the forefront
This was another big issue driven home by the panels, especially the closing keynote: the face of media is no longer just journalists and celebrities, but bloggers. It’s the reason we work with bloggers and have such a large community at Eden: who else is more trust worthy than someone you know, or someone who is like you? People want to find out more information about where to spend their money from people they trust. You trust your friends in the community, or the blogger you’ve read so much they now feel like a friend. This conference reminded me of all that.

All in all, Mom 2.0 was a great conference. We learned a lot, met many wonderful people, and are so excited to go back next year!

For my final installment into the world of SXSW 2011, let’s discuss a few panels on my second favorite topic, blogging. There were two panels I attended that spoke to issues that come up in blogging. First up was “The End Of Shame,” a discussion on the ever popular topic of “oversharing” online featuring comedian Heather Gold, journalist Jeff Jarvis, writer Melissa Gira Grant and makelovenotporn.com founder Cindy Gallop. Each panelist had an experience with what was dubbed by the outside world as an “overshare” from Jarvis’s openness about prostate cancer to Gold’s open discussion of a miscarriage. The reaction to each of their revelations was different, which both panelists theorized was because of their gender.

Gira Grant, who started out online as a cam girl mentioned that blogging as we know it started due to the old school online journals dozens of people were keeping in the early days of the web. Gallop shared what happened when her infamous TED talk on “Make Love Not Porn” was finally posted on YouTube, a place not known for its kind commenters. She insisted on moderating the comments herself, even forging relationships with several of her haters, and changing their perception of her.

Monetizing your overshare was more of the topic of discussion at a panel held the following morning in the same room called “Online Mom Communities = Hotbed of Local Influencers” hosted by Jennifer James and Lindsay Maines. This conversation was of particular interest to me as I work with many mom bloggers in my job on the Blogger Relations team here at EdenFantasys. Mom bloggers are definitely a marketer’s dream and this panel sought to “demystify” many of the myths surrounding this highly desirable niche. In the end, I walked away with information I already knew, which I tweeted at the time: “Mombloggers are not rocket science. They’re just providing content, living their lives, no real mystique. Just be nice and respectful.” An emphasis was made on maintaining good relationships with mom bloggers and I would say this is true of any blogging community.

While the provocative statements made by Cindy Gallop and others like her may seem like the furthest thing away from a typical mom blog, I believe these are both sides of the same coin. They are both groups of women talking about their experiences in life, honestly and openly. Both sex bloggers and mom bloggers take risks by living online as openly as they do, and both have opportunities to monetize their experiences should they decide to go down that route. I wonder what would happen if we got them both in the same room to talk about their experiences. Perhaps at SXSW 201 mom bloggers and sex bloggers can band together and join forces!

In the past week, you might have wanted to escape the Internet entirely due to the takeover of all streams by a little thing called “SXSW.” The yearly festival is more popular than ever, especially the Interactive portion, which for the second year, has boasted more registrants than the infamous music festival where bands get discovered, and musicians as big as Kanye West trek out every year to entertain the masses in Texas. 

So, what happens at SXSW? Besides the panels, it’s a collection of some fun, awesome, geeky stuff.  First, you have to pick up your badge! Your badge is your ticket to not only the convention center, but also to a large number of after parties. I proudly wore the EdenFantasys name on my badge this year:

Walking around the convention center, you can run into any number of cool things, like a table covered in Legos! Who wouldn’t want to relieve some of the stress of going to panels while playing with some blocks?

This being my third SXSW, I have a number of rituals I participate in when I attend. My favorite is hanging out on the fourth floor deck between panels, checking out the madness below. It’s also a great place to chat people up. I chatted up many people at SXSW this year, and they were all fascinated with EdenFantasys, some even admitted they shopped with us!

All kinds of companies make their way to SXSW, some brand-new like Retrollect, a new start-up I met at a Google party, and some established like Hootsuite. All the companies want to stand out in some way, so they do things like give away free stuff or have their mascot patrol the streets! Fun fact: Eden Fantasys uses Hootsuite to tweet! So, I was extra excited to catch the Hootsuite mascot.

On Monday, the SXSW trade show goes up! It’s everything you would expect: lots of booths, and lots of people eager to talk to you about their product. The British newspaper The Gaurdian had a very unique booth: they provided tea and scones [get it? because they’re British!]. There’s also a whole trade show devoted to video games called the SXSW Accelerator. The most exciting thing I found was a fake Mike Tyson, ready to pose for photos at a moment’s notice.

Many, many companies throw parties and they’re exactly what you expect: long lines to get in followed by longer lines to get a drink followed by a longer line at the bathroom. Online retailer Etsy bucked convention a bit and threw a party during the day at local bar Venue 222 which included a display of their best crafts, and a crafting table where you could make your own bags and shot glasses. Sadly, I saw nothing that could double as a sex toy cozy. 

They did give everyone a “hangover kit” which included a toothbrush and an apology note to hand to your friends! Etsy also threw a more grown up happy hour a few hours later on the same day, where I had a very long discussion on male masturbators with two programmers who declined to be named, but who did thank me profusely for the information when our conversation was over.

The best party at SXSW is a mobile one. It’s called the RVIP Lounge and it only exists at SXSW.  Every year, Jonathan Grubb and Kestrin Pantera rent an RV and drive around downtown Austin at night with a gang of happy drunk folks singing inside. As the night goes on, the crowd keeps changing and this makes for an amazing, extremely unique experience. They usually broadcast their location somewhat cryptically on Twitter. This year, I caught them parked outside the exclusive foursquare party.  Immediately, someone started to bellow the karaoke anthem “Don’t Stop Believing.”

Maybe the biggest advantage SXSW has is its location in beautiful Austin. This year, I was lucky enough to have a local guide who clued me in to one of the city’s hottest trend: food trucks! I don’t think I ate one meal in Austin this year that did not come from a truck and it was all delicious. We visited the East Sixth Street food trucks, home to the Vegan Yacht and decorated in Christmas lights as well as Counter Culture, another locally loved vegan food truck.

Intellectually stimulating, and a load of fun, SXSW is the only place on earth to be in the second week of March.

First up was “Profiting In Adult: The Recession Is Over,” a panel featuring several leading names in the Internet adult industry including Allison Vivas, president of Pink Visual; Micheal Brandvold, owner of Michael Brandvold Marketing; Jay Kopita of Ynot Summit; and Connor Young, also of Ynot. The conference room at the Hilton was packed with attendees, presumably with people either eager to attend a panel that might include porn, or from those eager to learn from those in the adult industry, a business long thought to be “recession proof.”

One of the most compelling statements bought up at the panel was the fact that young people simply aren’t used to paying for adult content and instead rely on “tube sites” to get their dose. Vivas, who produces original content at her website, proposed that content makers need to create better, more interactive content in order to compete with the lure of “free.” She asked everyone in the room if their experience on tube sites had decreased since they’d started using more banner advertising and only a handful raised their hands. She said she hoped that in a few years, everyone would raise their hands.

Mobile strategies were also discussed at the panel. The boom in the use of mobile devices should be a natural compliment to viewing adult content. Unfortunately, companies like Apple simply don’t want to partner with any adult company and will not allow their apps to enter the App store. One panelist astutely pointed out that there is no such thing as a “porn-free” iPhone or iPad. As long as they can access the Web, the devices can access porn.

My biggest takeaway from the panel is that the adult industry is just like any other, where professionalism and transparency will get you ahead. The panelists mentioned that the partying atmosphere of adult attracts many people, but only those who can work hard will last and be successful. I can say that is very true of working at Eden. Friends think working for a sex toy company is all dildo testing, but trust: we all work very hard here!

Another fascinating sex-related panel was part of SXSW Film’s programming. Called “Sex It Up!” the panel sought to answer the age-old question: what’s the difference between art and porn? It featured Lisa Vandever of CineKink, Vivian Darkbloom of Kink Studios, film maker Zach Clark, women’s studies professor Dr. Lynn Comella and attorney Alan Levy. Much of the panel was devoted to discussing the production of Ms. Darkbloom’s film Indietro for Kink.Com. Ms. Darkbloom wanted to make a film with pornographic elements (i.e., actors would actually have sex as opposed to simulated), but with a plot and an artistic edge. This was interesting to hear after attending the adult industry panel where all panelists agreed that porn consumers might say they want porn with a plot, but in the end, only end up watching about seven minutes of a film, on average.

Nevertheless, the panelists at Sex It Up all felt that sophisticated audiences want true depictions of sex on screen. Mr. Levy mentioned that there was a cultural shift happening that could be seen in independent, non-adult films. For example, in mainstream television and movies, people with “alternative” sexual leanings such as BDSM or swinging are often vilified. In independent films, they are portrayed in a different light. Zach Clark spoke of his film, Modern Love Is Automatic, which is about a nurse who moonlights as a dominatrix. Unlike Ms. Darkbloom, the depictions of sex in Mr. Clark’s film were simulated.

In the end, the panelists wondered if we were ever going to enter another new “golden age” of porn, like the one enjoyed in American porn in the 1970s where films like Behind The Green Door and The Devil In Miss Jones enjoyed their heyday. Again, contrasting this artistic viewpoint with the business viewpoint of the adult industry panel leads me to believe that the current market just can’t sustain artistic, well-made porn, at least not for an audience that primarily consumes porn online. We must look to our friends in indie films, who aren’t held back by the fake morality of Hollywood, to pick up the slack and show some real sex in our films!