I attended my first Go Wild planner conference this year in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel. The conference was held May 2-5 but we extended our trip one day to be tourists. We stayed at the Hilton Grand Vacations Resort which was about a 5 minute Lyft ride from the HRH.
Note about the conference hotel-this is one of the final events to be held there as it is getting demolished and reconstructed as a Virgin boutique hotel!
If you are not familiar with the planner community, it may not make sense to you why 1,400 people mostly women would even be interested in something like this. The truth is that even in this digital age there is a very large community dedicated to paper planning and all things planner related. Many of us subscribe to the notion that writing things down help us to remember. Research bears this out but to each his own!!!!
While it may seem like it’s only about planning, it’s really about planning to figure out how you can live the life YOU want to live. It’s about productivity, figuring out what’s important to you and developing steps and strategies to get to where you want to be. Using a planner is our tool to figure it out. Things like stickers help to foster creativity and creative thinking.
Background
The first Go Wild conference was held 4 years ago in New Orleans. The next years were in Nashville and then Austin. We now wait with tremendous anxiety for the announcement of where year 5 will be held! The conference was born out of a Facebook group that initially was an Erin Condren fan group and then grew into a planners in general group Wild for Planners. The participants are as widely different as one can imagine a Facebook group would be as are the planning styles. The attendees are called llamas which is also the mascot. The name derives from a saying about “no drama llamas”!
The Adventure Begins
I attended with my friend, Debbie. We took an early flight out to Vegas from SFO so that we could register on Thursday evening and attend the first event-a karoake night sponsored by Krissyanne Designs.
We also had lots of time to explore Vegas which I will write about in another post.
The conference is very focused on inclusiveness and making friends. There is a butt load of swag handed out but the focus is on relationships and making friends. In fact, there is so much sway given out that everyone, including Debbie and I packed one suitcase and then brought along an empty one to fill with swag. I can’t believe that I didn’t get a photo but believe me, the swag almost didn’t fit. Debbie is a savant at packing creatively so I was able to bring all of my free stuff back with me!
Registration 
Karaoke 
Dinner
After we registered and took some photos, we went to dinner at Pink Taco. It was delicious even though it was crazy busy. It was then onto karaoke night. I should note that all of the events and parties are included in the ticket price.
Day 1
The first day was scheduled to start at 8:00 AM and based on what we heard about online and read in the Facebook group we knew that we had to be at the hotel by 6:30 AM. Y’all know that I am not a morning person so this was quite the commitment for me.
It was a lot of fun meeting and talking with bloggers and Youtubers that I read and watch regularly. The presentations were very inspiring. One of the things I liked best is the focus on everyone just being uniquely themselves and not comparing or competing with one another.
On the first day, the tables which seat 10 are sponsored by different companies. Each seat is gifted the items at their table/seat. It is open seating which is why people try and be first in line. We heard that the person who was in line first arrived at 2 AM!!
The tables are all beautifully decorated and part of the fun is looking at the other tables and seeing what they got.
Some of the table sponsors this year were Happy Planner, Krissyanne Designs, Sweet Kawaii Designs, Cocoa Daisy, Teresa Collins, Paper House, Office Depot, Avery, Filofax, and many others.
Debbie and I sat at a table sponsored by Paper House which gave us a ton of Harry Potter themed products.
The speakers for today include the BOSS Panel with Belinda Selene, Irene Kwong (Simply Gilded), Kaylyn Minx & Michelle Askin (Bloom Daily Planners), Keshia Glam (kGlamCo), Mica May (May Designs), and Tesia Royer (Sweet Kawaii Designs), Teresa Collins, Erin Condren with Amy Tangerine, Jaaack Jack, Jen DuFore, Jen Robin, Jen Ross and Joy Cho.
The final speaker of the day was Cindy Guentert-Baldo (Llamas Love Lettering) where we were part of a live podcast taping. Her podcast is called The Uncurated Life. As someone who enjoys podcasts, it was a lot of fun. She is local to Napa so I’ll give the podcast a listen.
DAY 2
This day also had great speakers as well as an opportunity to work on a project!
Today’s speakers included Kristen Damian (Krissyanne Designs), Amber Kemp-Gerstel (Damask Love), Stephanie Fleming (Happy Planner), Terry Ellis from En Vogue. She shared photos of her craft room and supplies confirming that she really is one of us!
Even the bathroom was decorated!
The final event of the weekend:
Planjama
This was the party to end all parties! It was very Vegas-held in a night club with a photo booth, lighted dancers, a great DJ and open bar! It was sponsored by Happy Planner. It was so much fun and we stayed on the dance floor the entire time!!
Just for reference, here is the swag that I brought home:
Michaels (the craft store) gifted us all a big plastic tote filled with journals, washi tape, stickers, pens and loads of other craft supplies.
On the 2nd day, you sit wherever you want and table mates exchange gifts. It’s completely voluntary but attendees are very generous. We were gifted pencil cases, hand sanitizers, writing instruments, lots of stickers, and even a bracelet!
In case it’s not clear, I thoroughly enjoyed attending this planner conference and look forward to future ones. We won’t hear for awhile where the next one will be but I will be attending this one instead of PlannerCon. The vibe is much healthier, it’s much better organized, and I appreciate that everyone is in the same room getting the same thing (no price separation like PlannerCon VIP program).
So, do tell, are there conferences you’d like to attend or do attend that the average person may not understand?
I still don”t get Comic Con!!!
