Got a question that’s not answered here? Ask away! We’re sure you’re not the only one thinkin’ it.
Q. What is Vida Vegan Con, anyway?
Vida Vegan Con is a professionally run, annual conference designed to celebrate, explore, and fine-tune the practice—and ever-growing community—of vegan bloggers. With an action-packed two and a half days of workshops, discussion panels, speakers, special events, vegan food, and more, this conference is going to be the best vegan weekend of your life. Or at least that’s our goal! As vegan bloggers ourselves, we are producing the conference we’d want to attend.
Q. What is the date and location of the conference this year?
Vida Vegan Con will be held August 26-28, 2011, at University Place Hotel, in the beautiful city of Portland, Oregon.
Q. I love reading blogs, but I don’t write one. Can I still attend?
Yes! Of course! This conference is about uniting blog writers and blog readers. Come if you’re thinking about starting a blog, if you want to come meet your favorite vegan bloggers, if you just want to meet more vegans, or if you just really want to try out Hungry Tiger Too’s famous toffufalo.
Q. What if I don’t know anyone?
Don’t worry! Portland is a friendly city, and bloggers are super friendly people, we promise! And if you don’t know anyone, come up and say hi to one of the organizers. We won’t bite, and we’d love to meet you.
Q. What’s the agenda for the weekend?
See here.
Q. How do I register for Vida Vegan Con?
Register here. Registration includes a weekend of panels, workshops, talks, discussions, and roundtables of all your favorite vegan bloggers. It also includes most meals and a gift bag. It does NOT include transportation or accommodation.
Q. What does my registration fee go toward?
Good question! The organizers use your registration fee to primarily pay for event space for the entire weekend, food for all attendees and speakers, equipment, taxes, printing and design costs, extra hands, and then some. We are also passing along 5% of every registration sold to animal sanctuaries. We have priced registration as low as we possibly can to make this as inclusive as possible, and everyone will walk out of here with full bellies, inspired and educated hearts and minds, and an armful of the most useful swag to ever fit (maybe) in one bag.
We realize it may seem like a lot of money, but we want to throw the most comprehensive and helpful vegan blogging conference EVER for you. We can assure you that it will be worth it!
Q. Sounds so cool, but I don’t know if I can afford it. Are there any other options for me?
Certainly! We’d love to have you! We have awarded our two initial scholarships but are setting up publicly funded spots. Find more information here.
Q. Can I volunteer?
Thank you for your interest! Vegans are the nicest! Unfortunately, due to some companies’ exploitation of interns, we are not able to legally accept volunteers. If you still wish to lend a hand in some way, we are discussing other options and would love to hear from you.
Q. Do I have to stay at University Place or can I stay with my best friend Harmony’s brother Jeff who I think just moved to Portland to join a band?
There is a room block of awesome hotel and dorm rooms set up at affordable prices, and we’ve got a thread on our Facebook group to help you find roommates. You are responsible for contacting the hotel directly for your own lodging. You may either utilize the room block or take advantage of other options. See this page for suggestions and resources.
Q. How can my company sponsor the conference?
Thank you for your interest. Follow this link to view our sponsorship information.
Q. Who is going to be speaking at the conference?
We have an exciting roster lined up. As of now, we’re still finalizing the speakers, but they include:
- Isa Chandra Moskowitz of The Post Punk Kitchen
- Laura Beck of Vegansaurus.com
- Kris Holechek of nom! nom! nom! blog
- Lindsay Shay Nixon of Happy Herbivore
- Joanna Vaught of Yellow Rose Recipes
- Leigh-Chantelle of Viva La Vegan!
- Anika Lehde of Veganscore
See here for our full list.
Q. Will I have time to go out and explore Portland on my own? Do you have any recommendations?
Absolutely! Portland is a very vegan-friendly city and easy to get around in. We definitely encourage people to get out and about, and we’ll have a few events planned around town if you want to take advantage of locals’ advice. Also, we’ll be putting together a Map of Vegan Portland.
Q. What is the cancellation and refund policy?
If you have paid for registration and are later confirmed as a speaker or scholarship recipient, your registration can be refunded.
Otherwise, all registrations are non-refundable.
Cancellations will not receive a refund but may be under consideration for a voucher toward a future Vida Vegan Conference, valid for one year, minus a $100 processing fee.
If you want to sell your ticket to someone else, we will absolutely honor that ticket. If you need help, we will do our best to help you find someone but can make no guarantees.
[...] FAQ [...]
I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve been trying to post the vida vegan con badge on my blog for a few months, and when I apply the link on my add a badge feature, I get an error reading. I like to pride myself on being tech connected, but by no means am I tech savvy.
If someone could help me out, I’d really appreciate it.
See you in August hell or high water,
Jen of That Pain in the Ass Vegan
Two things here: First, we just tweaked the code for this so it should work better than it did months ago. Also, check out my discussion with JL Goes Vegan on the Get Involved! page–I’ve got a link here to a good html source–another way is to use the tools in Blogspot (I don’t have blogspot experience, but in WordPress you can build widgets easily by importing an image and assigning a link to it). I’m no IT nerd, but I do firmly believe if you hit enough buttons you’ll eventually get the right ones. Chaos IT Theory!
Is this conference always held in Portland, Oregon? I’m originally from Portland but live in Germany and will not be able to attend this year but would love to the next!
So sorry you can’t make it! We’re talking about holding the conference in different cities each time, and the next one will 99% be in the continental US. We should be announcing the next location and date at this year’s conference, so stay tuned. Also–and this is very lightly sketched so I’m not making any promises–we hope to livestream some portions of the conference, and we know some folks will be podcasting/videocasting throughout. We’ll announce everything as it is confirmed.
After years of switching between vegetarian, vegetarian of sorts, dairy free and gluten free. I’ve finally figured out that I can do gluten free vegan! It’s a bit of challenge, but I’m loving it. Tweaking recipes and creating my own.. I’ve been thinkg about starting a blog, so you can imagine how excited I was to find your information on ‘fat free vegan’ yes, I want to get involved. I’ve always been a good cook, and I need a community to support this new venture.
Any plans for 2012?