post-bloggercon reflections
i preferred the beginning, where a selected trio of local bloggers discussed the community aspects of their blogs.
listening to ben macneil talk about the uberpopular trixieupdate and rewarding users with regular photos was cool. it would have been nice to see him go into some more details, perhaps a behind the scenes look. and where was trixie? that was 50% of the reason why i woke up at 8am! of course who knows when you might bump into them at maple view farms, on campus, elmos, or armadillo grill with camera in tow.
sid’s discussion seemed disconnected, maybe mostly because i don’t completely understand his blog. which i think he said is something he actively pursues–to be at the end of the long tail. meanwhile paul was still trying to get wireless to work on his laptop, and i started live blogging and looking up URLs. ah, the bliss of wireless internet.
ed cone spent time talking about “flow,” and i wonder whether he means “traffic flow” as in “hits” or if he is thinking of Csikszentmihalyi’s flow? he offered some advice in response to those “how do i get traffic?” types of self-promotion questions. if you want to be read, he suggested emailing post snippets and URLs to other big name bloggers that might be interested in something you’ve written. i did like dave hoggards suggestion that you should blog like no one’s reading.
i don’t think any of this is different from what someone has to do socialize in the real world. if you want to meet new people, you have to get yourself out there, be a regular somewhere, increase the opportunity for new social interactions. and get to know connectors (people who know people). which is something that didn’t explicitly come up during the conference.
the second half with dan gillmor just didn’t seem to have any umph. i mean dan is so sedate, and as my attention wandered, i found myself registering for flickr and posting some pictures that i was taking from the audience.
for future bloggercons, i would recommend a panel structure composed solely of blogger-delivered “case studies” intended to touch on a number of predetermined conference themes (e.g. comments, traffic, aggregation, social networking/community, political advocacy) followed and intersperced with audience discussions and questions.
all in all, i had a real nice time. kudos to anton (and paul) for making it happen.
I meant traffic. Totally agree with Hoggard, that was a key part of my message — write your blog in the way you want to write it, not to please others or get traffic — my tips are for getting people to read all the good stuff you’ve written in that personal voice.
Oh, it was disconnected. Lost my place during the Long Tail discussion,and never got it back.
I agree about the second half of the conference. It was something else, not a community discussion and certainly not about using our blogs to build community. Mostly it was Dan Gillmor Q & A, which was probably interesting for some of the people there.
I see Ed’s answer but understand your question about relating blogging to Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow. I don’t blog much, but have found that the posts that mean the most to me, and that provide the most learning for me, are the ones that get don with no conscious concept of how long they have kept me engaged. And that to me relates very much to Dave Hoggard’s blog like no one’s reading. It is all about what I am thinking through at the moment. So – thanks for posting the very question I had when Ed mentioned flow.