5 years of blogging

It’s an odd coincidence that this weekend marks both the 5th anniversary of the day I started this blog and also the start of the annual ABC Kids Show in Las Vegas. This year marks the last installment of this venerable show before it relocates to more genteel digs in Louisville, KY, and it feels like the end of an era.

The blog and the ABC Show have always been inextricably linked, at least in my own head. Trade shows are the most challenging and rewarding times for me as a blogger. After a long day of walking aisle after aisle, all I want to do is collapse and get some rest. Instead I start uploading pictures, editing videos, poring over press kits and trying to write as many coherent sentences as I can before I literally fall asleep on my keyboard. It’s exhilarating and exhausting.

At the 2006 ABC Show, the first year I blogged that show, my blogging habit was a big novelty for the manufacturers exhibiting (Hey, aren’t you the one with that blog thingie?). That year I went directly from Las Vegas to Cologne, Germany for the European baby gear show. After almost two weeks of traveling, trade shows and blogging, I came home with pneumonia.

I slowed down just a little after that.

By last year, the ABC Show was teeming with bloggers, both veteran and newly minted, eager to provide their readers with up-to-the-minute coverage of all the newest products. Many exhibitors had PR people ready and waiting to hand out press kits and answer questions.

The times they are a-changing, but it’s an amazing thing. There aren’t enough hours in a day to read all of the extraordinary content that pours out of blogs. My Google Reader runneth over. But I’m so proud to be a voice in this chorus.

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