The Chicago SBI conference was priceless

by Ashley Cotter-Cairns
(Hudson, QC, Canada)

For those who attended, the Chicago SBI conference was priceless.

Aside from the near-certain brain damage going 67 hours without sleep did to me (too exciting to sleep!), I came away from the conference with:

- Renewed determination to implement what I had learned
- Dozens of new contacts; heck, let's just call 'em friends!
- A new appreciation for pizza (who needs crust when you can replace it with cheese?)
- New light through old windows: just when I thought I was getting pretty good at picking traffic-generating keywords, Louann's advice showed me I was missing a TON of traffic. That's going to be repaying my conference fees for decades to come
- A feeling of self-worth and desire to succeed: nothing like meeting so many like-minded people who want EACH OTHER to do well, as well as achieve success for their own sakes
- Lessened isolation: working from home can feel really solitary, but now I have all these great SBI friends to interact and exchange ideas with
- A desire to relearn and embrace social networking concepts

No matter what level you're at, you will come away from an SBI conference with something more than you expected to as you arrived. Looking down the list of topics before I went, I thought, "Okay, there's one I could miss" -- and yet, I'm so glad I did not skip a single topic, because it humbled me to realize how much each and every person had to teach me, even about topics that I thought I knew inside-out.

Thank you all. I loved, loved, LOVED this experience! I'll be in Tampa, even if it means hitch-hiking my way down the east coast.