Hello folks,
It’s the season for blogging meet ups, as yesterday I attended my 2nd event, this time hosted by scarlettlondon.com. BloggersSuite was held at the Qbic, London City hotel in Aldgate, East London.
The 2 hour long afternoon event was very different from Blogtacular, which I attended 3 weeks ago. Most of the attendees were beauty or fashion bloggers. The diversity of the attendees in terms of age, ethnicity, gender and blogging specifications was not as diverse as I would have liked.
Venue
Qbic, London City, is a nice hotel, but I’m not sure it was the ideal venue for BloggersSuite. The event hosted 75 bloggers, with a few businesses showcasing their products, Instagramable areas and a long table for the speakers and attendees. I thought the space was too small to be effective, and I found it difficult to hear the speakers, specially due to the loud background noise. There wasn’t enough space for all the attendees to sit down to listen to the speaker, meaning that only a lucky few were able to enjoy the highlight of the event in relative comfort.
Food and drink
I was disappointed with the food, which consisted of Qbic logoed cup cakes and popcorn in pink striped bags. The cup cakes were Instagramable, but the sponge was flavourless, and had quite a dry texture. The creamy frosting and decorative disc were both very bland in taste.
The popcorn packets again were Instagramable, but tasted stale.
The drinks were nice, I liked the complimentary cocktail, but I can’t tell you what it was as they were not labeled and there was no one I could see to ask.
I particularly liked the bottled Kineta Green Apple Matcha drink. Green Cola was also available, but I didn’t have an opportunity to sample it.
Goodie bag
Very impressive selection of beauty themed goodies in the bag. The value of the contents I believe outweigh the ticket price. If you’re not into beauty, you may find the goodie disappointing, but I am excited to try out these products and will report back on them soon.
Attendees were also gifted mobile phone usb sticks from SanDisk (not shown).
Special mention
Bloggerssuite did top Blogtacular by arranging a charity raffle for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire disaster, and at the time of writing, they had raised the best part of £200 in just 2 hours. I thought this was a nice touch, which was notably and extremely disappointingly missing from the otherwise perfect Blogtacular event.
If you would like to donate to this cause, please click this link for more information.
Mini masterclasses
The audience were treated to talks from 3 high profile bloggers on 3 different topics. The speakers were;
Haydy Squibb – Basic SEO Masterclass
Charlotte Jonsie – How to get brands to notice you an hoe to make your mark in the blogosphere
Vix Meldrew – Blog branding and finding your voice
All three speakers were brilliant, but as I mentioned, I found it difficult to hear their talks over the background noise, and I know I missed out on some key information they offered, which is such a pity.
It seems that the topic I was particularly interested in, “Fashion to flatlay” was cancelled, without explanation. The published timetable I accidentally discovered the day before on one of the speakers blogs, seems to have substantially changed, without notice – maybe I missed the announcement.
Value for money?
At £14.14 (£5.80 for early bird tickets), the ticket price was value for money. The goodie bag was generous, and speakers were good, but it was a pity that there wasn’t enough space to really take full advantage of everything the event had to offer.
Overall impression
It was a compact, busy venue, the food disappointing, drinks good, but in fairness, these events are not meant to focus on the facilities, the menu or even dare I say the goodie bag.
The speakers made this event, providing invaluable information in an entertaining way, which I’m sure everyone who attended were able to gain some good takeaways. The charity raffle was also a lovely thing to do, and I think the organisers should be highly praised for their efforts in this regard.
However, there simply wasn’t the space or the opportunity for me to engage with other attendees or the businesses as I would have liked. I did have a quick chat with a rep from SanDisk, but ran out of time to talk to the other business reps. The number of attendees was spot on in my opinion, but the venue was too compact to really make the most of the the event.
I also would have appreciated some sort of house keeping at the start, such as a welcome speech from the organisers, and speaker and business introductions.
Would I recommend BloggersSuite?
Yes. If you’re a beauty or fashion blogger, it is well worth a couple of hours of your time, especially for the goodie bag and the mini masterclasses.
I do get the impression that the organisers work very hard to put these events together, and was impressed with portions of the afternoon. The let down was the lack of physical space. I could forgive the sub par food, but not being able to hear the speakers and introducing a new timetable without notice simply shouldn’t happen. There was a general lack of information on just about everything, which I found surprising and disappointing. With just a few, inexpensive tweaks, this could be an essential annual event on every bloggers’ calendar.
Did you attend BloggersSuite? What did you think? I would love to hear your thoughts. Please comment below, and don’t forget to subscribe.
Thanks for reading.
Champagne Twist 