Monday, November 08, 2004

Finally, thank God, a less-than-reverent review of BloggerCon. "Bloggercon is more of a fan conference, where the followers of the conference insiders -- great minds all, admittedly -- can come and bask in the philosophical musings of these titans. Its Dave and the Friends of Dave having a love-in. Its fun in a way, because the conversations at the party are high quality, but is not a conference about the business of blogging or even one about where it is all headed. Its really a chatauqua, a revival tent meeting, where the faithful can all sing together and encourage the uncertain. But its fun to listen, even if you don't agree with the message in the psalms, because they sing so well." I don't agree, but all the hosannas were getting a little dull... 8:15:54 PM    comment []

Glenn Reynolds points to the impact of blogs on the Daschle-Thune Senate race -- not the campaign blogs, but those run by independent bloggers: "Professor Jon Lauck's Daschle v. Thune weblog played a big role (along with quite a few other South Dakota political blogs) in nationalizing that campaign, and in applying scrutiny to South Dakota's main political news outlet, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, whose pro-Daschle slant had previously gone unchallenged." 5:41:47 PM    comment []

Dinosaur disses mammals, predicts continuing world domination by dinosaurs. Retired CBS newsman Eric Engberg: "What I saw in the blogosphere on Nov. 2 was more reminiscent of that school paper or a 'Breaker, breaker 19' gabfest on CB than anything approaching journalism." Yawn. Dude, did you happen to catch the major networks calling Florida for Gore in 2000? 5:38:06 PM    comment []

N&R: "Times are tough at the Greater Greensboro Observer, which could cease publication by the end of the year if advertising revenue doesn’t pick up." You can't serve readers a diet of lukewarm soup, and you can't sell advertisers without readers. The Observer just doesn't have a very compelling product, although I think Sam Hieb does good work. 5:28:10 PM    comment []

I met my troll. At lunch at Stanford, a guy approached me and told me he was "Cog," a reader who has left any number of negative comments here since I first posted about the incendiary Seymour Hersh speech to the ACLU in July. We had a good talk, standing in the sunshine. He said he was sorry to be so hostile, he reads a ton of Arab press and wants the scary stuff there to get out, wants Americans to understand what we're dealing with... I asked why he didn't say so, instead of attacking. I've said many times in replies to his comments that he clearly knows a lot, that he should get a blog of his own, that I'm offering him a forum in my comments...he just shrugged. I asked why he doesn't seem to read what I'm saying before blazing away -- see his comment to this post -- and he shrugged again. He's passionate, but his passion gets in the way of his message. I had pictured Cog as a grumpy older man. He's actually youngish and not so grumpy, at least in person. We shook hands. We heard each other. Thanks, Cog, for introducing yourself, and for our talk. I hope you get that blog, you have a ton of useful and interesting stuff to say. And my forum is open to you, as always, I hope you will see a way to use it in a way that gets your message out in print the way it came through to me in that sunny courtyard. 10:35:00 AM    comment []

Jay Rosen raised the question during the politics session of high-level candidates writing their own blogs, instead of just having campaign bloggers. My guess is that Senate candidates will need to be shown the power of blogging before they devote the time needed to do it well -- and that the examples will come from local and congressional candidates -- the info will filter up, not strike as inspiration from above. Maybe there will be exceptions, certainly it's risky to argue with Jay... ...here's a pretty comprehensive writeup of the politics session, by adamsj, who had the great idea of a Carter Center B-Con. 10:11:56 AM    comment []

How to have a local blog conference, or, Just Do It. It was obvious at Stanford that people want more user conferences, more occasions to meet other bloggers and share some wisdom. There was excitement around the idea of reaching out to the Carter Center in Atlanta for an international shindig, and hope that Dave would someday bring his touring company to a town near you... But in the meantime, roll your own. We did it in Greensboro. It was fun, and easy. Arranged almost entirely via blogs and email, 24 days from conception to delivery. The Piedmont Bloggers Conference didn't use the BloggerCon name, but we used the BloggerCon format with success. The beginning, Wednesday, August 4: "Hoggard emails to suggest a quick weblog conference in Greensboro, sparked by the uptick of interest in Internet campaigning by local candidates. Sounds good to me. Ideas: Free. Open to all. Not a lecture program, but folks with hands-on experience can guide conversation. Might could do it here in the conference room of my office building on a Saturday morning. Invite Matt Gross." We thought we'd get 20 people, max, but we quickly blew by that number and decided to get a larger space. This is a nice thing about being local: you know your landscape, you can move fast and be flexible. We ended up with about 60 participants, including folks from the local daily and talk radio, some nationally known bloggers and some who should be. Notes: Geography matters, but you don't need to be in a huge city. Greensboro was an ideal place to hold a North Carolina conference, as it has a lively local blogging scene, and is an easy drive from Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Charlotte. If you build it, they will come, and they will bring cookies and cold drinks. The network effect in effect. People were really generous, they donated refreshments and offered to help in any way possible. It was a group effort, not just in the sesssions but in the execution. Related: don't charge people for admission, but let them give $ if you need it. As it happened, we didn't need donations -- the room rate for the museum auditorium was cheap enough that I could cover it with BlogAd revenue -- but the offers were there had we needed the cash. Trust the un-conference model. Understand that the intelligence is distributed in the crowd. I had seen Jeff Jarvis help invent the facilitator role at the first Harvard BloggerCon, but I was nervous about our politics session. Hoggard had never run one of these shows. We didn't want to waste the intelligence of a Matt Gross, or one of the candidates on hand. But Dave Winer came thru town, ate some barbecue, and said unto us: go for it. We did. It rocked. That said, find facilitators who can move things along and know their subjects. At Stanford, I was able to point to some people by name in the politicis session to keep the conversation going -- Lessig, Zack Rosen, Rebecca McKinnon, the RatherBiased guy; In Greensboro, we were able to do even more of that. Never a dull moment. (One nice thing about our local affair: it was more diverse than the ones at Stanford and Harvard -- we have actual Republicans here, and they came out to party.) Program: choose broad topics of interest, and then go with the moment. We had three sessions -- local politics, local media, and local community/culture. I think all but two participants spoke at some point. Links to user feedback here and here. Now you go do it. Let me know if I can help. 9:45:19 AM    comment []

Feedback and suggestion thread for BloggerCon III. 8:32:52 AM    comment []

Jay Rosen at BloggerCon: The People of Moore's Law. "The people of Moore's law are not necessarily optimistic about events in the world, but it's so normal to them they don't realize how optimistic is their casual assumption that platforms change, and new, more powerful, progressively smarter ones will get built. We'll be able to do way more." 8:30:57 AM    comment []

Jinni Hoggard gets injected with a radioactive isotope to determine the spread of her cancer. The news is good. Her husband's blog headline: "Mom's just glowing." 8:23:16 AM    comment []

Hoggard: "Marcus Kindley must go." "It's just time for the Guilford County GOP to go away. His ineptitude at party organization was made crystal clear when you consider how poorly the local Republican Party's influence fared in local, statewide and national contests last week.  More importantly, and undoubtedly related to local results, Chairman Marcus Kindley continues to exhibit his apparent belief that the path to victory for the local GOP should be paved with the remnants of deep-seated racism and fear mongering." Hoggard, a Republican, links to Gerry Goulder's Guilford GOP News: "The schism within the Guilford County Republican Party seems to be bursting open. There has been tremendous discussion among local Guilford County Republicans about the capabilities of current Chairman Marcus Kindley to lead the Guilford County Republican Party." On the other hand, I'm sure a lot of local Democrats are rooting for him to keep his job. 8:16:49 AM    comment []