What an enjoyable weekend we had! A weekend when, I hope, history was made and the personal finance bloggers in the UK got together to have our first conference. Well, OK some of the UK personal finance bloggers met but it is a start; apart from that I believe that quality is what counts 🙂 and the ones who didn’t come will be so sorry when they hear about the fruitful fun we had that next year will join us. And the fact that we met people from other niches and advertisers only added buzz to the event.
This seems to me to be part of a broader movement of alignment and organising of the personal finance landscape in the UK. Write on Finance Blog Up was organised by Karen of Help Me to Save and speaker included Emma of Zero Credit, Richard of imutual and the one and only Miss Thrifty. In another development, Ash and Jay of the Sterling Effort started a ranking of UK personal finance blogs – this is to be cleaned of bugs and made more stable, the lads assure me, during the coming weeks.
It was also great to meet long standing virtual friends (Ash and Jay of the Sterling Effort and Adam of the Magical Penny), catch up with friends (Elaine of Mortgage Free in Three) and make some new friends (Jenny and Greg of The Discount Coder Blog). And many others…
And of course we met Paul Knott, author of Ouch! – great presentation, great writing tips and one these in particular gave me the opening I needed to introduce myself as the Mistress Supreme of The Money Principle when on a panel. It works! As to Ouch! I’ll be writing more about it in couple of week – but any book on personal finance that manages to sneak in BD*M, s*x and scatology can’t be boring (sorry about the stars but Google are telling me that search engines will block my side because there are dult themes; you know me – I can’t include an adult theme to save my life :)).
In brief, the weekend was interesting, fruitful and enjoyable; the beer was great and personal finance bloggers in the UK are getting together. Let’s hope that this is the first step of a long and exciting journey.
Also, The Money Principle was included in the following carnivals of personal finance last week:
Yakezie Carnival at Financial Management Blog
Wealth Artisan’s FinCarn at Wealth Artisan
Carn. of Financial Camaraderie at PlantingMoneySeeds
Carnival of MoneyPros at The College Investor
Carnival of Retirement at Club Thrifty
Thanks and speak soon.
PS: I took this photo in Oslo several months back.
Any type of blogger meetup sounds like it is fun! I really hope I get to go to FinCon13!
@Lance: Next year I will be at FinCon, Lance. But I also hope that we here in the UK will manage to keep it going.
Oh no, there it is! Proof that I promised to work on the blog ranking system 🙂 I have a crazy week ahead of me so forgive me in this takes two or three weeks to get sorted. Anyway, it was great meeting you and John. I always thought you might be a bit crazy…so it’s great to finally have some proof! 😀
@Ash: You have time to sort out the ranking system but it is important – it provides one of the stands to getting PF bloggers in the UK to talk more to each other. It always helps if we know who we are – so the ranking is to a degree secondary. Stability is important, thought.
Crazy…in a good or in a bad way?I think in a very good way that is fun and interesting. And you know, Ash – it pays off in creativity and enjoyment in what one does.
Keep it up and speak soon.
Maria, hanks for your contributions to the panel discussions at the Write on Finance Blog Up Leeds. I do hope that we can keep the momentum going to create a useful UK pf community.
@Karen: I hope so as well, Karen; ande I was honoured to be there.
I met Adam at FinCon. That dude is nuts! …and he’s incredibly tall.Â
@AverageJoe: That he is! And great fun to be around (also knows a very nice pub with great beer in Leeds).
Both of you are right, nuts and great to spend time with:)Â
Great meeting you Maria!! Cheers
Can you make it to fincon13?
Glad you guys could have a conference. Conference and meet ups are always fun and so very educational.Â
@Suba: Absolutely right! It was so good to be able to ‘put face to the blog’ and simply being able to talk to the others. It also build a community.
@Suba: I won’t miss FinCon 2013 for the world. See you there, I hope…
I for one am looking forward to meeting up again next year – will be so interesting to see how it all develops over the year.
As for Fincon13 – I’ve started packing and as soon as the location is sorted flight will be booked.
And Adam is really tall – that cheeky grin is up a loooooooong way LOLÂ