The past weekend, I attended the 2nd Annual Minnesota Blogger Conference. You can read all about my day in Bloggers, Tacos and Minnesota Inspiration, but that's not what this post is about. This post is about Maria.

The founders of the conference alway back to the community. This year, they were happy to announce they would be featuring the Read Indeed charity for the conference. Read Indeed is a 501c3 nonprofit literacy organization and the vision of Maria Keller, a book-loving 5th grader who wants to make the world a better place—one book at a time. Maria’s goal is to collect and distribute 1,000,000 books to needy children by the time she’s 18. She has been collecting and distributing books since she was 8 years old—touching the lives of thousands of children around the world.

I was not aware of Read Indeed until last week. My daughter is a book-loving 5th grader who struggles to part with her books. Yet, we scoured the shelves and came up with a few that she wanted to share with other children who may not have the opportunities to read she has had.

Maria is up to 561,291 books collected and distributed. If you have any extra new or gently used children's books, consider helping Maria.

Photo credit iStockphoto

Minnesota bloggers rock. I know because I spent Saturday with 150 of the best, brightest and kindest people at the 2nd annual MN Blogger Conference.

Talk about a recharge! There is no way I can capture the energy in black and white print (Kate Hopper could, but not me) so I am going do the next best thing - introduce you to a few of the people I had the pleasure of talking with, learning from and being inspired by.

Among the people I met were Lee Svitak Dean, Food editor for the Star Tribune and author of Come One, Come All as well as Amy Peterson, writer of Green Your Plate blog. Do you see a trend here? 2 people - 1 topic . . . food. There is an amazing network of food bloogers in town and frankly, this sounds much more interesting than human resources, leadership and growth. I am a far cry from a foodie but that doesn't mean I can't add a few food blogs to my reader for inspiration, right?

Two non-foodies I met were Emma Wilhelm, an author of 8 Dimensions of Leadership, DiSC Strategies for Becoming a Better Leader and Christy Eichers, an old band leadership camp buddy of Charlie Judy, HRFishbowl. Go figure!

The inspiration continued in the sessions:

Lee Oden, Top Rank Marketing. With nothing more than a blog and some savvy community building techniques (think hub and spoke and meeting the needs of your customers) he created a globaly recognized online marketing business.

Paul DeBettignies, HireCast Consulting. After warming the crowd up he dished about networking, using the back of your business cards, being nice to others <karma always comes back to you> and the difference between lurking and stalking.

Communities may develop around a website or a blog, but they don't stop there. Led by Kate O'Reilly, Clever Kate, panel members Jen Emmert, Prior Fat Girl, Meghan Wilker, Summer of Dresses, Stephanie Meyer, Fresh Tart Steph, and Ian Schwartz, St. Paul Tweetup shared their commuity building tips: people will hate on you and you get to decide how to respond, invite people to participate in the community, and there is not best approach to community growth.

I'm a Squarespace girl. I've felt a little alone in the Wordpress world, but no more. Enter Josh Braaten, Big Picture Web. He's my very own Squarespace connection. If you use Squarespace, think about using it or want a side-by-side comparison of Squarespace and Wordpress, he's your guy.

I heart Kate Hopper. Have you ever written a blog post that felt flat? Um, yes. Kate shared ways to ground your stories in details and bring people to life by describing tastes, smells, sounds, textures and touches. Her first book, Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers will be out in Spring 2012.

The taco bar rocked, the location was superb and the parking was free. Wait, the entire event was free thanks our sponsors Top Rank Online Marketing, Allina Hospitals and Clinics and KARE11. Yes, free!

Not sure how Missy Berggran, Arik Hanson and the planning team will top this in 2012 but I can't wait to find out!

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Lisa Rosendahl