Photo of conference registration, copyright Russell Hugo

There are just 31 Early Bird tickets left, so be sure to register now! The special Type-A Mom rate at the Asheville Renaissance is also for a limited time and with a limited number of rooms, so be sure to book early and use the official link to get the reduced rate!

Photo by Rick Bucich of Tiny Prints.

Register now for Type-A Mom 2010.

_{Image of tribe, &copy Stephanie Hofschlaeger}

You can register now for the Super Early Bird rate! The Super Early Bird will expire, and there is a limited number of tickets available at this pricing.

Friday day-time will be devoted to Type-A Mom Business, and then in the afternoon we will feature the speed dating and reception. Saturday will feature break-out sessions for the following tracks: passions, practicalities, dads and tribes, followed in the evening by a cocktail reception. Sunday will open with the Mom Market, followed by a general session, the popular Blogger Town Hall Meeting, the keynote, and possibly an evening activity of some sort. We will again feature a Kid Con, but do not have the details yet. The pricing will be more than it was last year.

New this year:

Type-A Mom Business for Companies and Type-A Mom Business for Bloggers

This one-day add-on conference on Friday will have limited registrations, and it will feature two tracks: company and blogger. The company track will feature presentations and panels including case studies on social media marketing, tips on blogger outreach and how-to sessions on using social media tools to promote your business. The blogger track will feature panels on building your blog as a business, from nuts and bolts like setting up as a company, trademarking and legal issues for bloggers.

Dad Track

This year, the dads will get their own track, featuring dad blogger speakers and panels on dad blogging and social media.

Tribes

There are so many wonderful niches in blogging, but one issue is that some great ones don’t have a vast enough community to warrant a full session. To address this, Type-A Mom will have small group power sessions with one tribal leader where bloggers in the same niche can brainstorm, discuss issues in their niche and network. Watch for your chance to suggest your tribe.

Photo of Renee Ross, Cecily Kellogg and Megan Jordan at Type-A Mom 2009 keynote panel by Rick Bucich of Tiny Prints.

The tentative possible dates are currently Sept. 24-26 and Nov. 5-7. I am also opening the call for speaker proposals.

I look forward to announcing more details, hopefully very soon!

Photo of Type-A Mom 2010 by Rick Bucich of Tiny Prints.

Each of the dinners will provide a unique chance to experience the wonderful local dining scene (to learn more about that or a particular restaurant, be sure to see the local tourism office’s where to eat in Asheville page, or their Foodtopian Society site). If you aren’t already aware, Asheville has a killer local food scene with 60-plus independent restaurants and 45-plus farm to table restaurants.

Each dinner has extremely limited seating, so I would not delay booking or you might not get to eat with the speakers you choose (or attend a dinner at all). Your tickets will include shuttle provided by Accents on Asheville from Crowne Plaza to the restaurants to vibrant downtown Asheville. That night, there will be much to do around downtown, including the weekly drum circle (weather permitting).

To book, you must be an attendee of the conference (and attendees can bring a spouse or significant other). If you haven’t already done so, register now.

Book your tickets now via secure form.

_{Photo of Asheville City Market cheese, © Kelby Carr}

I am very excited to announce the tours will have an extensive itinerary at Biltmore both days, as well as stops at two of my favorite local attractions: North Carolina Arboretum on Thursday and The Health Adventure on Sunday.

The Biltmore part of the tours was designed especially for Type-A Mom Conference attendees. It will highlight the New Rooms that opened in Biltmore House this year. Perhaps the true heart of Biltmore, this suite of rooms, known as the Louis XV Suite, is where two generations of the Vanderbilt family were born.

The rooms are the most grand in Biltmore House, and were lovingly and authentically restored during an extensive three-year project by our Museum Services team. Your day with us begins with a short presentation by one of our Museum Services team members, followed by guided tours through the Louis XV Suite and the Grand Ground Floor of Biltmore House.

After a lunch break, your tour continues at River Bend Farm and Barnyard. Here you’ll discover what it was like to live and work on the estate in the 1890s. You’ll see craft demonstrations, farmyard animals, antique farm equipment, a kitchen garden, and more.

Here is the itinerary for the Thursday:

• 8 a.m. Depart Crowne Plaza
• 8:30 a.m. Arrive in front of Biltmore House for special “Type-A Moms” House Tour
• 8:40 a.m. Stable Café Loft – Overview of New Rooms with Museum Services staff member
• 9:15- 11 a.m. Louis XV and Grand Ground Floor Tour
• Break for shopping, restroom stops (Stable Shops) and front of house photos, etc.
• 11:45 a.m. Box Lunch at Deerpark
• 12:45 p.m. River Bend Farm and Barnyard
• 1:30 p.m. Depart for North Carolina Arboretum
• 2:45 p.m. Return to Crowne Plaza

Here is the itinerary for Sunday:

• 8 a.m. Depart Crowne Plaza
• 8:30 a.m. Arrive in front of Biltmore House for special “Type-A Moms” House Tour
• 8:40 a.m. Stable Café Loft – Overview of New Rooms with Museum Services staff member
• 9:15- 11 a.m. Louis XV and Grand Ground Floor Tour
• Break for shopping, restroom stops (Stable Shops) and front of house photos, etc.
• 11:45 a.m. Box Lunch at Deerpark
• 12:45 p.m. River Bend Farm and Barnyard
• 1:30 p.m. Depart for North Carolina Arboretum
• 2:45 p.m. Return to Crowne Plaza

If you’d like a little taste of what to expect, here is what Biltmore House looks like. It is America’s largest home:

Here is one of the new rooms. This is the Louis XV Room featuring Cornelia’s crib. Edith Vanderbilt chose this room in which to deliver Cornelia, in 1900. Years later, when Cornelia was a young wife, this is where she gave birth to her two sons, George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil and William Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil.

Here are kids learning pottery at River Bend Farm at Biltmore.

Thursday we also visit North Carolina Arboretum. I have a Flickr set of pictures I have taken both in spring and fall at the Arboretum. This will give you an idea of how lovely it is there (and I am hoping some of the bonsais will begin showing off their fall foliage in miniature… it’s way cool):

Last but of course not least, on Sunday afternoon we will hit The Health Adventure. It is a wonderful local children’s museum, and the new Grossology exhibit is openings just a couple days before the tour.

Register for a tour

I have some very exciting news for early arrivers to the Type-A Mom Conference. The Health Adventure is one of my favorite local attractions, and we bought annual passes last year so we could take the kids there anytime we wanted. It is a children’s museum, but with a unique health/medical/anatomy spin to it (the local hospital auxiliary founded it). Just as Type-A Mom Conference begins, the Health Adventure will be preparing to launch its fun Grossology exhibit that Friday.

Mom bloggers hate to wait, though. So the Health Adventure has kindly invited early Type-A Mom Conference attendees to get a hardhat, behind the scenes, after hours sneak peek at the exhibit which will teach science through all things gross.

Here is a picture of traveling Grossology exhibit (I am soooo going in that nose!):

The early arrivers can come alone, or if you are coming to the conference with your family you can bring them along. We have a limit on the number of people, however, so please comment below to RSVP and state how many will be in your group. I am afraid you cannot RSVP until you register for the conference, however.

Also be sure to follow @healthadventure. They will be partnering with the conference in many ways, including a stop during the blogger fam tours as well as stopping by Kid Con for a fun (and probably gross) lesson/demonstration for the children.

I am still working through details, so this isn’t all written in stone. What I do know for sure is that we have two rooms available at the conference to separate babies and toddlers from older children. I am talking with locals to arrange things like craft classes and drum lessons, and with my own Foodie Mama editors for no-bake cooking classes.

Here are some of the plans for Kid Con:

• It will not merely be a babysitting service, but its own mini version of a conference.
• Children will get swag bags geared at their specific age group, as well as name tags.
• Kid Con will have its own programming. We will have a schedule rich in fun and educational activities for the children attending Kid Con. .
• Like their moms do as bloggers, the children at Kid Con will get to demo and test out cool new toys.
• There will be two rooms to separate babies and small children from older children to allow for more comfortable surroundings for the caretakers and the children.

All of this will be provided for $35 per child during all programming hours of the conference, and attendees can be drop in or use the conference all day long.

The bad news is that the space for Kid Con is limited, so the number of spaces is limited. Besides that, it’s already proving really popular (about a third or more of moms registering for the conference so far are registering one or more kids for Kid Con). Kid Con spaces will be first registered, first served, so be sure to register now. (Plus, that $100 half-price Super Early Bird rate ends soon).

If you are with a toy company, a book publisher, a children’s food manufacturer or a local Asheville group that can provide educational entertainment or classes for the children at Kid Con, please contact me at kelby at typeamom dot net.

_{Photo of children, © edenpictures at Flickr}