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"Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all. How do we define this lively darting about with words, of hitting them back and forth, this sort of brief smile of ideas which should be conversation?" Guy de Maupassant

Friday, August 18, 2006

BlogHer 06 - My Reflections

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 :)

Some of my reflections on the conference follow.

On the Structure of the conference
This is really a recap for those who weren't there. It's useful for those thinking of organizing events and I shared this with the group working on the BlogCamp in India earlier. I think the way the sessions were laid out for the most part, worked well. A few of the breakaway sessions were really large - and the audio system wasn't great in all the rooms. Day 1 was instructional where we had about 1 hour sessions around certain pre-determined topics - where presenters made some formal-ish presentations - those that didn't were much more useful IMO - they ran workshops around questions the audience attending that workshop had, with some moderation. These sessions were run in parallel - and each ran for about 45 mins to 1 hour, with a repeat immediately thereafter, so a fresh lot of participants could take part in the session. So each participant at the conference was able to take part in about 2 sessions in the slot. Day Two was really just workshops - and much more unconference-like. These sessions were either run completely open, or the panel spoke for about 5-10 mins each and then it was thrown open for discussion. And action points were set too which was nice !

There were open discussions at the start of each day, and at the lunch sessions, with some keynote speakers - again this was done in the form of a moderated group discussion, and the whole attempt was to involve the audience in it - which they managed so well even with 400 folks on day one and 750 odd on day two. The one bugbear was that because they had so many sponsors, they allowed the sponsors 10 mins of spiel before each of the open discussions and keynote sessions - which wasnt received too well. The other thing they did with sponsors - was give them a separate area to show off their products and this was more effective I feel.

I was a little lost finding my Birds of a Feather group - I think what was missing was a little board or something to suggest the title of the session. By the time I got there, there was no place to sit, and I couldn't hear everyone very well and so I lost interest in the session.

Here's a great post by Christopher Carfi on conference marketing and how the sponsors handled themselves - some well and others making a real ass of themselves - at BlogHer 06.

On Our Session on Community Assistance
I really enjoyed it. Really. It was wonderful to meet Grace and Sara and work with them to ensure we had a session that really rocked. These are ladies who really have their feet on the ground, and hearts of gold - and I feel so priviledged to have heard their stories and learnt from them.

Some of the posts done around our Community Assistance Panel after our conversations there, which were greatly enriched by participation from the audience:

What I really liked is, apart from sharing stories, we did manage to take the discussion further into actionable points and came up with some promising ideas, which I have lifted off Christine Herron's blog post here:
  • Ham radio operator clubs have periodic field days, in which they pack up their gear and generators, and practice how they'd work in a disaster. Why not have a blogging field day, that would enable bloggers to work on how they'd be able to help in case of disaster?
  • Bloggers could connect with clubs of many useful stripes - ham radio, off-road driving, etc. - to form collaborative relationships that deliver more effective impact in case of emergency.
  • Take advantage of SMS on blogs - services such as 411sync can deliver blog content to cell phones, and many services (including Typepad) support posting to blogs via SMS.
  • Work with press associations to get information from individuals into mainstream media. Especially in affected areas, the mainstream media may be the last outlet capable of broadcasting information.
Some things people said that I liked:
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.
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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."


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