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International Food Blogger Conference

2017 Agenda

Below is the agenda from IFBC 2017 in Sacramento, California.

Thursday, September 28

3:00 – 6:30 PM Pre-Conference Excursion: Climate-smart, smoked prime rib beef dinner at the farm, Max capacity: 50, $25, Reserve your seat today!; pickup at the Residence Inn.

Join Mootral for the ultimate farm-to-fork experience. We are excited to pamper you with a world-first, premium dinner featuring climate-smart, dry-aged and smoked prime rib beef raised, processed and prepared at UC Davis.

Our adventure begins with a tour of the beef farm where you will learn about Mootral, an all-natural feed supplement that promotes healthier and happier cows and you will see it in action. Upon arrival to UC Davis, you will be greeted by one of the leading scientists in sustainable agriculture, Professor Ermias Kebreab and feedlot manager, Don Harper.

Ermias will provide an insiders education and look into the different activities to achieve sustainable livestock agriculture. Following the tour, dinner will be served at one of the campuses most beautiful attractions – the GATEway Gardens! With bellies full, each participant will received a special Mootral swag bag with the latest AMIR 3 in 1 fisheye, macro and super wide angle cell phone lens clip to take amazing food shots on the go, a Planetbox, eco-friendly food container and a Fairtrade tote bag to carry everything back to the hotel. You won’t want to miss this one of a kind experience!

Note: We love cows. As such, we need to ensure their safety when we have large groups visiting them in their home. We ask that participants confirm and sign a waiver that states they have not been outside of the continental United States within the 7 days prior to this excursion, as a safety precaution for the beef farm.

3:00 – 9:00 PM Pre-Conference Excursion: Cobram Estate & Olive Oil Commission of California, Max capacity: 25, $25, SOLD OUT; pickup at the Residence Inn.

Cobram Estate and the Olive Oil Commission of California are thrilled to invite you to experience Cobram Estate’s 2017 Olive Harvest.

Cobram Estate, the world’s most awarded olive oil, just launched in America for the very first time last year. To celebrate their California harvest this fall, they want to host you on day of olive oil-inspired noshing, scenic excursioning, harvesting and fun-having. You will get to see one of their stunning olive groves in the Sacramento Valley where Cobram’s Chef-at-Large, Kevin O’Connor, will be hosting happy hour with an eye-opening culinary experience that celebrates California’s fare and Cobram Estate’s shockingly delicious extra virgin olive oil. This excursion will give you the full olive harvest experience and show you the journey from tree to table.

Friday, September 29 

Breakfast on Your Own: Our host hotel, the Residence Inn Sacramento Downtown at Capitol Park offers a free hot buffet breakfast for its guests.

8:00 AM – 5:00 PM San Francisco Bay Coffee Company (2nd Floor Landing): will provide coffee for all conference attendees at the Sacramento Convention Center

8:00 AM – 7:30 PM  Registration & Book Display (2nd Floor Landing): Our registration area will be open daily. Stop by and browse fellow attendees’ cookbooks on our book display table. Have a cookbook to share? Bring one copy to display on this table.

9:30 – 9:45 AM  Official Conference Opening (Ballrooms 202/203)

9:45 – 10:30 AM  Keynote Speaker: Nick “Nicky Bobby” Papadopoulos of CropMobster (Ballrooms 202/203)

10:30 – 11:30 AM  All-Group Session – How to Make Money from Your Blog (Ballrooms 202/203): Catherine Enfield of Munchie Musings will moderate this dynamic panel including two top bloggers and social media influencers: Melissa Johnson of Best Friends for Frosting and Abeer Rizvi of Cake Whiz. The panel will share their secrets to monetizing your blog in this informative and exciting session.

11:30 AM – 2:00 PM  Picnic Lunch in the California State Capitol Park with Nugget Market

2:00 – 3:00 PM  Discovery Sessions: Choose one of two. These sponsored sessions provide in-depth encounters with a drink or food product.

  • Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, the Original (Ballroom 202): Federico Desimoni: Attendees will have the opportunity to discover and taste this amazing product pairing with another food.  This Discovery Session will provide an in-depth encounter with the original Balsamic Vinegar of Modena PGI and learn how to recognize it, as original and protected by the EU logo.
  • Superior Lamb (Ballroom 203): Trending Now – American Lamb Burgers & Sliders: Sacramento’s own Rodney Blackwell, a.k.a. The Burger Junkie, and Chef Jason Azevedo of Hock Town will be demonstrating two different sliders: “The Intro-to-Lamb,” and “Mega Mediterranean.”  Come learn how to cook with ground lamb, why American Lamb is #1, and grab a delicious slider to sample.

3:00 – 3:15 PM  Break

3:15 – 4:15 PM  Breakout Sessions: Choose one of two

  • Get Paid For Your Posts – Gabi Logan (Ballroom 202): A step-by-step process for finding the right companies to target, how to put together a blogging proposal at the rate that pays your bills, close the client in one call & how to do paperwork that protects you.
  • Let’s Talk Massive Instagram Growth – Stefani Pollack (Ballroom 203): As a blogger that grew to a 300K following on Instagram with 1,000 new followers a day, Stefani will discuss how to grow an engaged Instagram following and how to make money from it as a blogger.

4:15 – 6:30 PM Expo, Taste of Sacramento & Gift Suite (West Lobby): Enjoy a glass of wine, mingle with your friends, meet new IFBC attendees, check out this year’s goodies and takeaways, and say hello to our partners at this pre-dinner meet & greet.

Saturday, September 30

Breakfast on Your Own: Our host Residence Inn Sacramento Downtown at Capitol Park has a free hot buffet breakfast.

7:15 – 8:15 AM  Optional Fun Run Departing From the Residence Inn – Savor our host city on this morning fun run as we start day two. The fantastically fun and local running group 9run6 will lead us through their hometown and show us the sites along the way. All running levels welcome!

8:00 – 1:00 PM San Francisco Bay Coffee Company (2nd Floor Landing): will provide coffee for all conference attendees at the Sacramento Convention Center

9:00 – 10:00 AM  Breakout Sessions: Choose one of two

  • Why Bloggers Need to Know SEO – Jennifer Bourn (Ballroom 202/203): Discover strategies and tools to help you leverage SEO to attract new visitors to your site and increase organic search traffic. Learn about on page optimization, image optimization, and content optimization, as well as critical schema markup for recipes and social media.
  • Creating Videos for Under $100 – Lennis Perez (Ballroom 204): Learn how to make amazing food videos without breaking the bank by using simple, inexpensive props and tools, and finishing the videos with free editing software.

10:00 – 10:15 AM  Break

10:15 – 11:15 AM  Breakout Sessions: Choose one of two

  • Beyond the Blog – Panel (Ballroom 202/203): Blogging can be the entry to a career in professional writing and business opportunities. Join moderator Midgi Moore with panelists Lori Rice, Laura Sampson, Shanna Jones, and Felice Sloan who will look at how to put your blog to work for you, and how you can break into a career in food, writing, photography, events, etc.
  • How to Write a Scroll-Worthy Blog Post – Margaret Andrews (Ballroom 204): This session will teach bloggers how to write posts that will attract new readers and keep them coming back for more by hooking them right from the start, keeping them engaged, and hitting the subscribe button.

11:15 – 11:30 AM Break

11:30 AM – 12:30 PM Breakout Sessions: Choose one of two

  • Google Analytics for Maximum Engagement – Cort Tafoya (Ballroom 202/203): This advanced class will teach you how to effectively use Google Analytics so you can see exactly how many of your readers are doing what you want them to do, and where they’re falling off along the way.
  • Hungry for Words – Keep Your Writing Fresh through Observation – Kathleen Flinn (Ballroom 204): So often a blog feels like a beast to feed. Learn to find details, moments and experiences that will keep your work relevant and interesting to your readers, but also to you!

12:30 – 2:15 PM  Lunch On Your Own

2:15 – 3:15 PM  Discovery Sessions: Choose one of two. These sponsored sessions provide in-depth encounters with a drink or food product.

  • Styling for Social – How to Slice, Style and Solve your Trickiest Food Styling Challenges (Ballroom 202/203): Want your #avotoast post to grab some extra likes? Join Avocados from Chile and Food Blogger Lisa Lin of Healthy Nibbles & Bits as Lisa shares her styling techniques for some common food styling stumps. Be prepared to roll up your sleeves for this hands on discovery session and leave with tips that will help to give your culinary posts the extra edge.
  • Blogging for (Real) Beef – How You Can Engage Audiences on one of the Hottest Topics in the Food Space (Ballroom 204): Tasty burgers and the finest steaks are all over Instagram. Did you know these dishes can actually be a climate saver? The clue: Mootral, a natural technology by the life science company Zaluvida. Join your fellow bloggers in an exciting quiz-style competition to show-off your knowledge of sustainable food, to learn more about a topic that has become center stage, and more importantly, to take home the ultimate food blogger prize package:
    1. AMIR 3 in 1 fisheye, macro and super wide angle cell phone lens clip to take amazing food shots on the go.
    2. Easy to tote, reusable vinyl backdrops to liven up your foodie photos.
    3. A 3 month membership to the International food or wine of the month club (choice between wine, chocolate or cheese) delivered to your door.
    Hosted and DJ’d by the bay area’s Brainstormer crew, it will be a fun-filled way to gather interesting information for your next blog post!

3:15 – 3:30 PM  Break

3:30 – 4:30 PM  Hot Topics in Food Blogging – Panel (Ballroom 202/203): Margaret Andrews will moderate a lively Q&A panel discussion. We’ll be posing your most pressing questions about all the hot topics in today’s food blogging world whether it’s addressing controversy, dealing with plagiarism, growing a following, or whether organics really are better. You ask, we’ll answer! Join us for this dynamic group session with three top food bloggers including Stephen Chavez, Sabrina Snyder and Maggie Zhu.

4:30 – 5:30 PM  Live Food & Wine Blogging (Ballroom 202/203): This is one of the premier experiences of the International Food Blogger Conference. Attendees will experience 10 different food and drink products in small-group encounters over a 50 minute period, all the while live blogging, Tweeting, and using other social media platforms in real time. Confirmed participants to date:

5:30 – 5:45 PM Conference Close and Announcement of 2018 Date & Location (Ballroom 202/203)

Sunday, October 1

9:00 AM – 7:00 PM  Post-Con Excursion: El Dorado County, Max capacity: 25, $25, SOLD OUT; pickup at the Residence Inn.
The day begins at 9am when you’re picked up from the IFBC hotel (Residence Inn) and escorted to Skinner Vineyards.  The MC will spend the 45 minute drive from Sacramento talking up El Dorado agriculture, history and wine.  The group will enjoy a farm to table brunch prepared by Table Nectar. After a scrumptious brunch, you will depart for Downtown Placerville where Jody Franklin, El Dorado County Visitor Authority Director, will guide you on a historic walking tour of downtown, to include cheese & wine pairing, olive oil tasting, and charcuterie.  The final stop of the excursion is to Boeger Winery.  Beef ‘n’ Brew will provide our final  extravaganza: Chef Mike will prepare dry aged prime angus beef ribeye roast, old school style-over a wood fire! Chef will add an educational component to his presentation by deconstructing a side of beef to discuss the various cuts of meat he is preparing, the aging process, how to select the best cuts and more! After dessert, port and cigars, you will be taken back to the Residence Inn by 7pm, full of great food, wine and memories.  If flying home, it’s suggested bloggers stay in Sacramento Sunday night and fly home on Monday, Oct. 2.

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