When we opened up the poll so that our community could choose a Bloggy Boot Camp 2011 speaker, we had no idea how many people would vote. Thousands of opinions poured. People passionately supported our five finalists, and although the results were very close, we were all set to announce the winner last week.

However, even the best laid plans sometimes get off track.

Especially when you head off to BlogHer for five days. And your server unexpectedly gets upgraded. And you can’t access your website. At all.

All is right with the world again. We are home, the site is online, and the wait is over!

We are thrilled to announce that the winner of our Bloggy Boot Camp Speaker Contest is none other than Stacey Nerdin from Tree, Root, and Twig!

Congratulations to Stacey! She’ll be joining us in Atlanta on October 22 for her talk on How to Avoid Bloggy Burnout.

But Wait!

There’s more.

Like we said, the voting was incredibly close. In fact, it was so close, and our finalists were so good, that we’ve decided to include Robin, Sharon, Kimberley, AND Annie in our speaker line-up for 2012.

So get ready, ladies! Like we said in our 2012 conference tour announcement, you will have your choice of St. Louis, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Las Vegas.

Where will you go?

Thank you again to everyone who voted and participated in our contest. It’s just one of the many reasons why the education at Bloggy Boot Camp remains top-notch!

In honor of our Birthday Bash, we opened up our doors to speaker proposals for both our Denver stop on September 17 and our Atlanta stop on October 22. If you’ve ever been interested in becoming a speaker at a blog conference, this was your big chance! We asked our community to send us a video clip describing who they are and what they would talk about if we handed over the microphone to them.

And did you ever respond!

In the course of one week, we received over 100 video submissions! We could hardly believe it. An endless number of talented, funny, and creative women all forwarded videos to us. We only wish we had space for everyone.

However, we forged ahead. After an endless amount of debate and time on YouTube, we managed to narrow down our candidates to five women.

What Happens Next

Now comes the fun part! It’s time for our readers to choose one speaker for an upcoming Bloggy Boot Camp! Simply watch the below videos and then decide who you’d like to hear speak.

Voting is limited to once per day and will close next Wednesday, August 3. After we have a chance to tally the votes, we’ll announce the lucky winner!

Here They Are!

#1: Robin from Farewell Stranger:

#2: Sharon from Mom of 6

#3: Kimberley from Through the Lens of Kimberley Gauthier

#4: Stacey from Tree, Root, and Twig

#5: Annie from Mama Dweeb

Time to Vote

We’ll tally the votes and reveal our lucky winner towards the end of next week!

Update: The winner of the contest was Stacey from Root, Tree, and Twig, but there were more surprises!