Keeping It Weird at MVCon Austin

With the year winding down, the Mediavine Brand Team has been looking back on the multitude of events our company has been a part of in 2019, and one of our favorites was MVCon Austin, held in November.

I moved to Central Texas 14 years ago, so of course I was thrilled to be holding a Mediavine conference in my proverbial backyard.

From the gorgeous (and teal-decorated) Fairmont Hotel to the yummy food to our wonderful sponsors, every moment of the conference was a thrill.

We opened the conference with perfect weather and a view of downtown Austin at the Fairmont’s Rules & Regs bar.

We served up signature Mediavine cocktails while everyone mingled and met new blogging friends.

Because it’s Austin, tacos were on the menu (anyone else obsessed with cauliflower tacos now?) but that didn’t stop folks for heading out to eat even MORE tacos after the reception!

Our first full day of the conference kicked off with our CEO Eric Hochberger, providing a glimpse into the future of Mediavine.

He also announced our exciting new product, Grow!

The opening keynote, Marie Denee, brought her trademark style to the stage as she inspired the attendees on how to scale their businesses beyond blogs.

Ashish Kalsi from Google gave an enlightening talk on site security and how you can make your site more secure, while Betsy Eves and Kay Featherstone gave a crash course in RPM hacks, turning their session into a hands-on brainstorm for attendees.

During lunch, we played host bingo with return sponsor Agathon and afterward Maegan Carberry took to the stage to chat about personal branding.

Looking to expand to traditional media?

Amanda Berlin shared her expertise on pitching media outlets to not only expand your reach but to further position yourself as a content expert.

The rain didn’t stop us from enjoying our networking break before heading back in to hear legal expert Jamie Lieberman discuss how to approach the finer details of sponsored work.

Finally, we ended the day with the hilarious and empowering Tiffany Romero of Sway Group. We walked out of the ballroom feeling pumped!

Friday morning opened with a talk from Jordan Cauley and Heather Tullos on our plugin Create, and then attendees were welcome to attend breakout sessions, the expo hall or meet with the Mediavine team for site support.

There were so many wonderful sessions to attend on Friday — the only thing I don’t like about being the event coordinator is that I don’t get to see most of them!

In the morning we had Andy Dehnart on keeping the passion alive, Kate Ahl covering your Pinterest audience, Danny Ozment chatting about podcasting, Urvashi Pitre on batch content creation, Dan Bagby discussing SEO and Rachelle Lucas helping us understand how to pitch sponsored travel.

WHEW! It was a busy morning.

Over lunch, sponsor Rubicon helped attendees learn more about how ad buys work, and what you can do to make your site more appealing to advertisers.

In the afternoon Andrew Wilder discussed the importance of accessibility and how to make your site easier to use for everyone, while Lia Garcia covered how to create post campaign wrap reports that will have brands coming back to you again and again.

For our final session of the conference, we came back together to hear from Brandi Riley of the wildly popular Facebook Group Courage to Earn. She talked about how to apply your mindset to your everyday actions and move your business forward with confidence.

If you’ve ever heard Brandi speak, it’s impossible to not come away inspired!

Mediavine conferences always end with a party, and even though temperatures were getting chilly again (for Austin) we had a blast at the indoor/outdoor venue Springdale Station, sponsored by Perdue Farms.

Dinner was a spread of hits from The Peached Tortilla, and Dulce Vida provided excellent paloma cocktails.

We also had sweet tea mules and plenty of Austin Eastciders in a variety of flavors and Lagunitas beers.

To cap off the incredible week, the Mediavine team, sponsors and attendees alike hopped in front of the microphone for karaoke.

Let’s just say there was a lot of dancing and grooving going on!

Every Mediavine conference is an absolute thrill to put together, and we can’t wait for you to see all that we have in store for 2020.

Don’t forget that tickets to our biggest event yet, MVCon20, are on sale right now and you won’t want to miss out on all the learning, connections and fun!

See you in Baltimore next June.