Food Blogger Connect 2011 - presenting is fun!

A couple of weeks ago, on the 14th August, I attended and gave a presentation at the Food Blogger Connect 2011 conference in London.

It was held at The Hempel hotel in the very prestigious area of Bayswater, London. It's a 5 star hotel and was used in the final scene in the film Notting Hill!

I was really excited to present because it was the first opportunity that I had had to demonstrate the Recipe Template plugin for WordPress that we have been developing for the past 4 months - and I was very keen to see what people would think of it. After a few technical difficulties with the hotel network I gave a quick demonstration of the plugin and how it would benefit food bloggers.

During the presentation, I was very happy (and relieved!) to get a questions from the audience. Unfortunately, due to the technical issues and lunch being served, my demo was a bit shorter than planned - but that was okay as I had been able to give everyone a sneak peak at the plugin.

Straight after the presentation (despite lunch being ready!), I was approached by some keen food bloggers who were eager to ask me lots of questions, suggest new ideas and offered to help test the plugin before it is made public! This was brilliant - and just what I wanted from the presentation!

During the lunch break, between sessions and after the event, I was able to talk to many bloggers. Talking to and getting ideas and support from other food bloggers is a key part of the conference experience - you can't help but make new friends after every event such as this!

Many thanks to those of you who have offered advice and tested the plugin for us. With your help, we have been able to test the plugin on more than one test environment and you have given us valuable feedback, including suggestions for features that will be released in the first version of the plugin and some features that we will add in future versions.

Also on the day, I enjoyed watching the other presentations, in particular the one by Jaden Hair (Steamy Kitchen) in which she spoke openly and honestly about her career as a foodie and the live cooking demonstration by Caroline MiLi Artiss (Caroline MiLi Artiss).

Here is a roundup of a list of reviews of the event from some of the bloggers who attended.

For related comments made on twitter, see hashtag #FBC11.

Here are some of the photographs I took during the raffle.

Food Blogger Connect 2011