ALT San Francisco recap (Nick’s side)

A couple of months back when Amber and I started talking about going to the alt summit in San Francisco I wasn’t immediately sold on the idea. It did have 2 things going for it. First, if you’ve ever seen pics of any of the other alt summits, it looks like a blast. Secondly, it was being held in San Francisco (somewhere I’d been wanting to visit badly). There was only one downside to it, though it was a big one to me, it appears to be a really cool blogging conference…. for women (sad trombone). They don’t market it that way, but that was how I was feeling.

Thanks Michael Miller for the Photo

In the end, I decided I was okay with it. In this home blogging world we live in, where 98% of our readership is female, it appears that any blog conference we would go to would be dominated by women anyways, and alt looked like a really good time. There’s just not a ton of fellas out there unfortunately (Side Note: about 50% of the time when I would talk to someone and say “My wife, the one with the baby belly, and I blog about our hou…” before I could finish my thought they’d say “Oh you mean like Young House Love!” I would nod and say “yea exactly like them, but… like…. without pageviews”)

Me, Christine, and Ralph via Christine’s Instagram

So here’s the crazy part… being the only male blogger there (there were some other dudes there, but they all seemed to be from companies or with alt itself) ended up working in my favor. One of the other guys made the comment to me “How many times in your life, as a white male, do you get to be in the minority?” and he was totally right. I honestly think I probably enjoyed the conference more than Amber (she may argue, but don’t listen to her… she’s on drugs).

Court, Christine, Amber + baby, Me

The conference itself was intense and by the end we were both exhausted (in a good way). Here are some more of my take aways in no particular order:

1. We met a lot of great bloggers there. All of the ladies there were seriously sweet.  These ladies were some of my faves: Court, Christine and Jessica.
2. The ladies didn’t mind me striking up random conversations with them even though I’m a total creeper (I can’t help that I’m a mouth-breather and my preferred method of transportation is a window-less van).
3. The sponsors at the event were incredible. All of them. Wednesday night we went to dinner with the crew from Acura. Seriously an amazing group of people and a pleasure to meet with (shout out to Chuck from Acura… the other male at the dinner). If you’re reading this, you should buy an MDX.
4. Being the only male meant I didn’t have to compete with how well the women dressed to this thing. News flash: Turns out bloggers are mega stylish.
5. The Fairmont hotel was amazing and a fantastic venue for alt.
6. I never understood conventions before (like when people go to them for their jobs), but I totally get it now. I would never have imagined how motivated we would be coming out of alt.

Well, that’s about it. I’m not sure when we’ll be able to go again, with a newborn coming in a couple of months, but we will definitely attend the next one that we are able to. Hopefully some other couples/men read this and more start attending as well, it’s worth getting out of your comfort zone fellas. I promise.