FoodBuzz Festival 2011 in Review

Whew! It’s been almost a whole week since I attended the FoodBuzz Festival in San Francisco! Since I live in the Bay Area, I figured I’d commute to the festival. On the upside, the festival’s venues were either accessible via transit or transportation was provided; on the downside, commuting was a major PITA, even with accessibility. Next time, I am totally making this a staycation for the family! The Hubs and The Little Empress can go buzz around Union Square while Mommy pigs out!

Friday was a fun day. Once I got on site and picked up my goodie bag, I got to meet and chat with some other bloggers. The food blog world is full of really fascinating people and I got to meet a bunch of them! FoodBuzz provided a shuttle bus to the reception at the Terra Gallery.Oh, there was so much good food to be had! The first part of the reception was hummus and hummus-based appetizers (sponsored by Sabra) along with a selection of local wines and beers. The second part of the reception was the dinner. Sadly, not many of my photos came out as well as I would have liked (even with color correction). But at least I have dessert?

There have been plenty of times that I’ve been given strange looks for eating with my camera first; that is, taking pictures with my camera before even taking a bite. It felt really great to be in a crowd of people that ate with their cameras first!

I got a bit of a late start on Saturday but I ended up trotting in to the Federated Media headquarters “only” a half hour late. (Oops.) No worries — I was still able to catch plenty of the “Taking Your Blog to the Next Level” session while munching on the “light breakfast” that the Food Buzz folks so thoughtfully provided for their bloggers. The “light breakfast” included three different types of frittata, a hefty array of muffins, artisan jams, organic yogurt and orange juice, fresh fruit and free trade coffee.

(I need more “light breakfasts” like this in my life. Just sayin’.)

The next session I attended was the blog design workshop, hosted by Sabrina from The Tomato Tart and The Cuisinerd (sorry, I  didn’t write down your name!!!) It was an hour chock full of helpful information about how to design your blog and the basics of branding. Loved it! (And I’ve spent the past week or so putting in to practice what I learned.) After that was an introduction to using Social Media, hosted by Irvin from Eat the Love and Stella from The Brave Tart.

And then came some more fun… the Taste Pavilion! An entire floor of the Metreon for food bloggers to sample new foods. I tasted so many great things, I can’t even begin to list them all. So I’ll just do the next best thing and share photos

All in all, it was an incredible experience. I definitely plan to go again if they hold another Festival in San Francisco next year!