Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog

Agenda

• BlogHer: http://www.blogher.org/
  • Beth, who blogged the “fluffy” & social stuff: http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/blogher/index.html
  • Lisa: http://www.cadence90.com/wp/
  • BK: I decided to apply for a BlogHer live-blogging scholarship to blog the social stuff. This way I got to meet all sorts of neat & famnous people
  • BK: Heather Gold, comedian, excellent
  • BK: bathroom had a gender change, not enough women’s bathrooms beforehand
  • BK: I went around, did a lot of “Meet the BlogHers” and then a few of the men too.
  • LW: I’d been worried about going, hadn’t been sure I wanted to go, but it was really nice when I was there, glad I went
  • Jill: It had really good energy. Very good attention to detail, best discussion guidelines I’ve ever seen anywhere, moderation guidelines. Fabulous food all the time. Very well run, and in only 4 months!
  • LW: was more formal & upscale than any BloggerCon. Swag. Sponsors. Cocktail hour.
  • BK: fashion! I blogged feet & shoes.
  • LW: I felt underdressed!
  • Jill: great swag: a Google messenger bag!
  • BK: Ponzi got into a conflict because of her audioblogging during a session
  • BK: only negative: the wifi collapsed under the weight of 300 bloggers.
  • MalW: TechMart often collapses, the wifi. Even Vegas collapsed. It happens a lot at web conferences.
  • LW: OPML editor is really good for blogging when your net acess is sporadic
  • LW: “how to get naked” session was great – on being uberpersoanl in your blog
  • LW: I did a podcasting presentation w a videoblogger, basically livwe tutorials
  • LW: In my former professional life I spoke at copnferences a lot, often I was only woman. It was so cool to have that crowd at BlogHer. I thought to myself, I may never see this again. Someone flipped the polarity for a day.
  • BK: maybe unique to blog cons not just women’s… it was so nice go to into the stream, tagstream, flickr stream, to see everyone else’s angles on the same thing, same moment.
  • LW: ppl were hioghly prepared, so less like an unconference, no dead spots, but a good thing. you could totally fill a tech conference w women speakers. they’re out there. mary hodder of napsterization has put together a speaker list. lots of conferences are kinds stale, sape speaker same talk over & over. http://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi
  • LW: bloglines feed: http://www.bloglines.com/public/blogher
  • LW: blogher main site may morph to community site. currently lots of ppl posting their materials now. there’s also very good recordings whcih will be up on IT Conversations soon.
  • BK: the schedule links to all the liveblogs of every session
  • MalW: without powerpoint, what was the presentation format?
  • LW & BK: open forum, brief talking & then conversation w whole group, someone running around w the mic, etc.
  • MalW: Boston Facilitators’ Roundtable would love to see those moderators’ guidelines
  • LW: rooms w/out presentations didn’t have projectors
  • BK: advanced tools had the presentation as a bunch of blog posts tagged. but they lost net connection so they had to use a flipchart.
  • MF: why no visual acocmpaniment to presentations? i get the no powerpoint, but you’d think ppl would want to be able to show blogs like we do
  • Jill: i think they wanted a conversation not a lecture
  • LW: it was mainly against powerpoint specifically
  • Jill: sessions were just 45 min, lots to pack in, so better w/out projectors
  • LW: i didn’t feel deprived, i felt engaged
  • LW: the room we meet in here is very special. most conference rooms are set up with presenter v audience, encouraging passivity. screens tend to encoruage staring, but not here. something like where you put the chairs matters.
  • EG: (issue re divided attention & open laptops)
  • Mal: maybe let’s talk about this mkore again, it’d be good to discuss. sense of a lost room, divided attention. sometimes I say something truly outrageous just to test if people are really there. if you are indeed participating with continuous partial attention, is it bc of want, or should
  • MF: lots of us grew up w tv in the background. last night i went to shakespeare and listeded to red sox on my headphones…
  • new guy in corner: i’m so impressed, glad we have visuals here tonight! how did this stuff emerge? is there an evolving resource of how to blog a conference that led to this? (the live agenda, including the live blogger links etc)
  • LW: don’t think so… we should try to document what we learned from this… all those links go out to individual speakers’ sites, not back into the conference site. there wasn’t time to get all the bios set up beforehand, so organizers just asked for links.
  • BK: this is a demo of low administrative overhead. natrualistic planning.
  • LW: they had to trust people to do stuff, fairly important things, to write own materials, etc.
  • MalW: just over 300 is a very intimate conference, really. When you break 384 it’s the next level of intimacy.
  • corner guy: i’m here cos i was asked to join group that wants to blog the natl assoc of realtors convention. it’s gonna be huge. a self-appointed blog squad wanting to expose stuff w/in the industry. what can we learn from this?
  • LW: here the live bloggers were closely tied to the conference organizers. challegne for you is how to learn info etc. there’s a cultural expecation amongst bloggers that will be different for nonbloggers. how will they react to folks trying to record etc. people do notice it less but it may be different there.
  • Mal: here and at blogher we have erased a lot of the on the record off the record distinction. their expectation may be very different.
  • mal: watch unbearable lightness of being. figure out what being a photographer means when the state picks up your film.
  • lw: since it’s a public conference there will prob be a bit of on the record, the speakers should have a sense
    <li.mal: ppl will go to the hallway conversations

  • MF: do identify yourself as a blogger
  • guy: are there release forms, anything standardized?
  • lw: ask kaye trammel, journalism prof. she can give good guidelines.
  • eg: also google the assoc of media bloggers
  • guy: the url is http://realestateblogsquad.com
  • guy: one of the bloggers is Craig Newmark. he talks re “we business models” and i think real estate is that business model waiting to happen.
  • jill: distributed model works very well when you have lots of live bloggers. otherwise it’s too much in one blog.
  • lw: opml editor can build very lightweight directories. that’s coming but not here yet. join opml newbies & ask. ipodder directory, many nodes maintained by many ppl but appears to outside as a cohesive unit.
  • lw: los alamos national lab blog, they’re discussing how to deal w anonymity etc. http://lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com

• Blogumentary
• MF: disturbed by the guy with the amputated foot – the photos. inspriational story but too gory. in general also could have lost some footage over the film
• general: everyone liked the film, very good
• mf: 1, anyone can do this with the right dedication and not a *ton* of technological capacity. but 2, it cost like $15,000 and a TOn of hours, so it takes a major major commitment.
• LW: and he can;t screen it commercially, without eliminated some copyrighted images, footage, music etc.

  Dinner: Seoul Food