Lois Freeke , a career and personal branding strategist, had an exclusive interview with  Richard N. Bolles the author of What Color Is Your Parachute.

Freeke wrote how Bolles came up with the book title :

The strange title, first of all, was a play on words; back in the 1960s and 1970s when people were tired of their jobs, they'd say "I've decided to bail out."  It evoked the image of an airplane, so one day I flippantly replied, "What color is your parachute?" That provoked a lot of laughter.  Later when it came time to write and self-publish my book,  I remembered that laughter, and made this the title of the book.   It's an odd title, but people remember it, and it makes them smile. 

Ingenuity as shown by Bolles is important for food bloggers to make it in food industry.

Dian Anggraini of Omar Niode Foundation noted down her impressions  at the Career Fair and Networking Session, organized by the International Food Blogger Conference in Portland, aiming at finding out career opportunities in the food blogging world.

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Public Relations (PR) 

Lisa Hill PR is certain that it is important to work with public relations professionals to make food blogs popular.  

A PR person can give advice or help promote bloggers’ activities. One of Lisa’s specialties is in helping clients create posts or catchy tagline of  an event or a blog. In her career as a PR professionals Lisa has helped companies, book authors and cafes to introduce a product or service of a  client.

At the IFBC 2012 Lisa represented Stone Buhr, Tipu's Chai, Diane Morgan, and Moonstruck Chocolate Company

Guests visited the table of Little Green Pickle  representing Organic Valley and Hungry received information on how American farmers produce high-quality organic products  and tasted the products. Meanwhile Izea can help bloggers who have limited funds by introducing them to company blogs, media, and investors who have worked with Izea.

Sam Burt from Maxwell PR,  described his work as not only helping introduce bloggers to food business. With experience in public relations, Maxwell has a team that can help bloggers work with business people and media in the areas of travel, services, digital products and tourism. To introduce bloggers to businesses Maxwell often participate in community activities such as IFBC where in Portland it represented Pacific Natural Foods, Travel Oregon,Columbus Foods, Pamela's Products

Alison Brownrigg at Gruman-Nicoll PR  advised bloggers that a PR person is necessary to make their posts or activities known by the public. Start looking for the people around who have insight into the PR world and extensive business networking to help you. If networking is made, try to give positive feedback to the PR who have helped you, by informing people that you can succeed with PR services.

Associations

In addition to working with companies, PR and publishers, joining some associations is necessary for bloggers as mentioned by Martha Holmberg of  The International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP). According to Martha, IACP members get many benefits in addition to having the same vision and mission.  Members will be exposed to people who work in the world of food ranging from business persons, chefs and even government officials. Information to become a member is available here www.iacp.com

Fellow Food Bloggers

The 90 minutes allocated for the Career Fair and Industry Networking Session flew so fast. Nonetheless, with the very short time available, besides interacting with representatives of editors, publishers, public relations firms and food related business, IFBC participants also took their time in getting information from their fellow bloggers. Hopefully in this session food bloggers had a chance to make key connections and find out the color of their parachutes.

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Photos by Dian Anggraini