This past weekend Curious Confections was lucky enough to attend Techmunch, a workshop for food bloggers run by Babette Pepaj of Bakespace, and Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen, with the aid of Natanya Anderson of Fete and Feast, being held as part of SXSW Interactive.

It was held in the function room of Parkside,a restaurant on 6th St. We gathered at 11am, bleary eyed and reaching for the coffee, ready with pens in hand, and cameras round our necks.

I don’t think anything prepared us for the onslaught of such useful advice and information from an array of fascinating speakers, avidly scribbling down everything they said that was useful.. so most of it!

There was a mountain of Kitchen Aid to be given away, sadly I didn’t get any of it, the goodie bag was fantastic though. Lots of herb and spice samples, a cute little kitchen timer, and my favourite item, a book called Grow Green Grub, that will come in very handy with our attempts at gardening!

The day started with an introduction to Microsoft Tag, followed by “Connecting the Who with the What” by Cathy Brooks, an introduction to personal story telling and how to convey who you are to your followers.

Addie Broyles from the Austin-American Statesman and Anna Gonzales from News 8 Austin talked to us about how to leverage traditional media, yes, we have reached the point where newspapers and even television is classed as traditional!

I could continue in a huge list of who talked about what, it may or may not make interesting reading, but I want to thank all the speakers even if I don’t go into detail here of everything they said.

Highlights though, included Ben Huh, the publisher of sites such as I can haz cheezburger, epicute and failblog, he is a fantastic speaker and was highly entertaining. The SEO tips (search engine optimisation) contained so much information I ended up just writing it down, hoping I could understand and absorb it later.

I met many wonderful people, that I hope I can stay in touch with, I never realised Austin had such a large food bloggers community. And hopefully along the way I’ll be able to implement what I learnt.

The food was provided by Chef Shawn Cirkiel from Parkside, cheeses for a mid-day snack, and a delicious array of appetisers at the end of the day. The New York strip, marinated in soy, ginger and peanuts, was my favourite, with the potatoes in pesto a close second. There were wonderful herbed mascarpone and asparagus croustades, with a smoked tomato jus, and the cauliflower was the best I’ve had in a while, caramelised with citrus, chili and thai basil. The little salmon spoons were just the cutest plating too!

We also had cupcakes provided by Sugar Mama’s, I got to try the black and tan (guinness cake with baileys cream cheese frosting) and the James Brown (chocolate cake, chocolate icing). I also tried their vegan cake with amaretto icing, it was a surprisingly tasty cake, the icing was very strong though!

Drinks were also provided, I was drinking the specialty Bakespace Martini (stawberry stoli, lime juice and cava), rimmed with pink sugar.

My thanks to Benjamin Gauthy of Microsoft tag, Cathy Brooks of Other Than That, Addie Broyles of the Statesman, Anna Gonzales of News 8, Erik Deutsch of ExcelPR Group, Nichelle Stephens of Cupcakes Take The Cake, Emily Farris of Casserole Crazy Cooking, Cathy Erway of Not Eating Out In New York, Ben Huh of I Can Haz Cheezburger, Tony Adam of Bill Shrink, Sean Percival of Myspace, John Shiple of Ultralivetv, Serena Erlich of SVP, Jessica Randazza of Digitas, Brian Solis of Futureworks and Sarah Evans of Sevans Strategy for being so interesting and informative.

And most importantly, a huge Huge thank you to Babette, Jaden and Natanya, without you it wouldn’t have happened.