Good times and good people in San Francisco

I got into NYC early this morning from a crazy fun week in San Francisco. And when I say "early morning," I mean 4 a.m. Thanks to some hurricane action on the east coast, my flight was delayed over two hours. Then I had to wait another hour plus some change for a cab, but I will refrain from the full Wendy Whiner spiel here. The good news is that the hellish travel experience was somewhat alleviated by the incredible in-flight entertainment options on Virgin America. A Kathy Griffin: Life on the D-List marathon followed by a Dave Eggers TED lecture on 826 Valencia? Yes, please. I'll touch that screen.

This is all to say that I am still decompressing from meeting about 500 people in the span of 5 days at Ypulse and BlogHer--all of whom are doing some pretty kick-ass work. I'll name check a few highlights now and I promise to do more detailed commentaries (after I get a proper night's sleep).

YA superstars:
Justina Chen Headley is not only an amazing author (Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies) and Girl Overboard), she's also the co-founder of readergirlz. Justina makes it a point to create a social change project that ties into the themes of each of her books. And she takes a lovely photo, too!

Melissa Walker (author of the Violet series, which I reviewed last month) was all kinds of awesome. David Levithan should consider stand-up, and Lisa McMann deserves big credit for sharing her "mortifying" high school picture from her Dutch dancing days.

Girl Advocates:
I worked with Allison Keiley for years at Girls Inc., but I gained a whole new appreciation watching her in action on the "Are Girls the New Geeks?" panel at Ypulse, moderated by my girl Courtney Macavinta over at Respect Rx.

Have you seen The Midwest Teen Sex Show yet? Have you experienced the incredible-ness that is Nikol Hasler? No? Get thee to the website right now.

BlogHer Heroines:
Stephanie Quilao from Back in Skinny Jeans (who I interviewed for my book) gives new meaning to the term "authenticity." Alyssa Royse at Just Cause It was cooler than I could have imagined (and I imagined her to be pretty freakin' cool). I'm a new fan of Hope Revolution, Art Slam, and many, many other blogs that I will be adding to our list of links very soon.

Oh, and Stacy Morrison of Redbook won me over in a big way. More on that tomorrow.