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IFBC

October 12, 2013

Pike Place Market

IFBC Seattle 2013: Exploring Pike Place Market

I’m aware that I’ve hit you with four Seattle posts now, but as you can probably tell, I was completely enamored with The Emerald City – with the people I met, the friends I made, the hospitality that was shown to me and by the whole experience of attending an American Food Blogging Conference – Foodista’s IFBC.

Pike Place Market

Places to take in: Pike Place Market, Le Panier French Bakery, Piroshky Piroshky Russian Bakery, the original Starbucks opened in 1912

Pike Place Market

Pike Place Market: Views of Elliot Bay and the Olympic Mountains, breakfast at Lowell’s Restaurant Seattle  

Pike Place Market

Pike Place Market: Seattle and the Pacific North West is famous for it’s fish!  Pike Place is the oldest farmers’ market in the US trading since  1907

Given that this was just a four-day visit after a nine-hour flight, this was probably one of the craziest city-breaks I’ve ever experienced. Aside from a tightly-packed conference schedule, including a self-guided tour of Pike Place Market, I also wanted to spend every additional spare second I had with my sister, partner and kids who live in Washington State, and with my mum who was out visiting them for her 70th birthday, as well as exploring more of the city from a food perspective. Of course, this being me, I planned my Seattle break around the best places to eat – and it helped that I had a huge list of recommendations from both family and food conference attendees via a private Facebook group.

Seattle_Family__2

Family and Food Blogging – attending Foodista’s IFBC and chilling out with family during downtime

Although I have visited Seattle plenty of times before, this was the first time I was able to hone in on the food scene, taking in some of Seattle’s most iconic hot-spots.  Breakfast on my first morning was at Lowell’s in Pike Place Market featured in Sleepless in Seattle, followed by a visit to the very first original Starbucks established in 1912. Dinner across two nights had been organised by my family –  a contemporary supper at Poppy in Capitol Hill with more friends and cocktails and steaks at the timeless Metropolitan Grill, as well a leisurely spontaneous lunch at Purple Cafe. There were also plenty of pit-stops at street-trucks offering tasty on-the-go snacks, with my first experience of a Seattle Dog. And this was in addition to all the food enjoyed as part of the food conference!

 Dog in the Park Seattle

Favourite street-foot hit: Dog in the Park – the cream cheese Seattle Dog – featuring a Polish sausage, cream cheese, onions, cabbage, potatoes, sauerkraut and mayo.

Pike Place Market

Seattle old and new: original Starbucks opened in 1912 and the brand new Storyville Coffee Company, next door to Matt’s in the Market, Pike Place

The Purple Cafe Seattle

Purple Cafe – Grilled Wild Salmon, tomato, cucumber and house tartar

Seattle is an incredibly happening place, not only because of the ‘up-and-coming’ food scene, but also in terms of business, industry and tourism. The word on the inside is that Seattle could be the next San Francisco, with big players, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google with bases there. In terms of the food scene, AllRecipes, UrbanSpoon and Foodista all have a huge presence in the city, with areas such as Ballard and Capitol Hill drawing in the foodie crowd.

Some of the places that were on my list, but that I missed out on visiting this time, were in Ballard and included Get Your Hotcakes, The Walrus and The Carpenter & Delancey owned by food blogger Molly Wizenburg. There’s always next time, right?!

Downtown Seattle

Downtown Seattle: Blue trees – painted by an artist to draw attention to deforestation, the Seattle Monorail, the W Seattle – conference hotel

ifbc2014-seattle-banner

So, that’s all my re-capping and reminiscing for now, suffice to say this was a truly amazing adventure.

Travel really does broaden the mind and I came back re-invigorated, re-inspired and ready for more!

The good news is that next year, IFBC is returning to Seattle and registration is now open – will I get there again?!

You can read my previous posts on IFBC Seattle here –

  • Part One – Food Blogging Stateside
  • Part Two – Arrival, Opening and Keynote by Dorie Greenspan
  • Part Three – Entreprenurial Journalism with Mark Briggs
  • Part Four – this post – Exploring Pike Place Market and Beyond
  • JamieOliver.Com – Getting the kids interesting in fish and seafood – inspired by a visit to Pike Place Market

With thanks to Foodista and Zephyr Adventures for organising the conference. This trip was self-funded and all posts are completely free of any payment, commercial sponsorship or existing brand relationships.

An even bigger thanks to my family for supporting me and for making this trip possible!

Attendees were asked to write 3 posts as part of the$95 ticket deal – my four posts are linked to above. 

October 4, 2013

IFBC Seattle 2013 – Entrepreneurial Journalism with Mark Briggs – Post Three

It’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of attending Foodista’s IFBC in Seattle – what did I actually learn and was it worth going?! I’ve already introduced my personal reasons for attending a blog conference all the way over in Seattle and have mentioned some of my first impressions on arrival, including the conference opening and inspirational keynote by Dorie Greenspan. During the rest of the conference, we attended either big group sessions, such as an Amazon.com Grocery live food blogging session (think speed dating but with food products!) or we could chose from a selection of break-out sessions, split into Technology, Writing or Tech or we ate!

ifbc2013_banner_amazon

I was hoping to wrap up the conference in three posts, but I can see there might be a few more on the way…!

Today, I’ve decided to re-cap one of the sessions I enjoyed the most on the first day of the conference, introducing the concept of Entrepreneurial Journalism, because I think there were some really useful nuggets of advice to be shared and I felt this session was perfectly pitched.

Writing: Entrepreneurial Journalism: Building Your Food Blog Business by Mark Briggs.

This writing session was hosted by Mark Briggs, the Director of Digital Media at KING Broadcasting, author of Entrepreneurial Journalism: How to Build What’s Next for News (UK link, non-affiliate) and co-creator of a new app called Fork. I had already read Mark’s book on my Kindle during the flight to Seattle (in between watching The Great Gatsby!) and I was so pleased I did, since it meant I was already familiar with some of the concepts that Mark mentioned during his session. The main themes were creativity, readership, audience and community and the challenges of knowing – “What is your value?”

First of all, Mark pointed out (and he wasn’t the only one to do so during the conference) that as food bloggers, we seriously undervalue ourselves. We need to be more confident in what we’re asking for and that we should push ourselves to blog with more definition and purpose.

Mark referred to a couple of quotes from Simon Sinek’s TED talk on How Great Leaders Inspire Action, throwing out some of the following questions –

  • What’s your purpose?
  • What’s your cause?
  • What’s your belief?
  • Why should anyone care?

People don’t buy what you do – it’s why you do it.

From the very start of the session, we were already being challenged to think about ‘why’ we blog and to think about the people who read our content. If you blog, ask yourself:

Why are you hoping that your readers become part of your community?

Based upon the idea that ‘Creativity is the new literacy’ by Chase Jarvis, Mark also advised us to work on our creativity and to constantly challenge ourselves to think about how we can be more creative.

Creativity is not something that will just happen – we need to work on it, daily.

This was a really interesting concept to me, because the reason I started my blog almost three years ago was to have a creative outlet. Having spent lots of time writing, featuring brands, taking millions of photographs, cooking and building an audience – in many ways, I have achieved what I set out to achieve; I do see my blog as my creative outlet, but it became clearer during this session that I need to become even more creative if I want to build upon what I already have.

Another thing that stayed with me was Mark’s advice to:

Be different. Not better.

Build Your Blog into a Business

Mark highlighted that there are many ways of making money from a blog and that it is possible to turn a blog into a business; for example, you could partner with ad networks or host directly sold ads, be sponsored or become a brand ambassador, set up affiliate links, write sponsored posts, seek out freelance commissions, teach cookery courses, charge for event appearances, create a product or write a cook book, to name a few ways. However, the real key is to create quality content whatever you do:

The better quality, the more influence you have and the better your business prospects.

My understanding was that when you do this, you shift from ‘hobby blogging’ into ‘entrepreneurial journalism’ and then as Mark said: “It’s business time!”

You’re not bloggers. You’re media companies.

If you do find yourself in this situation, then it’s time to re-define yourself – think about setting up as a sole proprietor or in the UK, a sole trader – if you haven’t done so already. Being a blogger is now  a completely new business model.

Whatever the situation, you should always have a goal or a vision in mind. Define your mission, evaluate it regularly, ask yourself whether you are heading in the right direction and measure your progress. Here are two questions to keep in mind: “What’s my story?” and “What does my audience think?”

The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think – Marc Andreesson

Most bloggers also have the same issues – time. Time management is essential and Mark advised us to: “Make clear choices about what you spend your time on.”

Another angle to Mark’s strategy for food bloggers was to look for people within our own networks, maybe partners or collaborators, who we can work with creatively and “to leverage the cool/smart people in your life.” Perhaps think about making something or creating content that people want, quoting the Holstee Manifesto –

Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them, so go out and start creating.

And the last bit of advice from Mark? Ask yourself some more questions:

  • What is the opportunity?
  • Where is the niche?
  • Where can a community be formed?

If you’re interested in reading some more of Mark’s ideas, he writes a great blog called Journalism 2.0. Mark’s conference post re-caps some of our Tweets, too and there is also a link to the presentation – Is it a Blog? Or a Business? here.

Bored of writing product reviews? Mark suggested watching ‘Review Wednesdays’ on Daily Grace on You Tube for her take on things!

Want to get noticed? Create some content for You Tube which has more than one billion monthly users.

Final tip – the use of mobile devices to read blog is mushrooming. Make sure your site is mobile responsive or create a mobile version using a site such as Duda Mobile, which will even let you create a logo to use on your home screen.

With thanks to Foodista and Zephyr Adventures for organising the conference. This trip was self-funded and all posts are completely free of any payment, commercial sponsorship or existing brand relationships.

This is post #3 of 3 – attendees were asked to write 3 posts as part of the$95 ticket deal – but there’s still more to come from me!

Post One – Food Blogging Stateside

Post Two – Arrival, Opening and Keynote by Dorie Greenspan

 

What’s your view on the new landscape in media created by blogging? Do you welcome ‘entrepreneurial journalism’ or should bloggers stick to hobby blogging?

 

October 1, 2013

W_Hotel_Seattle

IFBC Seattle 2013 – Arrival, Opening and Keynote by Dorie Greenspan – Post Two

This is my second post on attending IFBC the International Food Blogger Conference in Seattle last weekend. I’ve already introduced the event and why I traveled all the way to the West coast of America from London to attend a blogging conference! I hope that in this post, you’ll get to read a little bit more about my experience of attending a US conference and what I learnt.

ifbc2013_banner_amazon

The conference agenda was very tightly packed and since I was battling with an 8-hour time change I found it quite a challenge keeping up with it all. I didn’t make the Thursday evening excursion to Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery in Woodinville (I hadn’t booked onto it assuming I’d be too tired) or the exclusive documentary preview of GMO OMG! as my plane was delayed by over four hours, meaning that I arrived in Seattle very late on Thursday evening.

The folks at the W Hotel, Seattle – the official conference host hotel – were very accommodating and I found the staff to be welcoming and helpful (isn’t everybody in America?!) I was super-impressed with my conference rate room – a Spectacular room with a view of downtown Seattle and the Space Needle in the distance. I ordered room service – a much-deserved vodka cocktail and slow-braised beef cheeks with mushrooms and saffron papardelle. Given that this was hotel room food (at 11pm) this meal is up there on the list as one of the best dishes I ate (and there were a lot!) I’ll definitely be keeping a look out for some beef cheeks to slow-cook during the winter months. I also enjoyed tuning into my favourite Seattle-based show, Frasier and was very tempted to order Sleepless in Seattle on pay-per-view…When you’re used to being a busy mother-of-two, a couple of hours to yourself is worth the trip alone!

W_Hotel_Seattle

On Friday morning, the conference officially opened with Gluten Free Carnitas and Tofu Sofrito Bowls provided by one of the conference sponsors Chipotle Mexican Grill. Mexican food is still really big in the US and the Chipotle Mexican Grill aim to serve ‘Food with Integrity’ –  sustainably raised food, sourcing organic and  local produce where possible – also a huge topic at the moment in America.  Our lunch bowls were filled with cilantro-lime rice, pinto or beans, braised pork carnitas and tofu sofrito, along with guacamole, cheese and red-wine vinegar pickled onions. One of the things I noticed pre-conference was the fact that food allergies and intolerance are taken very seriously in America. We were even given the option of specifying ‘Paleo’ as a requirement – catch up, Europe!

Lunchtime was also my first opportunity to meet some bloggers and to try and put a few names to faces. With over 320 attendees, this was no easy task! The very first person I met was a very sweet lady named Meagan Davenport, a local writer and photographer.  We also chatted to a cook and author named Roger Scouton, before heading into the Great Room for the Keynote.

Gluten Free Carnitas & Tofu Sofritas Bowls
Gluten Free Carnitas & Tofu Sofritas Bowls @ChipotleTweets

Keynote – Dorie Greenspan

Excitement filled the conference room as we awaited Dorie Greenspan – our keynote speaker. Dorie has written ten cookery books, which have included authoring Baking with Julia (with Julia Child!) and Desserts by Pierre Hermé. She has won a whole host of awards during her career as a food writer, including awards by the James Beard Foundation and the IACP – the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She was also named in the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. If you are a blogger who has taken part in or read about Tuesdays with Dorie or French Fridays with Dorie, then you may also already be familiar with the work and recipes of this formidable woman. Pretty much every single person in the room, including the men, wanted to be Dorie! It was an incredible privilege to be able to hear her speak.

Dorie framed her keynote around blogging and building a community, speaking of her transition from traditional media (or ‘old media’ as she affectionately named it) to new media. Throughout her career, Dorie has worked in professional kitchens as well as a Television producer, authored ten cook books in print and has worked as a freelance writer. She currently lives between Paris, New York and Connecticut and recently launched a sophisticated cookie business with her son, whilst maintaining a strong presence across social media with a blog and an active Twitter following. She shared some of the following nuggets of advice:

I’m lucky because I work hard. I’m fortunate because I always say yes. I did things because I thought they would be interesting or I’d learn something. I’ve never done something specifically to make money. I didn’t look for money because I was doing things that were interesting to me….Concentrate on the work. It’s the only thing that’s important.

Dorie also spoke about the importance of building a community, believing that writers have never had as much power as they have now. She also spoke affectionately of Julia Child and shared anecdotes;

Working with Julia Child was the greatest experience of my life. She called writing cook books ‘cookbookery!’

Dorie also mentioned the movie Julie and Julia, pointing out that before Julia Powell and her blog, cooking through a book was an unknown phenomenon. Contextually, Dorie said that blogging “gave a new definition to instant gratification,” adding:

As bloggers, we have the chance to speak from our hearts. In the old days, everything was mediated. We used to have to send the Editor our clips, now we have our blogs. It’s the most exciting time that I can think of to be involved with food.

Dorie’s advice was to work as hard as we can to create a community, pointing to Tuesdays with Dorie and French Fridays with Dorie, as examples of how a simple blog-based idea generated a whole new community of people who were interested in cooking and baking. The idea for the two events was unplanned and happened organically, they are less about the author Dorie herself, and more about the community of people cooking from her books, in the process, fueling cook book sales and adding to Dorie’s profile. Dorie loves the fact that so many people cook from her books, sharing her recipes and interacting with one another, as well as with her.

Dorie_Greenspan
Photo courtesy of IFBC/Foodista Website

As a keynote speaker, Dorie came across as being incredibly warm, funny, articulate and modest. She answered all our questions willingly and at ease, setting the tone of the whole conference as a friendly and supportive environment of like-minded food writers. Despite all of her accolades and successes, Dorie sees herself not as someone above learning, but as someone who is always open to acquiring information and knowledge and of taking on new challenges. Above all, Dorie’s best advice was to:

Do what you’re most proud of and always say yes!

There is so much more I want to write about, including more conference highlights and sessions as well as all the food I discovered in Seattle! Stay tuned for more.

With thanks to Foodista and Zephyr Adventures for organising the conference. This trip was self-funded and all posts are completely free of any payment, commercial sponsorship or existing brand relationships.

This is post #2 of 3 – attendees were asked to write 3 posts as part of the$95 ticket deal.

#IFBC Post 1 – Food Blogging Stateside

You can also view my Seattle Food Album on Facebook –

Post by Fabulicious Food.

Are you a fan of Dorie Greenspan and her cook books?

September 25, 2013

IFBC Seattle 2013 – Food Blogging Stateside – Post One

Seattle Pike Place Market

Seattle and I have been friends for a very long time. Both the city itself and the luscious, green areas surrounding it, stretching out to the Olympic Mountains in the Pacific North West, hold a special place in my heart. Almost twenty years ago, my sister made a small city named Sequim, within Washington State, her home. Since then, I’ve flown into Seattle-Tacoma Airport many times, extending the journey downtown into Seattle, right by the iconic Pike Place Market, picking up the Washington State ferry across to Bainbridge Island and beyond. My first visit was as an adventure-seeking sixteen year-old, in the summer before I started Sixth Form College. I was instantly captivated by American life, there was so much space and everything seemed bigger and better. My sister and I made the most of every second we had together, knowing that the physical distance between us had become so great. I looked forward to going back again two years later before starting University. Almost ten years on from that first trip, I happened to sit next to a tall British man on the plane from London to Seattle, who would later become my husband. Fast-forward another ten years to the weekend just gone, and I find myself sitting on the place once more, but this time, as a food writer and blogger, with a ticket to attend a food, writing and technology conference called IFBC 2013 the International Food Blogger Conference. Whilst it’s probably fair to say that most bloggers wouldn’t make a 4,800-mile pilgrimage to a blogging conference, I had lots of reasons for wanting to make it there, including the chance to see my family. It was an opportunity that I simply couldn’t miss and it turned out to be one of the most valuable weekends of my food writing career so far, and the most memorable in terms of family-firsts!

International Food Blogger Conference 2013 Seattle

IFBC was founded in Seattle in 2009, by a Seattle-based company called Foodista. It was hailed as a pioneering gathering of food bloggers and was the first of its kind in America; at a time when food bloggers were beginning to raise their game and were eager to find ways to make their food writing hobby into a career. In 2010, Zephyr Adventures joined in as conference organisers and in the following years, the conference moved around a little, to New Orleans, Santa Monica and Portland in 2012.

Foodista

This year, ifbc was back with a bang in its hometown of Seattle, presented once again by Foodista and organised by Zephyr Adventures. With over 320 food blogging and writing attendees as a captive audience, the conference attracts some huge global brands, which this year included Amazon.com and Urbanspoon, alongside regional supporters such as Alaska Seafood and Pastry Smart, and international players such as Bordeaux Wines and Scottish-based LoSalt, amongst many others. I’ll be weaving in some stories about the brands and sponsors that I met at the conference in future posts.

Zephyr Adventures

It’s interesting to look back at the conference agenda in 2009, and to see that the sessions focused on blog etiquette, how to handle freebies, digital photography, food writing for publications, drafting book proposals, food styling and SEO. Whilst the themes were very similar five-years on, I got the sense that food blogging has become even more hard-core, with many hobby bloggers now settled well into bona-fida careers as food writers, cookbook authors and photographers.

On the flip-side, I also met some people from within the food profession, in many guises, including chefs, food authors and photographers, who had more recently taken up food blogging as an extension to an already successful career. The keynote speaker Dorie Greenspan (an amazing food writer who worked with Julia Child!) was a perfect example of this; her work began in traditional publishing, which she affectionately referred to as ‘old media’, but she now has an incredibly strong online media presence, making the transition into ‘new media’ with a blog, an active Twitter following and so on. Dorie’s strongest message focused on working hard and building a community, turning to the example of community groups, such as Tuesdays with Dorie and French Fridays with Dorie that have taken on a life of their own; fuelling her cookbook sales and on-going international success. Food Photographer for the New York Times,  Andrew Scrivani, also very much works in the world of new media, defining himself as 80% business man, 20% artist, with an online presence and a blog functioning as an extension of his photography and a promotional tool. Again, there’s much more to come on learning from Dorie and Andrew in upcoming posts – they were both wonderful speakers and extremely generous with their advice.

IFBC App

The IFBC13 agenda was very tightly packed, and this year, the conference came complete with its very own smartphone ‘App’ designed by 47 Degrees, offering the schedule, speakers, sponsors and even social media tweets from in one handy portable package. Personally, I loved the ifbc App and referred to it many times during my stay at the conference host hotel, the very swanky and modern W Hotel in downtown Seattle.

IFBC SEATTLE

Agenda highlights included a pre-conference excursion to Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, an exclusive documentary pre-view, exhibition-sized food and gourmet fairs, including a Taste of Seattle dedicated entirely to conference attendees, a gift suit, highly-acclaimed speakers and many other break-out sessions focusing on Technology, Writing and Tech.

Some of the bloggers I met were taking part the conference for the fourth or fifth time, others, including myself, were ifbc first timers! There was also a very friendly (closed) Facebook group set up in advance of the conference so that people could start to introduce themselves, make connections as well as share blog posts and make plans for the weekend. After the conference the group was opened up and became ifbc Attendees & Alumni. The conference itself must have been pretty overwhelming, since I had a huge list of people from the Facebook group that I really wanted to meet, but never actually found. Other people were perhaps better at recognising avatars than I was, or possibly simply had a more water-tight blogger recognition plan! I did, however, meet some really wonderful people; my American food blogging counterparts, who all made me personally, feel incredibly welcome. “Oh, you’re the girl from London!” most exclaimed – as if to suggest that somehow I was a little bit crazy…!

Together, we ate, drank, chatted, networked, live-blogged, scribbled-down notes, Tweeted #ifbc or #IFBC13, took obsessive amounts of photographs. Above all, we learnt, we shared and we had so much fun.

I have lots more to write about so stay tuned for more of my Seattle-based adventures.

Seattle

With thanks to Foodista and Zephyr Adventures for organising the conference. This trip was self-funded and all posts are completely free of any payment, commercial sponsorship or existing brand relationships.

IFBC, Foodista, Zephyr logos and App screenshot taken from conference website.

This is post #1 of 3 – attendees were asked to write 3 posts as part of the$95 ticket deal.

You can find post #2 of 3 here – Arrival, Opening and Keynote by Dorie Greenspan

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