Another huge result of bloggercon was all the new feeds I've subscribed to, Like Michael's Dowbrigade News. Another gem from him today: A three-day, no-holds-barred sex and drug orgy involving 268 male Japanese businessmen and over 500 local prostitutes at 530-room Zhuhai International Conference Center Hotel on Lover's Road, a boulevard overlooking Zhuhai Bay in a resort city in southern China, has shocked the public around Asia and strained relations between the two governments.
11:09:56 AM
Bing!Werner, whom I met and hung out with at BloggerCon is using the syncPod channel to develop an RSS Enclosure downlaoder in .NET I'm on a mac and can't test it, but would love to hear of any usage reports.
10:55:17 AM
Dr. David M. Burns: "Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life."
10:38:09 AM
It was a bit wacky getting home from BloggerCon. I (unfortunately) had to leave halfway through the Day2 Fatman Session to catch my flight home. Wouldn't you know that there was such a strong tailwind that we would've arrived in Amsterdam so early it would have violated local noise laws, so we sat on the tarmac for half an hour!
It still only took us 5 1/2 hours to get there, record time! A producer was waiting to pick me up and whisk me through make-up to a [quick] location shoot. On top of all that I had promised to present Glennis Grace with her debut album that eveing, so by the time the alarm rang at 4am the next morning to go to the morning radio show I was pretty wiped.
I just awoke from a 2 hour nap and am feeling excellent. Of course the lag in writing gave me more time to process my thoughts on BC and undobtedly slipped a few memories into the permanent storage areas.
Seeing, hearing and meeting everyone was a real trip for me. Honestly, I was a bit starstruck when I saw all the name tags.
Although I'd read almost everyone's thoughts on their blog, interacting in real time was a priceless experience which seemed to make an idea pop into my head with each conversation.
What sticks in my mind most is the brief conversations about weblogs from foreign countries, in my case Europe. I'm jealous of the vigor and dedication that goes into blogging political and social issues in the states. Believe me that there is no country in Europe as adamant about certain inalienable rights, like free speech. When it comes too that Dave is right, blogging truly is an 'american thing'.
It could have everything to do with the fact that the US is only 200+ years old and documents like the constitution are still pretty fresh in everyone's mind. The city of amsterdam alone is over 700 years old, the dutch constitution even older.
We're on the eve of the birth of a constitution for a new union of states (Europe), comprised of 400 million people with a single currency. Surely that is worth blogging about.
Unfortunately the blogosphere in my neck of the woods hasn't quite moved beyond the stage of commenting on traditional media. In turn, Big Media here is still reporting that weblogs are only used by teenage girls who write about their pets. Sound familiar?
I feel as if it's my duty as an american to blog the creation european constitution, get people interested in the process and (hopefully) the outcome. There's ample opportunity to shape the ground rules and laws that the citizens will abide to. Considering the size of the new union, the US should be interested in the economic power of europe as well, something else that has to be blogged.
Many countries in europe still maintain state-owned media outlets, others have powerful media monopolies, like Berlusconi's empire in Italy. In the netherlands, almost every major newspaper comes from a single publisher. You can see the mountain of work bloggers must start chipping away at.
And we need all the help we can get from our brothers and sisters overseas. We need to be led by example.
Many more ideas and thoughts still to be codified, that's why god created weekends :)
5:44:30 AM
