BlogPaws West - Day 2

The second day of BlogPaws West began with a special tribute in memory of the many people and animals lost on September 11, 2001 . The keynote address was made by Patricia Callahan of Canine Companions for Indepedence, an organization that provides service dogs to people with disabilities. Patricia was joined by CCI graduate Randi Price and her service dog Lucky. We were all deeply moved by Randi's comments regarding her special relationship with Lucky.

For the first breakout session, I attended Writing Essentials presented by BlogPaws co-founder Yvonne DiVita. Yvonne also blogs on Scratching and Sniffings and Lipsticking. She provided great suggestions on how to use action words to build traffic and convey your message, write paragraphs to engage your readers, and create content that you can use to create a book. The second session I attended was Your Pet Oughta Be in Pictures presented by Jessica Bush of DOGingham. Jessica helped participants determine camera settings to get the best results, provided composition tips, and identified common mistakes and ways to overcome them.

After lunch, I spent the afternoon working with Vicki Boatright (aka Bztat) helping her to create her special mural for BlogPaws. It was fascinating watching her work, and I was honored to have some small part in the creation of such a fabulous piece of art. This mural was created at the conference and incorporated thoughts, quotes, comments, and pictures from the conference attendees. The mural was presented at the closing session and will be put on display in a public setting, possibly one of the shelters supported by the BlogPaws conference.

I am happy to have attended BlogPaws West - to have seen my old friends from BlogPaws East, meet new friends, and improve my blogging skills. And I look forward to attending the next BlogPaws conference in 2011.