Announcing ProBlogger Melbourne Training Day – Register Your Interest Today

Today I’m excited to give ProBlogger readers advance notice of a special training day in Melbourne for bloggers—the second ever ProBlogger Training day. I’ll share the details below (you can express your interest in attending or sponsoring below, too), but first let me fill you in on the backstory.

In July 2010, and very much on the spur of the moment, I came up with the hare-brained idea to run a small conference in Melbourne.

Within a couple of days I’d booked an international speaker (Chris Garrett), had convinced four local bloggers to speak, booked a venue, and had announced to the world it was happening. We released 100 tickets (I thought I was ambitious, given there were only three weeks until the event) and I stood back to watch what would happen.

The event sold out quickly and we ended up upgrading our venue room to accommodate another 50 people. The day was amazing—it brought together 150 great bloggers from across Australia (and one from New Zealand), and some amazing speakers. There was a real buzz in the room (and around the Web as it trended on Twitter). You can read about the day here. The overwhelming response was that people wanted another event (although they wanted more notice and a bigger venue, as it was squashy).

The details so far

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been working on the next Melbourne ProBlogger Training day. Here are some advanced details (although as we’re a few months out there is still a bit to be filled in):

• Date: Friday 21 October 2011
• Time: all day (9am-5pm for the conference)
• Networking Event: we’re looking at adding an evening networking drinks after the conference part of the day free for attendees
• Cost: TBA but we’re aiming to keep it affordable again
• Venue: we’re still finalizing this, but it looks like being in the CBD of Melbourne. The venue is larger than last year in terms of capacity, but also will allow us to spread out a little more.
• Speakers: the only person I’m able to talk about at this point is myself … but I’ve already had confirmation from two overseas speakers and am talking to a number of local bloggers.
• Schedule: last time we had everyone in the same room for the whole day; this time we’re booking a venue where we can have multiple topics running at once. You can set your own schedule depending on your needs. I’ll update you more on this as it gets closer.

Interested in attending?

We’re currently putting together a site with all the information about the conference, and anticipate launching it and starting to sell tickets in August. However, in the meantime, if you’re interested in attending please add your email address below and you’ll be the first to be emailed about it (this advanced email list bought the bulk of the tickets last time, so you’ll have every chance to attend).

Note: if you can’t see the email field above you may need to disable ad blockers, as some are a little too aggressive and block this form.

Calling sponsors

Do you have a company or product that you’d like to get in front of 200 or so Australian bloggers? If so, we have a limited number of opportunities for sponsorship on this event. Last year’s attendees numbered 150, but they were an influential bunch. We tallied up their combined readership and it totaled millions of readers, so this is an opportunity to get in front of key influencers.

These sponsorship opportunities are limited to a handful of companies, though, so please don’t delay in contacting us via the contact form here on ProBlogger. We’ll get you information on these opportunities a.s.a.p.