Wow. Write to Publish happened. It was amazing! Sorry you haven’t heard from us in a while, everyone. The week before the conference was crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever received that many important emails every hour of every day in my life. Despite our best efforts to keep everyone in the loop and up to date, it seemed like everyone had last minute questions and confusions. But, I guess that’s the event planner’s life. The time after the conference has been spent recovering and catching up on homework.

The conference went really well. We received a lot of feedback via our surveys and in person, and it was overwhelmingly positive. Of course, there’s always stuff to work on. Here’s an example of how planning and reality don’t always coincide: we planned to have a sandwich board outside to point the way to the conference. As it turns out, you need a city permit in order to have a sandwich board displayed–which we found out too late. So, unfortunately, we didn’t have one this year, though we will recommend that one or two are purchased for next year. Also, we planned to chalk the pavement around the conference to point the way and made stencils to make it easy. When I went to pick up the spray chalk, though, it turned out the store didn’t carry it like we thought it did. I ordered the chalk online and received it the Tuesday after the conference. So, the best laid plans did, in fact, go awry and, needless to say, our signage outside the conference was not the best. Our apologies to anyone who had a hard time finding the conference; we’ll make sure to fix that for next year.

My favorite part was the social hour afterward. We had a lot of fun hanging out with the staff and attendees. Special thanks to panelist Leia Weathington for hanging out with us as well. My highlight was hearing a conversation between two people–you know, one of those conversations that begins with, “Oh, you go to that college; do you know this person?” It turns out she did know that person, used to be her roommate, had heard for years about the other attendee, who was her roommate’s childhood friend, and had just never met him until the conference. Small world, right?

Of course, just because the conference is over doesn’t mean our work stops. We are working to set up the website for the interim stages, collating our data to pass on to the press and to next year’s staff, organizing our own documents, and just generally cleaning up. It’s a relief and a little sad for the conference to be over. If you want to stay involved in Ooligan Press, you can follow our Facebook page here, follow @ooliganpress on Twitter, or sign up for the newsletter on the website here. If you’d like to say nice things about us online, you can use the hashtag #W2P15. We had a lovely time with all of you. We’re happy that you enjoyed our conference and found it informative, and hope to see you again next year.