Thursday, May 19, 2005

Amazing -- I started posting about the Converge conference...and right away people started offering money. Very generous, very Greensboro, but not my intention. Although one large local institution that contacted me via email is now in the game... I mentioned that I was going to make a personal contribution toward travel "scholarships," and Sue quickly matched it. Others have mentioned money in the comments. Thanks, and maybe we'll end up setting up a scholarship fund that takes general contributions, but that's getting ahead of ourselves. I just wanted show my support for the project. We have some support from A&T, and support as well from the N&R. Foundation money is being pursued, so we can feed people and bring in speakers and such. I think we are going to make our budget, but of course I'll let you know. FYI, this conference grew from two roots. A&T and Allen Johnson were talking about a journalism/diversity/web thing. And Sue was considering a big event for GSO that would combine web creativity with other arts. Two great tastes that taste great together. I just got pulled into the slipstream and suckered into doing some work, and I could not be happier about it. 8:47:05 PM   permalink   comment []

People are highly pissed off that Rick Santorum compared the Democrats to Hitler. Yes, it's bad, it's deplorable, a United States Senator should not say such things. But let's maintain perspective: it's Rick Santorum. What do you expect? 8:11:33 PM   permalink   comment []

Glenn Reynolds saw Sith: "The effects were great, but I couldn't bring myself to care all that much. Really, nothing special, and, of course, drastically inferior to the original movies." Yes. Talk it down, lower my expectations, make me think it's going to be awful. Then when it's merey bad I'll be happy. 8:08:21 PM   permalink   comment []

A thoughtful article on the state of the Bar Mitzvah, "a peculiarly American form of excess," by Emily Bazelon in Slate. Makes me prouder than ever of our boy and the way he chose to do his thing. 3:03:42 PM   permalink   comment []

A billion here, a billion there...wait, I just used that line in the previous post. Anyway, a huge amount of our money is unaccounted for in Iraq, and nobody seems to care. 2:52:03 PM   permalink   comment []

A million page views here, a million page views there...pretty soon you're talking about a signficant loss of readership: Kos and now Instapundit say they won't try to lead their readers behind the NYT's planned pay-wall. 2:48:27 PM   permalink   comment []

And...we'd like to have our conference cover some how-to on the business of blogging. But without the $1,000.00 fee to attend. Ours is attractively priced at...free. We are raising money now. My hope is to raise some "travel scholarship" funds to help bring in people who might find prohibitive the cost of getting to and staying in GSO. In fact, I'll pledge $500 to that travel fund right here and now. 9:10:44 AM   permalink   comment []

So, about this conference...I think A&T and the N&R are going to pull out the stops and get some great participants for the Friday sessions. I'll consult with them to bring in some blog-side contributors. Saturday: we want it to be the next generation of blog conference, hands-on how-to about being creative on the web, and making the web a more diverse place in every sense of the word. For example, we'd like to skip past the is-blogging-journalism stuff (I thought we were past that at the original BloggerCon in 2003), and, say, talk about how to do journalism with an InstaKit.  Roch and Ben and I are working on the Saturday program. We see three tracks -- tech, community, and culture. Or something like that. It would be nice to have a mix of session leaders, some from GSO and some from places far far away. Tech would include very how-to aspects: this is how to create a podcast, this is how to put video on your blog. We might repeat sessions on this track so that people could be sure to catch them without missing some highlight from the other tracks. Community would include politics and activism. Just speculating, but maybe we could get Sandy Carmany to run a session on political blogs, and Joya Wesley and or Ruby Sinreich to talk about activism...and we need some global perspective, too. Culture is pretty damn broad, huh? Could include journalism, faith (definitely stealing that one from Nashville) fiction and poetry, fine arts and video... There is also a music and nightlife component in downtown Greensboro that is being handled by people who know something about music and nightlife. We are open to suggestions. I'm talking to some folks I know out in blog world. I'd like to talk to you, too. Early October is a nice time to be in G'boro. Hope you can be here. 8:56:10 AM   permalink   comment []

David Wharton, giddy but well-dressed scooterista, is saving money and time on his two-wheeler. 8:20:11 AM   permalink   comment []

I dreamed last night that Jeff Jarvis sold his blog to a major media company for $1 million. The contract was written on a manila envelope. This is depressing on so many levels: that I dream about blogging, that someone else (even so nice a someone else as Jeff) gets the dough, and that the blogger in my dream is Jarvis rather than Wonkette. 8:12:50 AM   permalink   comment []

Gate and the City does a nightlife check on the Star Wars crowd. "There was this one Princess Leia who had great buns." 8:01:29 AM   permalink   comment []