Instead, I decided to go with the always delectable Lenny Kravitz. I’m pushing the definition of old school b/c I know that Mrs. G defined it as anything before 1999 and “Fly Away” is right at 1998.

I think that this was the first time that Lenny Kravitz really stuck in my head. I knew some of his older (early 90’s) songs but they never caused me to pay too much attention to him. This song always gets me going though and it’s a great intro into Friday and the weekend. Have a happy day folks!

As a mini bonus I’m including a couple more Lenny videos:
1994’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way”

and 2000’s “Again” - especially for a certain flash of anatomy around the 1′30″ mark - oh and because of his spectacular guitar playing…

Here’s what we have:
The Dress

The Front of the Dress

The Back of The Dress

Me. In the Dress.

The Shoes

These are the shoes we(the bridesmaids) came to agreement on. Picture them in silver, though (for more views: Famous Footwear).

The Potential Hairdo
We’re required to have updos (good thing she told me because I was surely about to just curl it all up). I was thinking about attempting this style:

after seeing this YouTube video on how to create it:

Also considering just braiding my hair and doing a braid updo. I like these styles:

(the first and third styles).

The Nails
French manicure and pedicure:

.

The Makeup
I dunno. Suggestions? Instructions?

The Total
I totaled up the cost of being a bridesmaid:
$150 for the dress (??? for the alterations)
$40 for the shoes
$50 for the hairstyle (if I get it done professionally. Free if I do it myself)
$40-50 for the nails ($10-15 if I work it out with some press-ons)

For a grand total of $180-190 at least. Relatively cheap in the scheme of some bridesmaid costs, but still.

After getting only four hours of sleep, I headed out to the Blogging While Brown Conference which was held in the Georgia World Congress Center. It was around 8:45 am Saturday morning and registration closed at 9:30. That should be enough time, I told myself. That, I realize now, was small town thinking. First problem, I started driving down the wrong highway for ten miles before realizing that the exit I was looking for didn’t match up with the upcoming exits on the sign. Turned around and drove ten miles back and then an additional ten to actually get to the place. And who would have thought that there would be traffic on a Saturday morning? Eventually I got there, parked and walked 5 miles to get to the conference rooms (seriously felt like that with my heavy @$$ laptop weighing me down). Got registered and in there. Blam. Wonderful.

Our first session was from Jordan Berg of FreePress who showed us a video about how broadcast/cable companies are working to become gatekeepers of the internet and tried to convince us to take all the material he’d brought.

Next up was “The Ultimate Blog Experience” by Angela Conyers-Benton and Markus Robinson from Black Web 2.0. Very informative presentation. Here’s what I took away from them: 1) Ways to build traffic and SEO tips to get your blog to come up higher in Google (search engine) searches, 2) make sure you are in control of your own content (looking at you blogspot folks), 3) Blogging frequency and how to manage your content (I had no idea you could schedule posts in Wordpress, guess what’s gonna be my new best friend?) Their presentation had blogger folks scrambling to get their own domains because of Blogger’s questionable content ownership policies. Go here if you want to get more on their presentation.

Up next was a Town Hall Session with Jason Pye of the Libertarian party and Michael McKay Murphy of the Republican party who spoke with us about their backgrounds and explained to us how they (and their party) related to us (Black bloggers). Members of the Democratic and Green Party were invited but were not able to make it (in the Green Party’s case, I think that they didn’t make it onto the Georgia ballot).

We took a break for lunch (yummy sandwiches and such) and I got the chance to talk with Villager (Wayne Hicks) of Electronic Village, Theo Johnson of Theo Talks, Laquita Jones of Terrell Tax and Planning and Ananda Leeke.

Then there was the post lunch session called “Bridges: Build, Cross or Burn? Can New Media Work With the Old Guard and Old Media?” All I can say is that I’m glad that we had lunch before this session. The panel consisted of Tamara Reynolds (Glam Media), Clarissa Goodlife (Color of Change) and Necole Bitchie (NecoleBitchie.com) and was moderated by Kevin Ross (3BandaS).

The discussion ended up being about the balance between monetizing your blog and selling out. It got so heated that Gina McCauley (What About Our Daughters?) jumped in to add in her two cents. The biggest issue was about the difference between how entertainment-type blogs and activist-type blogs use monetization (that is, entertainment blogs are more likely to do so). Also a topic of contention was the use of ad networks, ad exchanges and affiliate programs. For the full discussion, visit the recorded archive provided by TheoTalks.net at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/586451. Interesting discussion, but waaaay longer than we were all ready for.

Freddy O (photographer, painter, all around artiste) took the group picture and here it is (after 30 some odd clicks):

(Click the pic for a larger view. The red star is me!)
 

Next up were the breakout sessions:

• Secret of a Media Insider (Carmen Dixon, All About Race)
• Podcasting 101 (Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow, Mixed Chicks Chat)
• Umoja from a Black Blogger’s Perspective (Wayne Hicks, Electronic Village)
• Blogger Rights (Kristal Lauren High, Esq. and Shwana Ruth-Bridges, Esq.)

I checked out the Podcasting 101 and Umoja sessions.

Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow headed up the podcasting session. They’re so cute together and have such chemistry. It was fun learning from them. They got me inspired to try out podcasting. One day, I hope I’ll be able to have my own online radio show or something like that (and fulfill my dreams of a broadcast journalism career).

The last session of the day (that I attended) was Umoja from Wayne Hicks of Electronic Village. I think attending this session was the last kick in the butt for me. What I mainly took from the session was to have a goal for my blog and to remain committed. He also listed out some of the reasons (Black) blogs fail including boring topics or boring writing, lack of motivation, personal issues and poor blog design. Also he outlined the difference between the afrosphere (community of Black bloggers) and the AfroSpear (big “A” – community of progressive Black bloggers who focus on making positive changes in the African Diaspora)

This session was the last remaining boost I needed. In the last four months or so, I’d been sporadic in my posting and was on the verge of ignoring AllTayo.com.

Coming to this conference refueled me with motivation and gave me new ideas and inspiration for what to do with my blog. Keep watching…

All in all, great conference and I look forward to the next one ( I feel like I’ve said that before, but it bears repeating).

Shout-out time! You can check out a more complete listing of the conference attendees at http://bloggingwhilebrown.blogspot.com.

My own private shout-outs (folks I spoke with directly and/or got B-cards from, sorry if I left someone out!):

Sincere,
Villager,
ATLien (Straight From the A),
Ananda Leeke,
LoveBabz,
Terrell Tax and Planning (Laquitta Jones),
Wayne Dixon,
Bruce Dixon (uh, no relation, I think?) and
Tiffany Duhart of Nokturnal Escape Entertainment (from J-Ville, sorry, I never got your business website!)

Phew! That was so long! Hope you’ll join me for part 3 of my trip (and no, I won’t keep you hanging like I did with the gallbladder story ;))

Ha, I’m back ya’ll. First post up is about the Blogging While Brown Conference that I attended this past weekend in Atlanta. I’d known about it for about six months and was going back and forth about whether or not to attend and basically at the last minute (like a month before), I decided to go. And I’m so glad I did. First up, thanks to Gina McCauley at What About Our Daughters for spearheading this conference. It was much needed and I can only see it getting bigger and bigger as the years go by.

Since I live about five hours away, I decided to drive up to ATL and stay with my aunt and cousin for the free. The first BWB event was the pre-conference Meet and Greet. Cuzzo and I showed up, but ended up leaving early. Why? Simply because I have shy tendencies and they were in full effect that night. We ended up getting drinks from the Fox Atlantic Grill. She was full and wasn’t able to finish hers so there was a plan put into play to sneak the drink out in a to-go cup. Let’s just say that plan ended with the bartender walking by and tell us that we were on camera and that if we tried to leave the restaurant with the drink, we would be in trouble. She was heated, I found the situation funny as hell.

That night we ended up going to Studio 72 (she’s a VIP hostess there) but ended up leaving because she wasn’t feeling the crowd that night. So she suggested we go bowling. Mind you, I’m in a cute T-shirt dress (similar to these) and some cute black stilettos. And she’s in jeans. Talkinbout, “let’s go bowling”, lol. Anyway, we ended up at the Midtown Bowl where I bowled my best game ever (88, stank you very much), but no one was around to see it! Got back to the house at 4 in the morning. And I had to be up by 8:00 am to make sure I made it to the conference on time.