Here is the first video introducing some of the bloggers that attended. Head on over to YouTube where you can see the rest of the interviews!

Enjoy!

So, here are the ideas we’ve been sent. Names of the lovely people who created these beautiful banners will be published once a winner is announced.

TO VOTE: Please leave a comment below specifying which is your favourite option. Is it A, B, C, D or E?

Voting ends Thursday January 7th, 2010. A winner will be announced on Friday January 8th, 2010.

OPTION A

OPTION B

OPTION C

OPTION D

OPTION E

Thank you and appreciate your input!

Thanks to Hilda for all her professional work in putting this video together. Interviews will be up soon.

Enjoy!

As promised, we have  created a space for you to submit your questions. The last day to submit questions is Friday, December 18th, 2009.  Kang will then come back and answer all your questions here on Monday, December 21st, 2009.

You can also download the applicable presentations here.

As promised, we have  created a space for you to submit your questions. The last day to submit questions is Friday, December 18th, 2009. Kang and Meeta will then come back and answer all your questions on Monday, December 21, 2009.

You can also download the applicable presentations here.

As promised, we have created a space for you to submit your questions.The deadline to submit questions is Friday December 18th, 2009. Jeanne and Jamie will then come back and answer all your questions on Monday, December 21st, 2009.

You can also download the presentation for Writing Style & Voice here and for Copyright here.

The first Food Blogger Connect was held on November 28 in London, glorious London. Well, rainy and gray London yet all aglow in stunning holiday spirit, bright Christmas lights and the radiant faces of 50 excited food bloggers. One day packed with laughter and sharing, information and networking, friendships strengthened and friendships formed. This event was a first of its kind, bringing together 70 bloggers from all over the world – Germany, Holland, France, Ireland, Switzerland and India, making this truly an international connection.

Together a dynamic and knowledgeable team consisting of Bethany Kehdy of Dirty Kitchen Secrets, Hilda of Saffron & Blueberry, Meeta of What’s For Lunch, Honey?, Jamie of Life’s a Feast and Mowie of Mowielicious all joined forces and pulled together an event that had the world of food bloggers all abuzz and atwitter. An exotic location, Lebanese restaurant Levant, leant an ambiance lush, rich and romantic, candles glittering amongst the gold, fairy tale music whispering in the background and a breathtaking buffet of incredible Lebanese food held the promise of a wondrous, magical day.

Food blogging is often a lonely game: Though passionate about food we find ourselves all alone in the kitchen, in front of a keyboard or peering through a camera, most likely talking to ourselves as we stir and knead, snap and type. We suffer like the kid in the back of the class wondering how everyone else seems to be so popular, amazed that all the others know just what to say and know just the perfect outfit to wear, so stylish and attractive, invited everywhere while we seem to be odd kid out fading into the woodwork. We doubt, we question our determination and ask ourselves if we really have what it takes to be a successful food blogger. Well, Food Blogger Connect 09 answered these questions with a resounding round of applause! Finally meeting and talking with other food bloggers just like ourselves reassured each of us that we are not alone, confirmed that we are all part of a community willing to share and encourage and that nagging doubt about our place in the marvelous world that is food blogging was replaced by excitement and determination.

Food Blogger Connect was a day packed with networking, exchanging ideas and information amid the laughter and the hugs. The FBC Team had put together an accomplished, lively group of speakers who shared their experience and insight into important food blogging issues. After Jeanne of Cook Sister presented the BloggerAid project and Cookbook, Meeta kicked off the speeches with her out-of-the box look into food styling and photography including her look at “guerrilla shooting”. She shared with us her unorthodox tricks and easy solutions towards producing edible-looking food photos. She touched on lighting, color, texture as well as props, highlighting her words with a slide show of her amazing food photography. We all learned so much from Meeta’s own experience gleaned from 4 years of blogging and her self-taught photographic evolution.

Meeta’s advice: “Use your camera as a painter would a canvas and start coloring.”

Kang of London Eater focused his talk on indoor food photography in both natural and artificial lighting situations, otherwise known as “Photographs in the Dark” for those interested in taking pictures for restaurant reviews. He dissected his camera in front of us and showed us all how to get those gorgeous shots in low-light situations.

Both Meeta and Kang’s enthusiasm and evident passion for their food photography excited and inspired the crowd to grab up their cameras and start shooting!

Jeanne and Jamie, both writers who cook (as opposed to cooks who write), followed with a passionate, sexy talk on finding your writing style, your voice, expressing your own personality through the writing on your food blog. Of course, they touched on the basics of grammar and punctuation, visual clutter and blog post structure and organization, but they brought home the fact that a food blog is all about food and they explained how to find just the right way, the right words to stimulate the senses and inspire desire. The emotional and cultural experience of food should punctuate your writing, but keep it simple, natural and accessible to your readers. And stay true to yourself, who you are and no matter how often you are bitten by the envy bug, you should never try and copy another food blogger’s style. Jamie and Jeanne also discussed stat envy, focus and how to stay motivated through thick and thin.

Kang jumped back in with an interesting and fun talk on social media, how to notice and be noticed, how to use social networking sites to your advantage, increasing both your visibility and your traffic.

Jeanne closed up the session with a brief but important discussion on staying on the right side of copyright laws – and protecting your own work.

The FBC Team gathered an enormous amount of input and immediately began sketching out the outlines of the next Food Blogger Connect in 2010 the very next day. Tentative dates have already been set – 5th-6th June. We all learned so much and left so inspired and motivated to put everything we learned at FBC 2009 into practice, but at the end of the day, everyone, both the organizing team and the attendees, realized that we all wished we had had so much more time to go further in depth on each and every subject, ask questions, share our own information and experience with a give and take and have more time just to get to know our fellow food bloggers. Taking this into consideration, we have decided that next year the event will be spread out over two days and offer interactive workshop type presentations so each question, each query and every idea can be shared and discussed in detail. For the team it is vital to get as much feedback from bloggers as possible. One of the huge success factors of this event is that the team will be relying partly on input and ideas from bloggers, making Food Blogger Connect 2010 an event specifically tailored for the requirements of a food blogger.

In the upcoming weeks lots of details and information, like the slides used at the FBC 2009 and round-ups of the speeches will be available at the Food Blogger Connect website. Keep checking for updates. Furthermore, there will also be the opportunity for bloggers to submit questions to ask the speakers, interact with everyone that was at the event, and so much more. And of course updates will also be provided for the next Food Blogger Connect 2010.

So if you often feel alone and left out as a food blogger, if you find it exciting to actually meet and spend time with others of this great family of food bloggers, or if you want and need to know more about optimizing your blog, improving your food styling and photography, finding your ideal writing voice, cleaning up your space and presenting your brightest self to the food blogging world as well as increasing your visibility and maybe even getting published, then keep your eyes open for information about Food Blogger Connect 2010! It’s going to be bigger, better and hotter than ever!

It’s time this new and shiny website got some character and we need your help! We need you to put your talent and skills to the test and design an FBC logo and banner. How cool is that?!

What do you, the winner, get in return? Well besides being the cool dude/dudette around the community, you’ll also be given the credit for being the mastermind behind the branding. And, if that’s not enough… We’re also giving the winner a free ticket to FBC10- both days!

So, what are you waiting for… get cookin’ and show us what you’ve got.

Submission Guidelines: FBC slogan is “Pass Your Plate!” Deadline for submissions is December 18th, 2009. The submissions will be put forth anonymously to the community and then voted upon. The winner and the participants will be disclosed at the end of the competition. Winning masterpiece will need to be in the following formats; JPEG, PNG & EPS & TIFF.

Send all submissions to info@foodbloggerconnect.com

Good luck and break a chicken leg!

A fusion of all these images-faces, fun, laughter, food and hugs-now resonate in our minds. And if by some freak chance we were to forget any of them, well then there are these sensational round-ups to keep the emotions stirred.

Here’s what the attendees had to say:

Kang from London Eater:
http://londoneater.com/2009/11/30/what-i-saw-at-the-inaugural-food-bl…

Aoife from The Daily Spud:
http://www.thedailyspud.com/2009/11/29/spud-sunday-stinky-spud/

Paul from Get Me Cooking
http://www.getmecooking.com/blog/review-of-food-bloggers-connect-lond…

Davina from The Sugar Bar
http://www.sugarbar.org/blog/2009/11/30/sweet-surrender-oreo-truffles…

Sarah from Meals With Sarah:
http://simplycooked.blogspot.com/2009/11/food-blogger-connect.html

Sarah from Maison Cupcake:
http://blog.maisoncupcake.com/2009/11/celebrating-our-dirty-kitchen-s…

Oz from Kitchen Butterfly:
http://www.kitchenbutterfly.com/2009/12/01/food-bloggers-connect-200/

Oz from Kitchen Butterfly (Part 1)
http://www.kitchenbutterfly.com/2009/12/01/food-bloggers-connect-09/

Sarah from Food For Think
http://sarahjanek.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/food-bloggers-connect-09/

George from Culinary Travels:
http://culinarytravels.co.uk/?p=1465

Jeanne from Cook Sister!
http://www.cooksister.com/2009/11/food-blogger-connect-2009.html

Sunita from Sunita’s World
http://sunitabhuyan.com/?p=2992

Jamie from Life’s A Feast
http://lifesafeast.blogspot.com/2009/12/food-blogger-connect-09.html

Beth from Dirty Kitchen Secrets:
http://www.dirtykitchensecrets.com/food-blogger-connect-2009-back-to-…

Mowie from Mowielicious
http://www.mowielicious.com/home/2009/12/food-bloggers-connect-09-its…

Sarka from Cooking Your Dream
http://sarkababicka.blogspot.com/2009/12/i-was-there-food-bloggers-co…

Hilda from Saffron & Blueberry
http://saffronandblueberry.blogspot.com/2009/12/food-blogger-connect-…

Meeta from What’s For Lunch Honey
http://whatsforlunchhoney.blogspot.com/2009/12/food-blogger-connect-2…

Deeba from Passionate About Baking
http://www.passionateaboutbaking.com/2009/12/london-bridgedfood-blogg…

Solange of Pebble Soup

http://pebblesoup.blogspot.com/2009/12/food-blogger-connect-09.html

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Basic Food Photography & Styling  by Meeta of What’s For Lunch Honey?
How to make your photos look edible!

Just a few days to go before the big FBC meet in London. I am excited and looking forward to meeting everyone. I have the great honor of speaking about a topic I am very passionate about – Food Photography. I thought I’d give you a little teaser of what to expect.

I have been blogging for almost 4 years now and basically learned a lot about food photography from scratch. My approach to the presentation will be to explain what I learned over these 4 years without getting too technical, much fuss and most important without a huge budget.

There will be tips, a few unorthodox tricks and simple suggestions for everyone who is interested in taking edible looking photos for their food blogs. We’ll talk camera, light, color, texture and styling with props and much more.

Here are just two slides I thought I would tease you with.

See you in London on Saturday

Meeta

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Writing Style & Voice by Jeanne of Cooksister! And Jamie of Life’s A Feast
How to find your blogging voice and make it sing!

The countdown is moving swiftly along and it is hard to believe that we are on T minus 72 hours to lift-off of the first ever food blogger conference in the UK!

Jeanne of Cooksister has always described herself as a writer who cooks, rather than a cook who writes. Jamie of Life’s a Feast thinks of and writes about food as a whole emotional and cultural experience. Together, they will be speaking about a topic dear to their hearts – writing style and voice.

Food touches all of the senses: taste (obviously), smell, sight, sound, touch, but how much of that is lost when the food is seen through a computer screen? A food blog writer must be able to communicate what is missing, to stimulate the senses and stir up passion with words. A successful food blog is one that inspires desire in the reader: the desire to eat, to cook or even to write themselvesabout what dish you are presenting to them.

Writing a food blog can be a lonely and sometimes frustrating experience when your words seem to come out wrong and you feel that nobody is listening, but ultimately finding and polishing your voice is something that all good bloggers have to do in order to be successful. We will be sharing our experiences of developing our own writing and addressing issues such as:

* how your cooking and lifestyle influence the kind of writing you do;

* figuring out who you are writing for;

* being inspired by others but remaining true to yourself;

* structuring a good post and the importance of writing basics;

* staying motivated; and

* staying on the right side of copyright laws – and protecting your own work.

We hope you are as excited about hearing what we have to say as we are about saying it!

Jeanne & Jamie.

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Creative Makerting & Social Media By Kang from LondonEater

Social Media & Me

I would like to give you a perspective of what Social Media means to me, and what I think my role is within Social Media. If I am articulate enough to get my ideas across, then you should come away with some practical ideas on how to make blogging even more fun than it already is and for the benefit of my non-blogging readership, a snippet of my thought process behind this very blog.

I will also be talking about “Photographs in the Dark.” I’ll be running through a couple of slides and I will show you a slice of what goes through my mind when I take pictures of food. The objective is for you to walk away with some ideas of how to nail that shot in a lowly lit room. I have a few surprise items that I’m going to whip out on the spot which I hope will help liven things up abit, so if you’re going, do look out for something shiny.

See you there!

Kang