Design Bloggers Conference Recap

Happy Friday!  I am back home from this past week's Design Bloggers Conference (DBC) in LA, and thought I'd share a short little recap for you.  First off- it's amazing what we managed to pack in to 3 days.  I roomed with Gaby (of Savvy Home) and her friend Sabrina stayed with us, too!  Both girls are from Montreal and speak French fluently as well as English.  We hit it off great and I was thrilled to finally meet Gab in person after being "blog friends" for so long.  

The first night we got there, there was a welcome party at H.D. Buttercup.  Jeffrey Alan Marks and Ross Cassidy (hottest gay couple EVER) from Million Dollar Decorators just so happened to be in attendance.  Epic swoon.

{Gaby and I with the boys- can you tell I'm blushing?}

That was definitely the highlight of the party, and overshadowed the fact that the two beverage choices were lackluster at best.  Dry rose?  No thank you.  We also swiped the last few goodie bags and someone had taken Gab's candle out of her sack- sad day!  However, browsing the showroom floor and seeing the many pretty vignettes was inspiring.

That evening Gab and I went to dinner with Irene of designstILes, Erin of Holtwood Hipster, and Arianna of Arianna Belle.  It's so fun meeting people when you have gotten to know them via the internet and they turn out to be who they say they are (no Catfishers here!).

{On left: Irene, me, Gaby. On right: Sabrina, Arianna, Erin}

The first full day of the conference (Monday) started off with Windsor Smith as the highlighted speaker talking about design trends in 2013.  The afternoon we skipped out on and headed to get some sun by the pool.  Since here in Houston my life is consumed by school and work, I treated the conference as a vacation as well as a networking opportunity:

{Sabrina and I}

That night the Lulu & Georgia team invited us to dinner at Cecconi's West Hollywood.  It was such a chic restaurant!  Of course Kathryn Ireland was leaving as we were arriving.  Erika of Small Shop Studio and Irene also came.  It was fun meeting owner Sara, and employees/blogger friends Alexa and Michaela in person, too!

{Erika, Irene and I}

The next day I managed to sleep through the best speaker, interior designer Barbara Barry (everyone RAVED about her talk).  She has a way with words it seems.  I did make it to Newell Turner's keynote address, and he did a great job of addressing House Beautiful's quick adaption from print media to online and print media. He also stressed the importance of blogger collaborations, and the future of design blogging.  Here Gab & I are with Michaela:

That night was the closing party at the Harbinger showroom.  Let me say- this party was so fun!  It was packed, but the cucumber mojitos were delicious and the eye candy was well worth scrambling in and out of crowds of people.

Even the bathrooms were beautiful:

After the party ended at 8, Gaby, Courtney, our new friend, and I decided to walk next door to Koi for sushi.  As we left, we asked the valet what time they would be at Harbinger til.  They said 9:30, so we decided we'd be back in time to move our cars.  The food at Koi was out of this world.  They even served gold flakes on the sushi rolls:

After we finished, we went back to get our cars at 9:20.  You can guess what's coming.... NO VALET!  They had left for the night.  A note on the door at Harbinger said, "If you left your keys with valet, sorry, you have to come get them tomorrow at 9 am."  We couldn't believe it!  Of course we stressed out about where our cars were but Harbinger wouldn't respond to our frantic tweets.  :(  Nonetheless we managed to cab it back to the hotel and all things considered it was a good night.

C O N C L U S I O N:

{Gaby, me, Michaela}

Would I go to another Design Bloggers Conference?  Probably not.  I didn't think the speakers this year addressed any issues/ideas that were revolutionary to the world of design or blogging.  The location (Hilton near Universal Studios) was kind of off the beaten path and a 25 minute drive from the showrooms.  However, it was worth the cost to go solely because I got to meet many people I had been wanting to meet for a long time.  The conference afforded me that opportunity.  And yes, my opinion might be different if I had heard Barbara Barry speak.  She was everyone's highlight speaker, while my highlight was the Hilton hot tub (ha!).