Just a little note to let you all know, I’ll be switching over the majority of my coverage of The Blogcademy to The Green Room from now on. The reason being that I anticipate that these posts will be of most interest to the people reading the business and personal updates on my blog rather than the weddings. So make sure you’re checking in here regularly if this kind of stuff floats your boat.

Portland & Los Angeles venues

Plenty has been going on behind the turquoise curtain since London. We did a soft launch of our next cities last month so the eager ones amongst you could plan ahead and now we’re able to finally share all the nitty gritty details, starting with the most important thing – the venues!

I’m thrilled to let you all know that the Portland event will be taking place at the uber cool The Cleaners at Ace Hotel (and there’s a photo booth in the lobby!) with the LA leg going down at Beachwood Studios slap bang in the middle of Hollywood. Oh yes, I can’t wait to get me some of that Californian sunshine!

I’m also super duper head over heels excited that the always epic Made U Look Photography will be joining us in Portland to shoot the workshop and generally hang out with us all weekend. Y’all have to meet these ladies, they are seriously inspiring. If you are interested in film and experimental photography they really are the best of the best. We love them.

Curriculum changes

In other news, after some feedback from past Blogcadets, we’ve decided to switch up some parts of the curriculum for upcoming workshops. First off, we called upon Richard Wakefield of FX Films to shoot Lisa Devlin‘s photography talk in London so that we can offer it with your ticket purchase – you’ll receive the password and can watch the video as many times as you’d like. Lisa is an award-winning photographer and has a lot packed into her talks and this will benefit you since some of the technical info can take a few viewings to get down.

Onto the good news: with the time saved from offering Lisa’s talk as a video we have more time to add in content in some other areas that we felt were lacking from the original lesson plan. We’re adding in new segments including how to form industry connections and key tips to successfully network (in a non-weirdo/creepy/slightly stalkerish way) and opening up the discussion to cover the ever contentious issue of image use and copyright for bloggers.

Finally, there will be even more time for one-on-one time with the headmistresses (another thing our past graduates said they wanted more more more of). This is especially helpful for those of you seeking personalised feedback for your blogs and online businesses.

Scholarship

Don’t forget that if you’re thinking of trying out for the scholarship spot for either Portland or Los Angeles, you have until this Friday (15th February) to get your creative entries in. To read more about the scholarship and how to enter, check out the bottom of our FAQ page. We’d love to see you there!

Sponsor shout out!

And finally, we are also currently taking new sponsors on for both the Portland & Los Angeles events. If you run a business making something cute, practical or just down right awesome and you’d like to get in in front of 60 enthusiastic (and instagram-obsessed) bloggers either in the goodie bags, decorating the space or by donating your time, we’d love to hear from you. You’ll be featured on all three of our blogs (with an overall reach of over 1 million readers – yowser!) so check out our one-sheet and drop us a line.

PHEW, it’s all go go go in Blogcademy-land. I’m so excited about these new changes and I can’t wait to get over to the West Coast. I booked my flights last week and, quite frankly, March can’t come around quickly enough.