Recap: The Gem Conference & The Atelier Collective
Over the last few weeks, I was lucky enough to grab tickets to a couple of women-in-business conference events: The Gem Conference (shout out to my buddy Abby to sending me her virtual ticket!), and The Atelier Collective. Since not everyone had the opportunity to attend these events, I thought I’d create this blog post to give you all a recap of some things I learned, what the highlights of each event was for me, how I felt about event & would I go again/recommend it.
Though these two conferences seem similar when you look at them on a visual level, I found I had a bit of a different experience with each of them! The Gem Conference was on the weekend of May 30th & 31st, and The Atelier Collective was a one-day event on June 17th. Since The Gem Conference was first, I’m going to start with recapping this event:
The Gem Conference
Going into this event, I really didn’t know what to expect. I’d never attended an in-person conference like this, and I most definitely had never attended a virtual conference. I wasn’t sure if we were going to be given the opportunity to ask the speakers questions, what the content would really cover (if you’ve never been to a conference, the workbooks & schedules don’t go into depth on the content, just a general overview – which makes sense given that they don’t want to give everything away!), and if I’d be able to virtually network.
This conference fell during the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, so this became a very highlighted topic over this conference (rightfully so!), and it was lovely to see that The Gem Conference already had diversity in their speakers for the weekend including Black women and other WOC. I’d say overall, I ended up learning a lot about some things that I already had knowledge of (photography, branding, etc.), and I loved that the structure of the conference was more presentation, followed by a Q&A. Some speakers did their presentations live, while others pre-recorded and then went live for their Q&A sessions. The platform that The Gem Conference used was easy to navigate, and I found it super simple to converse and network with other attendees (though the chat went wildly fast, especially during some speakers!). Now let’s talk about the highlight speakers from the event for me:
The Birds Papaya
(Sarah Landry)
Of course I don’t want to give away the entirety of the presentation that any of the speakers gave, I can confidentially say that Sarah Landry is one incredible woman. I loved her before, and I loved her even more after hearing her speak about how she grew on social media, including placing more emphasis on her connections with her audience via comments & stories, versus taking the time the write the perfect hashtags on her posts.
Ana Tavares
Though I do already know a fair amount about the basics of photography, using the mobile Lightroom app and presets, I found Ana was incredible at not only being an engaging presenter to watch, but also provided easy to digest information for beginners, as well as examples of simple ways to improve your photos just by using the camera in your phone, a few props, and some good lighting.
Megan Cornell
If I’m being honest with you, I can’t say that this was the presentation I was looking forward to the most. In fact, I’d venture to say that I wasn’t really all that interested in the legal presentation, and I was highly debating going to take a break (or a nap) when this presentation was on, but boy am I glad I tuned in! Megan ended up specifically discussing legalities for influencers, and gave tips and tricks for partnerships with brands, what you’re legally obligated to do if you work with a brand, and provided a plethora of information on the topic – my hands almost couldn’t keep up with how many notes I was typing.
Gemma Bonham-Carter
Firstly, I’ve gotta say – this girl has one awesome name; Gemma Bonham-Carter? Instantly started thinking of Helena Bonham-Carter. I love it! But I also love the information she provided during her presentation. Once again, a presentation that I didn’t think about really tuning into, but I’m thrilled I did, and once again, filled my workbook page with notes from her presentation on how to grow your email list. I didn’t really think I needed this information given that I don’t really havean email list, nor was I planning on it, but after I listened to her speak, I’m definitely thinking about doing this!
The Atelier Collective
When The Atelier Collective made their official decision to go virtual this year, they decided to offer an “Atelier Experience” box including beverages, snacks, and other goodies that normally would’ve been accessible to each guest at the in-person event. These boxes were quite limited, and sold out very quickly (which totally makes sense, they were beautiful!), and honestly, I hadn’t really decided if I wanted to attend this event when they first launched the boxes.
Alright, here comes the most unsurprising thing you’ll see during this whole section of the blog. What made me decide to buy a ticket to this virtual event? The email I got about their two surprise guests…can you guess who? If you said Jillian Harris & Tori Wesszer, then ding, ding, ding! You’re a winner! After receiving an email saying Jillian and Tori were going to be speaking, I rushed to grab myself a ticket with no regrets. By the time that this conference came around, I felt pretty confident of what to expect going into it, given that only a couple of weeks ago, I had spent the weekend attending The Gem Conference virtually. Though, I will say that the overall experience was similar, there was some slight differences; the main two being that the format was more Q&A’s with the hosts of the event, and that I found it far more difficult to network with other attendees since the platform they used to host the event had a different “chat” type experience, using an up-voting type system and not following a chronological order – if I could give them one piece of feedback, it’d be that! I also fully appreciated the fact that they became aware that their panel of speakers lacked a lot of diversity, and included a segment called Amplify, dedicated to four Black speakers, giving them the microphone to amplify their voices during this conference. I hope to see more of this from more conferences in the future. Of course, just like The Gem Conference, I had some highlight speakers from the event, and here they are:
Tessa Virtue
If you’re from Canada, you know who Tessa Virtue is. If you don’t know who on earth I’m talking about, you’re probably not from Canada – but she’s basically Canadian royalty. Tessa Virtue is a former Olympic figure skater, and one of the more decorated figure skaters in the world, along with her life-long skating partner, Scott Moir (I’m still secretly hoping that they love each other, but I think all of us Canadians know that heartbreak of them not being a couple all too well). Tessa discussed what it was like making the transition from training for the Olympics, her whole career being a sport, to entrepreneurship, interviewing for jobs for the first time & getting more schooling. It was quite interesting to listen to her speak given that I’ve watched her for as long as I can remember performing in the Olympics, representing Canada and absolutely slaying the ice.
Jillian Harris & Tori Wesszer
Did you honestly think Jillian speaking wasn’t going to be a highlight for me? Hahaha. Well honestly, I am definitely a little biased when it comes to her and Tori, but I can truly say that I loved listening to them discuss their past, including how they once started a business together and how it failed. It’s amazing to hear about how two very successful women once experienced huge failure. It’s pretty easy to think that people like Jillian Harris have had everything come to them so easily, and that they probably just had an upward streak throughout their life & career, but the reality is that we all fail sometimes, and not everything works out just because we want it to. I also love that this was a joint business between her and her cousin, Tori, and when it didn’t work out, they went their separate ways, created their own empires & then came back together to create the Fraiche Food Full Hearts cookbook. I always love listening to these women speak, but this presentation really stuck with me.
Overall, I’d say that these experiences were definitely something I’m happy I had, and I would love to attend these conferences in the future when we’re allowed to have human interactions again. I learned a lot, and because they were virtual, it allowed so many more people to attend since there was no space or geographic limitations (and also, tickets were more affordable!). The only downsides I would say is that there were no formal “breaks”for longer than 5-10 minutes (which I think are needed!), having a virtual event wasn’t quite the same as listening to these speakers in person, so it didn’t feel quite as exciting when the speakers “came on stage” and honestly, conferences are hard to be engaged at in person, let alone virtually! You definitely want to be well rested going into one of these things because if you aren’t, you’re going to be tempted to nap all day.
Have you ever attended an in-person or virtual conference? What would you say are your pros & cons to both? Let me know in the comments. And also let me know if you’ve been to either of these conferences! I’d love to know other people’s experiences! See you again on Friday xo.
