Pinterest In The Making Conference 2018

I am so excited to share with you that I was invited to go to the exclusive Pinterest In The Making Conference 2018. The conference is for content creators and is being held in San Francisco June 5th and 6th. Pinterest promises food, mixed drinks, and arts and crafts. Yes, yes to all of these things!

I will be attending the conference with my twin sister the Pinterest mastermind at The Mix. Michelle offers a business Pinterest account set up and management services. Michelle and I found some babysitters for our four kiddos and are making the drive up to San Fransisco. Unfortunately, we will not be attending day two of the Pinterest In the Making Conference because I booked a trip to Hawaii and we leave Wednesday early morning.

Pinterest is having coffee and office tours of their San Fransisco offices Wednesday. I did not know about the In the Making Conference when I booked my vacation to Hawaii. Too many fun summer activities going on at once. Super bummed we are missing that but maybe we can catch it next year. This post focuses on day one of the Pinterest conference in San Fransisco.

When I received the email confirming my spot from Pinterest I was beyond ecstatic. This little snippet is from the email and has me super excited for all of the learning and networking opportunities.

Stay tuned for more details about the day-of next week but get ready for a full-day of learning how to grow your brand and business on Pinterest, meet our product team to ask them questions, provide us with feedback (we want to know your ideas!) and hear about new features too! Plus, you’ll get to meet hundreds of other creators from around the world.

In the email, Pinterest shared a group board they started just for the Pinterest Conference In The Making. The board is below and filled with pretty photos and details of the conference. Check it out and follow along.

Food and Drink at In the Making Conference

The day is not only going to be about learning about Pinterest strategies and pinning for businesses but about networking with other business owners and bloggers over food and drink.

According to the Pinterest itinerary, we are also going to be lucky enough to have drinks from the cocktail masterminds Bon Vivants. YUM!

Bon Vivant Etymology: French, literally, “good liver”. – A person having cultivated, refined, and sociable tastes, especially with respect to food and drink. The Bon Vivants is a nationally recognized cocktail, hospitality, marketing, and design firm.

Pinterest also shares that there will be coffee drinks from Lady Falcon Coffee. Which from their pins and website look like the cutest little food truck filled with goodies. How fun is my trip going to be?!

And last but not least the food. The food is going to be catered by Natvie Co. I was digging around on the Pinterest boards and found a menu from them which is below. Can you say avocado toast and tortilla soup, please?

I know I will be enjoying my coffee and lunch kid free all while networking and learning.

Guest Speakers

Below is a list of all twelve quest speakers for the Pinterest In The Making Conference. I thought it would be fun to learn about each speaker before going to the conference being held in San Fransisco. After reading their bios some of them were so inspiring I thought I would add them to my post to share. Each bio is straight from their websites. Links to check them out for yourself included. To say I am excited to learn from these business women is a huge understatement.

Amy Tangerine www.amytangerine.com

Born and raised in Chicago, Amy spent much of her childhood wallpapering her bedroom walls with the colorful and glamorous pages of fashion magazines. She learned how to sew her senior year of high school and what developed was her first passion: designing.

Within five years, she had become an award-winning designer and founder of the popular handcrafted t-shirt line Amy Tangerine. Her collections were featured in hundreds of retail outlets, including Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, and Barneys New York, and yielded impressive worldwide sales.

In 2007, her business expanded to include scrapbooking, with her fashion design work now being produced on a custom basis. Her love for sharing her clothing and now also paper crafts has taken her all over the globe and given her the opportunity to teach creative classes all over the world.

She also stays busy with creative collaborations ranging from custom scrapbooks to celebrity events to consulting services.

When she’s not at home in Los Angeles, California with two mischievous Jack Russell Terriers, her long-time partner, JC and their adorable son, Jack, she is traveling, finding great places to eat, and doing her best to enjoy every moment. All while Instagramming everything along the way. Amy loves salted caramel anything, doggy cuddles, baby giggles, palm trees, riding her beach cruiser, and nachos. Always nachos.

Alex Evjen – www.avestyles.com

She would never have thought she would be dubbed the “Pinterest queen” by her peers or end up with a famous home published in top decor magazines and blogs, but it attests to the skills and talent that has made the name Alex Evjen synonymous with influencer marketing.

Deemed Business Insider and InStyle Magazine’s Top Pinner,  she has helped countless brands such as Target, Home Depot, and Anthropologie create digital content that keeps consumers wanting more and making products fly off the shelves.

With her creative eye and her strategic mind, she excels at helping brands incorporate Pinterest into their overall digital strategy and use this powerful platform to anticipate ever-changing consumer trends. Organically, Alex has grown her audience to over 1.1 million followers with a reach beyond 10 million people.

She has always kept authenticity and integrity a priority through the past seven years as an influencer and creator. In a sea of perfect squares and rectangles, she carefully balances transparency and beauty that connects with her audience and satisfies her clients by increasing sales to “out of stock” status.

Her ability to create meaningful content-driven solutions for businesses across multiple categories mixed with her unrivaled logistical experience in social media marketing makes her a top caliber addition to any creative team.

Beth Kirby – www.localmilk.com

My name is Beth, Elizabeth Evelyn to be exact. A native Tennessean, I was born in the South. I didn’t care for being Southern, but I grew up. And when you grow up you get eyes in your head.

And what I saw was myself in the South and the South in me. It’s a broken place, and its richness lies in its brokenness. It’s an awfully human place. A bloody place. A pig fat place. One morning you wake up, look in the mirror, and see that the river and mountains and murder ballads are in you. They are you. You’re them. And you know its nonsense to say otherwise. I am, for better or worse, some strange breed of Southern.

Caroline Preuss – https://carolinepreuss.de

Caroline’s site is not in English but extremely beautiful. I could not find a bio on her to share. Which makes me even more excited to meet her and hear her speak.

Joy Cho – www.ohjoy.com

It’s 2005. Miley is still just Hannah Montana, cell phones don’t have apps, and blogging is still a mysterious new frontier. Enter Joy Cho, a newly engaged graphic designer looking for a place to share her inspirations after moving to Philadelphia from New York.

While on the hunt for a new job, Joy turns to the unknown world of blogging as a way to process this incredible transition in her life.

Fast forward eight years and Joy’s small site has turned into Oh Joy, a powerhouse of design, fashion, and all things good in life. Now in Los Angeles and married with an adorable daughter, Joy is a graphic designer turned blogger turned entrepreneur.

She continues to post beautiful moments from her life while also taking on social media projects for notable clients like Target, Anthropologie, and Banana Republic. As if these projects don’t keep her busy enough, Joy’s “Rx” side of her business provides consulting services for companies on portfolio development, brand brainstorming, and more.

To top it off she also has her own line of stationery, home office products, baby clothing, and wallpaper. Read on to see how this wonder woman changed the face of lifestyle blogging and graphic design while remaining true to her boutique company roots. Taken from bio done by The Every Girl

Maria Lichty – www.twopeasandtheirpod.com

I’m Maria and my husband is Josh. We share a love of cooking, baking, and entertaining. We enjoy creating recipes that are simple, fresh, and family friendly. We love sitting around the table with good food, good conversation, and good friends and family! Our kitchen is always open!

A little about us…we were best friends before we got married in June of 2008. We catered our own wedding, with the help of family and friends. Our guests wanted the recipes from our wedding, so I posted them on Josh’s personal blog. Our family and friends loved the recipes, so I kept posting about our culinary adventures. Soon, strangers were visiting the blog, so we transitioned it into a full-time food and lifestyle blog. We have been blogging for over seven years.

Gimme Some Oven is a celebration of life shared around the table, and specifically, the recipes that bring us all together.  Because whenever I think about it, most of my favorite memories in life really have taken place around one table or another.

From cozy date nights in watching “This Is Us” with our favorite garlicky pasta, to impromptu happy hours after work with friends toasting the world’s best margaritas, to decades of Christmas Day dinners fighting over the last slice of Grandma’s pecan pie, to bringing over a pan of my favorite chicken enchiladas to friends after surgery, to introducing our 100th friend to the brilliance that is nooch popcorn — well, if you ask me — good food shared with good people is pretty much the best.

And all the better when that food is quick and easy to make, legit do-able, seasonally inspired, lightened up a bit, and wildly delicious — right?! If that sounds like your style, you’ve got a kindred spirit right here.

Melyssa Griffin – www.melyssagriffin.com

Yo! My name is Melyssa Griffin and I am OBSESSED with teaching online entrepreneurs and bloggers how to make their passions profitable (and popular)!

How did this become my life?

Well, in 2013, I was working as an expat in Tokyo, Japan. Living abroad was a beautiful adventure, but teaching English often left me feeling underutilized, under-paid, and creatively stifled. I was alone, I was isolated, and truly, I was miserable.

Cue the tiny violins.

So, I started my blog (formally called The Nectar Collective) as a simple creative outlet, in hopes of starting an online community. I had no ambitions of making it my full-time job. Heck, I wasn’t even aware it COULD be my full-time job.

But my blog rapidly became my after-work obsession.

Between my strong passion and ridiculous commitment to trying new strategies and ideas, my site took off. Eventually, I launched a graphic design studio through my blog, and three months later, I was doing it full time.

I quit my job as a classroom teacher, moved back to California, and hustled my blog and graphic design business nonstop, earning that coveted “six figures” during my second year in biz(and this is coming from someone with NO business experience previously).

Since then, my graphic design business has closed up shop because I’ve moved on to online education — teaching aspiring entrepreneurs how to start and grow their own business.

Kyla Herbes www.houseofhipsters.com

Kyla is a freelance graphic designer and Pinterest Influencer with a passion for all things vintage. Born and raised in small-town Wisconsin, she left for the big city after graduating college and presently lives in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago with her family.

These days you can find her designing and renovating her new home, shaking up a tasty cocktail, or whipping up a unique DIY. In her spare time, you’ll find her at the flea market or local estate sale gathering antiques to style her shelves. She is also the Home Decor Tastemaker at The Pin Collective and the creator and curator of the Instagram account @ihavethisthingwithpink

Ashley Rose – www.sugarandcloth.com

Once upon a time, I attended Marshall University for Art & Design. Then, against my parents’ better judgment, I decided to take a break from school. That break accidentally turned into a few years. During that time I moved across the country to Houston, learned from a few mistakes, and found an entirely new appreciation for art and design after waiting tables to make ends meet.

In the midst of all of that, I started Sugar & Cloth in September of 2011. It blossomed into more than I ever imagined, and I finally took the (terrifying) leap to leave my day job in 2014. Now I have the privilege of getting to create and share content here with you as my full time job.

I also get to figure out work/life balance with my other half and resident photographer, Jared. He helps me sharpen my outstanding sense of humor by pretending to laugh at my jokes all day long. Oh, and we take many, many coffee and macaroon breaks…

Alejandra Ramos – www.alwaysorderdessert.com

I have two big passions in life: food and the written word. In January of 2004, I took a break from the latter, temporarily pausing my course of study at The George Washington University to move to Florence, Italy, where I enrolled at a professional culinary institute. It was a move that might seem whimsical in print, but which made sense to all who knew me and my love for the kitchen.

Within weeks of hatching my plan, I found myself living in a lovely, albeit sparsely-furnished, flat just steps from the legendary Ponte Vecchio on the Duomo side of the river Arno. Eager to extract as much as possible from the experience I immersed myself completely in the Florentine culture, learning the language quickly and adopting as many of the local traditions as possible.

Days were spent running through the cobble stoned streets of Florence, to-and-from classes in our perpetually sauce-stained chef whites, or shopping for produce and cured meats in the lush street markets.

There is a feeling of recklessness that takes over when you are 21, far from home, and lacking any real responsibilities.

We lived our lives accordingly, befriending (and sometimes dating) goodhearted, but questionable characters–chefs, writers, painters, and vagrant travelers who had left their countries and traditions to make this ancient city their home, if only for a moment.

We came from different backgrounds and spoke different languages, so our interactions were reduced to the most basic of human activities: food, drink, sex, and laughter, common denominators that transcend translation.

It wasn’t all games. In Florence, I also experienced loneliness, broken hearts, and the inevitable frustration that comes along with always being an outsider. I (and my roommates) existed in a perpetual state of almost-poverty brought on mostly by irresponsibility and an unforgiving exchange rate. My roommates and I dealt with this the best we could, by fighting and flirting; crying and stealing (blood oranges and toilet paper, mostly. Occasionally bottles of olive oil.). Somehow, despite the drama, I learned to cook.

I named this blog Always Order Dessert because the phrase perfectly captures the spirit of that time. Despite the frustrations (and the dwindling Euros), I always made a point of ordering dessert. I was never too full; I always made room for a bit more sweetness.

I am now married and live in New York, the city of my birth, where I make my living as a full-time food writer, recipe developer, and occasional private chef. I make frequent TV appearances cooking and talking about food, and dream of one day hosting my own TV food or cooking show and writing a book (or, better yet, 10 books!).

I spend nearly every second of my free time running back and forth between my laptop and my kitchen as I work on my writing, my blog, and my cooking. I started Always Order Dessert so that I would have a place to share the stories, recipes, meals, and experiences that makeup so much of my life.

Camille Styles – www.camillestyles.com

Every moment is an opportunity to inspire, create, and explore. Here at Camille Styles, we focus on the daily decisions that allow us to embrace those opportunities. Discover a fresh approach to style through fun ideas for the wardrobe and home. Try delicious market-fresh recipes that are perfect for dinner tonight.

Take advice from inspiring influencers on health, fitness, fashion, beauty, and professional goals at a site that views every aspect of clean living through a glamorous lens. We hope to inspire healthy choices and happy, beautiful lives.

Thanks friend, I appreciate it!