April 18, 2004
Blogger Con II - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly First of all, you'll notice that this entry doesn't come while bloggercon is actually happening, but the day after. Thanks to their choice of using an adhoc wireless network, there were plenty who couldn't get on the network all day, including us. Adhoc mode is for military vehicles out in the desert, not this!
The first session we attended was Lisa Williams' "Visions from Users," where the audience discussed what features they wanted in the next generation of blogging tools. It seemed that most of the bloggers there were writing their own tools and few had heard of or use the more popular tools, since many of the features suggested are already features! One poor soul wondered aloud if the browser was coming to an end, failing to realize, among other things, that almost all news readers out there use embedded browsers.
Next it was off to "Blogging in Business" headed by David Weinberger. Most of the discussion was centered around who would be blogging at companies and how long would it take before corporate blogging became mainstream. Most thought it would be a number of years before it really catches on. Stowe Boyd made a good point, saying that companies need to read and understand blogs before they can start doing it themselves. Most of the corporate blogging today is done by CEO's or by company employees with there skin deep, "these are my own views" disclaimers. Then there's the question of whether this kind of censored or monitored blogging is really blogging at all? I say, if you're blogging between 9 and 5, it's not a blog, unless your boss doesn't want you to do it.
Right after the session we noticed that we had missed Dan Gillmor's discussion on Presidential Blogging, which I hear was quite interesting. After lunch it was off to Shirky's Power Law with Philip Greenspun. Arguments of which metrics are best to rate blogs and of how to make the A-list ensued, but probably the most useful observation is that there are many A-lists, with bloggers being popular amongst their niche without being generally popular. For example, Going Nohwere is no doubt on the A-list of unread blogs. I can say with confidence that more people do not read us than do. Frankly I don't see why bloggers are so concerned with their blog rank. I would hope that most people start blogging for reasons other than popularity.
We ended up leaving early, opting not to attend the last session on religion, but all in all the topics and comments were interesting with a few entertaining attendees thrown in the mix.
The first session we attended was Lisa Williams' "Visions from Users," where the audience discussed what features they wanted in the next generation of blogging tools. It seemed that most of the bloggers there were writing their own tools and few had heard of or use the more popular tools, since many of the features suggested are already features! One poor soul wondered aloud if the browser was coming to an end, failing to realize, among other things, that almost all news readers out there use embedded browsers.
Next it was off to "Blogging in Business" headed by David Weinberger. Most of the discussion was centered around who would be blogging at companies and how long would it take before corporate blogging became mainstream. Most thought it would be a number of years before it really catches on. Stowe Boyd made a good point, saying that companies need to read and understand blogs before they can start doing it themselves. Most of the corporate blogging today is done by CEO's or by company employees with there skin deep, "these are my own views" disclaimers. Then there's the question of whether this kind of censored or monitored blogging is really blogging at all? I say, if you're blogging between 9 and 5, it's not a blog, unless your boss doesn't want you to do it.
Right after the session we noticed that we had missed Dan Gillmor's discussion on Presidential Blogging, which I hear was quite interesting. After lunch it was off to Shirky's Power Law with Philip Greenspun. Arguments of which metrics are best to rate blogs and of how to make the A-list ensued, but probably the most useful observation is that there are many A-lists, with bloggers being popular amongst their niche without being generally popular. For example, Going Nohwere is no doubt on the A-list of unread blogs. I can say with confidence that more people do not read us than do. Frankly I don't see why bloggers are so concerned with their blog rank. I would hope that most people start blogging for reasons other than popularity.
We ended up leaving early, opting not to attend the last session on religion, but all in all the topics and comments were interesting with a few entertaining attendees thrown in the mix.
