What is a Blogher conference all about? I write as a Sheknows Expert which is part of the Blogher family and I really was not sure what Blogher: Experts Among Us conference in Los Angeles would be. I decided to go after my friend, Melissa, called me and said, “How can you not go? It is in Los Angeles.” I have been saying that 2016 is Year of the Conference so it seemed I should go. This conference opened with Wine and Gyn, all the questions you would ask your gynecologist if she was your best friend and you went to drinks. I knew I was in the right place!
Earlier this year I went to my first TBEX Travel Blogging conference in May at the Mall of America and stayed at the brand new Hyatt Regency Bloomington. I loved the conference, the behind the scenes tour at the Mall of America and my executive suite at the hotel. Then in June I went to my first SCUBA show in Long Beach where I drooled over all the destinations I have yet to dive and I stayed at the incredible Hotel Maya where I had wooden floors, a balcony with a view of the Queen Mary and s’mores! I was pretty much in heaven. For Blogher, I stayed at my own house and I went to the conference each day by Uber. I realized after I sat in traffic one day, I should have taken Uber to a metro stop. But enough about where I stayed, what did I learn? Would I go again? Should you spend time at conferences?
Each of these three conferences has taught me so much. I have another conference in Texas in August and in Arizona in November. All five of these conferences, I am going to for the first time. It is a year of exploration.
My focus this year has been to grow my skills with video. I was thrilled to be able to attend the workshop on Managing Your YouTube Channel. The panel included three incredible women: Kandee Johnson, Whitney White and moderator Sarah Penna from Awestruck. I am always worried and wondering if I am running my YouTube channel the “RIGHT” way. I really appreciated all that they shared. It was the perfect place for me to be. I now have over 550 travel videos on YouTube, ROKU and Amazon Fire Tv and across all my platforms I have 700,000 video views. I learned from this group that I am not alone. It is really hard work. It does take a long time. I just have to keep going.
I went to a special event with AARP called Disrupt Aging. The panel was also three women who were fantastic role models for making your own way in life. I loved how they talked about opportunities, staying positive and owning every aspect of yourself.
In the Expo room, there were incredible companies of all types from Baskin Robbins to Lamps Plus and everything in-between! Everyone was friendly and ready to share about their product and how to get involved. I met Luvvie Ajayi and was able to interview her about her new book, “I’m Judging You.” I even got my own Judgey Pop!
The best part for me was spending time with travel friends new and old. It was great to have meals together and talk about challenges on the road and learn from their experiences. I highly recommend Blogher and I plan to go back again next year! Actually, I will go back to all of these conferences next year.
Let me know if you are going and we can meet up. Happy and Safe Travels! Lisa Niver
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Lisa Ellen Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries and six continents. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she worked on cruise ships for seven years and backpacked for three years in Asia. She is the founder of the website WeSaidGoTravel which is read in 235 countries and was named #3 on Rise Global’s top 1,000 Travel Blogs. Niver is a speaker at the Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Dallas Travel and Adventure Shows for 2023. Her podcast, “Make Your Own Map,” has been watched in more than 11 countries on 4 continents. Niver is represented by Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary, Inc. Look for her memoir in Fall 2023 from Post Hill Press/Simon and Schuster.
You can find Lisa Niver talking travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, Satellite Media Tours, The Jet Set TV and Orbitz travel webisodes as well as her YouTube channel, where her WeSaidGoTravel videos have nearly 2 million views.
With more than 150,000 followers across social media, she has hosted Facebook Live for USA Today 10best, is verified on Twitter and listed on IMDb, and is the Social Media Manager for the Los Angeles Press Club.
As a journalist, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors and been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. She has been a judge for the Gracie Awards for the Alliance of Women in Media, and has run 15 travel competitions on her website, publishing over 2,500 writers and photographers from 75 countries.
For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty times.
Niver has published more than 2000 articles, in more than three dozen magazines and journals
including National Geographic, Wired, Teen Vogue, HuffPost Personal, POPSUGAR, Ms. Magazine, Luxury Magazine, Smithsonian, Sierra Club, Saturday Evening Post, AARP, AAA Explorer Magazine, American Airways, Delta Sky, enRoute (Air Canada), Hemispheres, Jewish Journal, Myanmar Times, BuzzFeed, Robb Report, Scuba Diver Life, Ski Utah, Trivago, Undomesticated, USA Today, TODAY, Wharton Magazine, and Yahoo.
https://bit.ly/m/lisaniver
Awards
National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards
2021 Winner: Book Critic: Ms. Magazine “Untamed: Brave Means Living From the Inside Out”
2019 Winner: Soft News Feature for Film/TV: KTLA TV “Oscars Countdown to Gold with Lisa Niver”
2019 Finalist for: Soft News, Business/Music/Tech/Art
Southern California Journalism Awards
2022 Finalist: Book Criticism
2021 Winner: Technology Reporting
2021 Finalist: Book Criticism
2020 Winner: Print Magazine Feature: Hemispheres Magazine, “Painter by the Numbers, Rembrandt”
2020 Finalist: Online Journalist of the Year, Activism Journalism, Educational Reporting, Broadcast Lifestyle Feature
2019 Finalist: Broadcast Television Lifestyle Segment for “Ogden Ski Getaway”
2018 Finalist: Science/Technology Reporting, Travel Reporting, Personality Profile
2017 Winner: Print Column “A Journey to Freedom over Three Passovers”
Social Media Presence
YouTube Channel: We Said Go Travel (1.7 million views)
Short form video:TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts
Twitter: lisaniver (90,000 followers)
Instagram: lisaniver (24,000 followers)
Pinterest: We Said Go Travel (20,000 followers and over 70,000 monthly views)
Facebook: lisa.niver (5,000 followers); We Said Go Travel (3,000 followers)
LinkedIn: lisaellenniver (9000 contacts)
