Monday Recap : IFB

Okay, so I'm a little late posting this recap.

Monday! Monday was great. I got up and headed down to the Independent Fashion Bloggers conference, which turned out to be amazing. I ended up hanging out with Erin and Rebecca, which was really nice because I didn't get to hang with them at the Chictopia 10 summit or the Girls Night Out.

There were really great topics and panelists and I left feeling really inspired and refocused. It gave me a lot of really relevant information and answered so many questions I'd had about my blog and blogging in general. If any of you are thinking of going to an IFB conference in the future, I'd definitely recommend it, based on how great this one was.

Rebecca, Me and Erin (photo by HolierThanNow)

Jennine Tamm Jacobs, founder of IFB

I didn't get any photos of the first two sessions, the blog marketing workshop and the business of blogging, probably because I was really interested in what was being said. There was a panelist in the first session from G-Star Raw (and I can't remember his name for the life of me. Bad blogger!) who had an amazing perspective on blogging, and his quotes were just brilliant.

He talked about how blogging is to the journalistic would as punk rock was to music and graffiti was to fine art. Back at the nascence of those movements neither were considered valid forms of art, but artists like the Sex Pistols and Jose Parla totally changed the way we understand music and fine art. In the same way, blogging represents a power-shift in journalism to a more democratic way of doing things. Instead of an elite sect of journalists telling us what they think is important and news-worthy, we as bloggers decide for ourselves what we think is important and then share that with our readers.

It was really inspiring to see how we are kind of at the cusp of a change, and bloggers are at the forefront!

Some of the panelists from the blog ethics session:Imran Amed, Diane Pernet (top), Clark Hoyt, and Jessica Schroeder
This session got pretty dicey. Since ethics in the blogosphere aren't yet completely hashed out like they are in the old media. Clark Hoyt, who is from the New York Times, had a completely different point of view than Jessica and Diane (and most bloggers, I would think). He also didn't come from a fashion journalism perspective either, which made it difficult to reconcile his point of view with our world as fashion bloggers. It was great to listen to everyone trying to discuss blogging ethics, which is definitely something that is and will go through some growing pains as blogging comes into its own.

Some of the panelists from the "future of fashion blogging" panel:

Tavi Gevinson, Susie Lau, and Phil Oh

The last panel was also really amazing. Discussing the future of fashion blogging with some of the most notable fashion bloggers. They had some great perspective too. Obviously the Bloggers vs. Editors thing came up because of Tavi, and that whole discussion was amusing. There is just so much room in the world for bloggers and traditional journalists that it seems silly for journalists to be afraid of bloggers (and I'm not sure most of them are). I think some may be worried about the blogger movement, however, due to the very thing that makes it so appealing to people: its democratization of the journalistic voice. I'm sure there are some journalists out there who don't believe that "lay people" should have an equal voice as "elite" journalists, but as far as we can tell, blogging is here to stay, and it's a beautiful thing!

dress/F21 :: cardigan & shoes/target
After the panels we had a great after party, thrown by Couturious, which just launched last Saturday, I think. It's a really fun site, actually. Weardrobe had a great green screen photobooth set up where you could get your photo taken and have yourself be put into some of the backgrounds from Couturious!
They also had the most amazing array of food and wine. Seeing as I hadn't eaten anything all day, it goes without saying that I totally stuffed my face. SO GOOD. I'm bad at mingling around people I don't know, so I spent most of my time hanging out with the food.

Did any of you guys go to the IFB conference? I only saw a few people that I knew there. It's weird because people seem familiar, but you can't remember which blog they are from! After Erin and Rebecca left, I hung out with Suzanne (founder of Weardrobe) and Krystal. People kept saying that Krystal and I looked like sisters! I think it's the bangs...

Monday was a really good day, and good end to my week in New York. So glad I got to meet all the lovely people I saw there!