Friday, August 18, 2006 |
It has been a while since I have been promising myself that I must share my thoughts on BlogHer 2006. One of the best things for me there was hanging out with with old friends and making new ones ... so shout out to danah, Nancy, Beth, Lisa, Elisa, Phil, Marc, Amy, Toby, Stephanie, Nicole, Susan, Grace, Sara, Salim ..... the list is endless :). I enjoyed the Yahootinis at the cocktails - thanks Salim for leaving behind tons of free coupons! I even got a hug from Dave Winer - not a sexist one methinks - it was because I am one of the rare species that still uses Radio Userland and after attending our session on community assistance, he thinks I am tough as nails :)
Jeremy Pepper -"This is the only time that I have not seen the newbies attacked as idiots or undeserving the veterans attention, but rather working together to make the community better. Let me ask you: is that such a bad thing?" Lisa Stone - "Own the fact that you're a writer. A lot of women, and especially bloggers, don't do that" (smiling - Dilip where are you? and Peter .. who always ask me whether I am a writer or blogger .. and so far I've always said blogger ... I own up now to be a writer:)) Nancy on the culture of love - "If we cannot feel safe to speak our individual truths, even if they are not the truths of others, we won't get anywhere. I know I still have a long way to go down this road. But if I continue to react hatefully and in the culture of fear (fear of men, fear of women, fear of making a fool of myself) I won't get anywhere. So I'll keep trying to move more towards the culture of love. That includes apologizing for inadvertently hurting you or anyone else. And trying to be more thoughtful in how I express myself." On the Other Sessions: I've blogged about three sessions I really enjoyed earlier - What's Your Crazy Idea, Ten Types of Web Writing and Tagging. Here's a great summary of the Get Deeply Geeky session which was quite inspiring as a lot of geeky girls got together - and here's a really neat map created by Nancy while the session was running. While I liked what each member of the closing keynote address said as individuals, and I felt that most of the audience were enthralled and inspired by them, personally I couldn't help feeling a little uneasy about the tone of the discussion there - it reminded me a little of those early TV shows talking of women's liberation movements - while this spirit is great at one level, in some ways it made me uncomfortable and a little fearful that the gender divide would only be greater because of such discussions. I was a little disappointed too, that there wasn't more discussion around the crippling DOPA - and as I told danah - I would have loved to see BlogHers translate their dissent into action of some form - set up a petition, set up common tags and commit to write against it on a specific day, google-bomb it in some way. The spirit of BlogHer could have been used so effectively then ... I think its a wasted opportunity. BlogHer 06 Links Resource: Technorati on BlogHer BlogHers on Flickr The conference blog Amy Gahran's wiki on Blog coverage of BlogHer 06. I really enjoyed meeting Amy who contributed a lot to our session - she's done some great live-blogging too. And finally, my message to Elisa, Lisa and Jory: A warm hug from India, and thank you for inviting me to be a part of this really wonderful and real movement called BlogHer. And for the opportunity of meeting so many women who I would have never had otherwise. I've been following some of the rumblings and ramblings in the blogosphere - around sponsors, around the Mommybloggers, around the food, around the venue, around the erratic wifi. Hey there are some things you can fix, but you can't really please everybody and shouldn't even attempt to! These ramblings and your thoughtful reflections as you go ahead into BlogHer07 are all signs that it is a real 'movement' (for want of a better term - revolution isn't quite it) and that there is momentum. It is really the natural extension to chaotic organisms as they grow - chaos and creativity! And I keep feeling that BlogHer is bigger than the tools that enable us to participate, its bigger than the conferences and meet-ups and networks that are built. It is about, as Stowe Boyd so eloquenty states in a really thoughtful post on context - taking our eyes off the tech in the foreground to acknowledge the world behind, forming the background. It is about rolling snowballs that Euan Semple articulates wonderfully in the context of citizen-based politics: "Who knows, maybe out of all of these conversations and exchange of ideas that blogging has enabled we will some day tackle the really big stuff. The stuff that matters. How we run ourselves and conduct ourselves in the world. It may not be any one particular group and certainly unlikely to be some sort of "killer app." but I am more and more confident that the connected worldview that we are fostering is different from what we have experienced before and certainly affords us a new means of expressing ourselves and making our views known. Maybe we will be able to regain some of the ground lost to those who see life as a fight which has to be won and polarise everything into black and white maybe the middle has something to add after all." blogher06 blogher 2:17:02 PM comment [] trackback [] |
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Copyright 2009 Dina Mehta