Once upon a time, a girl knew how to write sentences. She wrote inane and silly things that people, for some reason, responded to with varying degrees of enthusiasm. All she wanted, beyond world peace and a decent amount of ice cream, was a pair of black boots. Oh, and plus an invitation n to TribeUp NYC.

 

She got the invite, but alas, no boots. So instead she bought silver-glittered flats, and thus went to New York with stupid, sparkling shoes. The girl cried and cried about not having boots. TribeUp NYC was awesome though, so she decided to live with the stupid, sparkling shoes, and live to see another day. Hopefully, a boot-wearing day.

 

The end.

 

Just kidding. This post isn’t about going to TribeUp NYC sans boots. It COULD be, as that is quite tragic. No one should be forced to attend TribeUp NYC sans boots. But we won’t talk about that. It’s just too, too depressing and I don’t think my readers should be forced to have such malaise forced upon them.

 

See how much I love you?

I’m protecting you from enduring the pain of TribeUp NYC sans boots. Because I’m a patriot and a humanitarian and shit. There should be a statue dedicated to my strength and bravery.

 

Jesus, half a page already and I haven’t even gotten to the good stuff. I should not be allowed to gorge on toffee-covered peanuts while writing. It ends badly for all of us.

 

I’m going to start over now. Because TribeUp NYC was such a great experience, it deserves its own intro.

 

Once upon a time, a girl who believed herself to be a mediocre writer got invited to attend a HUGE fucking blogging convention in New York. And thus her career was born, as she attended TribeUp NYC sans boots. It was EPIC.

 

OMG, we aren’t saying “epic” anymore, are we? Because it means something way bigger than what most people mean when they bandy that word about. It means, like, historically fucking massive in size, blowing the time-space continuum out of control in its awesomeness.

 

Oh. Well in that case, I’m fairly certain TribeUp NYC sans boots was way frigging EPIC.

 

Maybe “epic” isn’t even big enough to describe how incredible an experience I had. Maybe the vocabulary needs to develop a new term. Something along the lines of “Motherfucking EPIC-to-the-max”.

 

Okay, I’m still working on that. Sorry to disappoint. I’m gonna segue now. It will not be a smooth transition. Ready for it?

 

I’m writing this in third-world conditions.

 1. There is no frigging ice cream. Although the toffee-covered peanuts are extremely delish. So maybe I shouldn’t even include this point on my list. Except that it adds to that slightly “off” sensation.

 

2. I’m in a car. That shit ain’t right. But Lena and Geoff would be proud, because I’m taking their collective instructions to heart and being all professional and whatnot by showing up, doing the work, and staying “committed” as opposed to merely “interested” in blogging. More about those two kids in a minute.

 

3. I’m using my hubz’ laptop, instead of mine, which would be bad enough without adding in the additional fact that I’m also a car. My laptop has MS Word installed, which is what I’m most used to utilizing as a tool for writing things, like most of the developed world. His? No Word. Some kind of acne called Linux. Which I hate. Fucker. My laptop also rules because there is a picture of a Pacman ghost drawn by my baby girl taped to the cover.

 

See how my life kind of sucks right just then? #IknowRight?

But whatever. This is my job, so I’m taking the bullet and MAKING. SHIT. HAPPEN. You can thank me by petitioning your local government for that aforementioned statue. Lemme know how that goes.

 

The first speaker at TribeUp NYC sans boots was…

No wait. I’m not there yet. Sorry. I pulled out my notes and distracted myself into seriousness. I’m not so great with the serious. My bad. I’ll get there in a minute.

 

Because we had never been to New York, and thus had no firm understanding of exactly how the Mass Transit System works (namely, how long it would take to get from point A to point B), we hopped on the first train that came our way. Which put us at Penn Station with “just enough time” to walk to the conference.

 

That phrase is in quote marks because, yeah, we arrived 45 minutes early. If my mom was dead, she would roll in her grave. Luckily, she is alive and well… which unfortunately also means she will never believe that shit in a million years. But it really happened, I swear.

 

Me, my hubz, and my stupid, sparkling shoes arrived at TribeUp NYC sans boots WAY FUCKING EARLY. Which means we beat everyone else and got the Triberr staff all to ourselves for a bit. If you aren’t jealous, you’re more stupid than my sparkling shoes.

 

Lemme tell you what it’s like to walk off the elevator and approach a group of people you’ve never met before when you aren’t really that sure of yourself. It’s fucking scary as all hellz. There was this moment of anxiety where I wanted to cry a little bit. But I knew people might notice because of my stupid, sparkling shoes. So I bit my lip and carried on.

 

I’m so relieved I didn’t cry. Because I realized that one of the guys I spotted across the room was DINO FUCKING DOGAN. And then? He turned around, and asked in amazement (maybe with a little bit of awe, too, because apparently he thinks I’m fuck-tons of funny), “Andi-Roo?”

 

Oh. My. God.

Yeah, he totally recognized me. And then? He bounded across the room like the hyper little tiger cub that he is, and gave me a huge bear hug.

 

Dan Cristo got up from his lunch and walked over in a more sedate fashion. “Andi-Roo!” he gushed in stoic tone of voice. Not sure how someone can both gush AND be stoic all at once? Me neither, but DAN FUCKING CRISTO pulled that shit off like a boss.

 

And just like that, shit got real.

 

One more note before I move on to the meat-n-potatoes portion of the night. My hubz got to help hang the very first TribeUp poster. I didn’t get a picture of him doing it, so maybe you think I’m a liar-face, but it happened. Just ask Dan. Dan cut the tape and found wire cutters and got a ladder. So he was THERE, bitches.

 

So yeah. Dino and Dan were happy to see us, and made this super HUGE deal about how we drove all the way from Ohio to be there. They made me feel like a goddamn hero, is what. See? Bullets, baby. I’ll be expecting that statue.

 

Now I can actually say this:

The first speaker at TribeUp NYC sans boots was Geoff “I think I’m an asshole” Livingston. Please understand, I do not think Geoff is an asshole. He’s the one who said that. Geoff said his sarcasm is too wicked and throws people off.

 

Or something like that. I didn’t keep good enough notes. I only wrote down the IMPORTANT bloggy-blog types of things, not any of the off-the-cuff good stuff. Goddamn it. Where is my fucking TARDIS when I need it?

 

He offered a superb five-point lesson in how to get, keep, and leverage attention. All in all, Geoff gave an excellent presentation and I can’t wait to delve further into what it means for this here bloggy-blog. More on that in tomorrow’s post.

 

Next up was Lena “plant your flag” West. She offered an inspiring eight-point lesson in leveraging and expanding influence.

 

Everyone else in the room must have been bored, because I know SHE WAS TALKING DIRECTLY TO ME. Every word that fell from her lips was shit I seriously needed to hear, whether encouragement or a swift kick in the ass. I’ll be more explicit later, but rest assured it’s well worth the wait.

 

The third presenter was our esteemed leader himself, Dino “you gotta make me look good” Dogan.

 

Dino is so enthusiastic about everything that comes out of his mouth.

At one point, after he had complimented my blog as being “super funny”, I said to him, “I’m not sure I should take your enthusiasm to heart, because you get so excited about things, I can imagine you jumping up and down over SILVERWARE.”

 

I was surprised in no way whatsoever when he asked, “Okay, but did you SEE the silverware? None of that cheap plastic stuff — they brought out the nice METAL forks for us!”

 

See? It’s hard to tell if he really likes me, or if he just likes everything from amoebas to zits and everything in between. You know what? Doesn’t matter. Because I sure do like him an awful lot, and I like that he finds joy in the little things.

 

Robert “I’m not a blogger” Moore came next. He had a Powerpoint presentation, which although old-school-ish, was actually pretty great because it’s been a long time since I’ve had to take notes, and this gave me a brief respite from trying to remember what’s being said as I scramble to keep up. So while he seemed a bit nervous about it all, I was quite grateful.

 

I plan to cover what each presenter said in another post, but one of my favorite phrases came from this speaker: “Create serendipity.” It’s eerie he said this, because that word has been in my brain a lot lately. I’ve been talking to my hubz about how fortunate I’ve been in the past five years, falling into the right place at the right time more often than not. I would say this whole event was extremely serendipitous. Even without boots.

 

Dan “bloggers are now celebrities” Cristo gave the audience an unexpected surprise by jumping in with a presentation of his own. He indicated that bloggers are now celebrities, which I thought was awesome because I’ve been meaning to try out diva lifestyles.

 

So… about that statue you’re building… I require a fuck-ton of glitter, just so we’re clear.

 

The final speaker was a comedian. A really funny, adorable guy who doesn’t tweet and barely utilizes any type of social forum. A hilarious person who had no idea what an RSS feed is. You’d think the speech would suck… but it was actually pretty terrific. And funny. Did I mention the funny?

 

Brendan “this link takes you to a Twitter account I’ve only used once” Fitzgibbons had a lot to say regarding bringing on the laughs. One of the many lessons he offered was this: Sometimes repetition is funny.

 

Like, for instance, talking about TribeUp NYC sans boots. Repeat it often enough, and suddenly it’s a “thing”. So he’s right. Only now I just ruined it because if you have to say it out loud, or spell that shit out, then it’s not very funny after all. #FML

 

Following the presentations, potty breaks ensued, raffles were pulled and prizes were won, and I didn’t win the frigging iPad. I really thought I was going to, because I wanted it REALLY bad. I almost just kind of assumed it would be my number called. How disappointed was I to NOT win? Well now you’re just being a little bitch by asking such a shitty question. Fuck you, anyway. Jerk.

 

So that’s what happened, in a nutshell. The Spanish nuts that are still in their skins. Tomorrow I will shell deez nuts and remove their skins. The naked nuts will then hang forth and we shall get to know the details intimately.

 

For now, though, I have to finish this up and get to bed. I’m so tired I can’t even think straight. You should see my spell-checker. It’s getting pretty testy.

Tune in tomorrow for more on TribeUp NYC sans boots!

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