June 26th, 2010 by Dawn Becker

The “economic downturn” became tangible to me last year when half of my regular clients were unable to pull together the funding and sponsorship dollars to host some of their regular annual events. I went into rethink mode about the event management company that I had been running for more than a decade, BPL Events, and I made the decision to stay true to the work I enjoy so much.

A year later, things have turned around completely. The networking and business development time I invested in the quieter part of last year has resulted in a bursting schedule of events that’s leading into 2012. And I couldn’t be happier with all of the new and returning opportunities.

During the midst of the decline last year, I decided to start BananaViews as an outlet for my secondary passions – all things food and how cultural upbringing impacts our sensibilities and behaviours.

With the idea to eventually draw more readers to my personal blog and to learn more about how larger blogging sites work, I also decided to write restaurant reviews for blogTO. It was a great learning experience and I have to say that I found Tim Shore, founder of blogTO, to be a patient, friendly guide. And it was an interesting experience to observe the miscellaneous comments from readers many of which were random, vehement, or completely off topic. This was a good opportunity to learn about making your opinions public and committing them to words and having to distance yourself afterwards, or not.

Despite these positive experiences, with the emergence of so many new and exciting event contracts, conferences and fundraisers, that I needed to put my full attention to I had to make a decision about writing reviews for blogTO – there are only so many hours in a day. I couldn’t grapple with the idea of doing a mediocre job and the pressure to keep up with a weekly review was simply stressing me out. This had nothing to do with Tim’s expectations as I found him to be understanding. Running a business myself, feeling like you’re letting someone else down really sucks. The end result, I had to drop blogTO.

After advising Tim, I was more than pleased when he invited me to come back to write for him again once my schedule settles itself out. I am thinking about it. So it’s so long but not goodbye blogTO. Here is my last blogTO review (for now) on Pearl Harbourfront. Thanks again to blogTO and Tim Shore for making me feel so welcome to the team.