Photo by Steve Goodman
As soon as the announcement came out in January, I registered. But today, blogher Lisa Stone posted the Blogher 06 collection of blog banners and buttons. Here's more information about the conference and registration. Okay, now I need to decide which button to put on my side bar ....
By chance, I stumbled upon these interviews from JD Lasica of people he interviewed at Blogher. (This was while I was learning how to use ourmedia.org for publishing my vlog posts for Cambodia4kids using the fantastic tutorials from freevlog.org.)
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Mary Hodder's post Link Love Lost or How Social Gestures within Topic Groups are More Interesting Than Link Counts comes directly out of the discussion at blogher at the Technorati 100.
Currently, blogs are measured in systems like Technorati or ranked in PubSub by links or by number of subscribers to a feed in Feedster. In particular, these are the not very interesting, subtle or telling measures used to make indexes like the Technorati Top 100 or the PubSub 100 or the Feedster 100. In Particular, the Technorati Top 100 is based purely on inbound links. All of these lists tend to favor those who blog in more general, popular topic areas, and not those who are specialists in an area.
For many bloggers the relevant sphere of influence is not overall popularity, as those indexes express. It's influence and connection within a community. And the relevant measure of connection isn't the number of connections -- it's the depth and impact of those connections. This is about celebrating the niche, and measuring engagement over time.
She has a table that lists the items that could be in a new metric and their relative weight. Interesting food for thought. This is not only important to bloghers, but also niche communities such as nonprofits and nonprofit technology bloggers as well.
Also, Danah Boyd does an analysis of linking behavior on blogs and differences by gender. (Via Nancy White
(I've been wanting to do audio and video for a long time, but it wasn't until my blogher experience that I actually got moving and picked up the knowledge to try my first one.
Lisa Williams showed her vlog from Blogher at the Berkman Thursday night blogging group and during the walk to dinner, I got to ask her how she did it. Before blogher, I had been reading and watching Andy Carvin's dispatches from Africa and feeling that I wanted to do that too ... but didn't know where to start.. Then I came home and made the mistake of checking the RSS reader and found this post from Ponzi and called into the show and talked to Chris and Ponzi about my geek toy collection. Anina, who vlogged me at blogher, left a comment and so did Village Girl, a khmer vlogger, who told me on the phone last week that vlogging was easy. And Viola -- a vlog post.
Video How I did it:
1.) Identified a very short and simple flim: Show my geek toy collection
2.) Jotted down a story board (introduce each toy in collection)
3.) Use the video setting on my new Cannon PowerShot SD300
to do the flim clip
4.) Use a video editing program (Windows Movie Maker because it was free and on my computer)
5.) Identified simple editing process: Titles Video Credits
6.) Saved and uploaded it
(choose a lower setting so it wouldn't take long to download)
7.) Made a cover graphic in photoshop
I'm not happy with the aesthetics yet ... need to learn
how to:
Next project will be montage of stills with titles ... are there any good how-to sites that are easy to read and understand?
Looks like I'm not the only blogher inspired to vlog. Lisa Canter posted her first vlog too! What I liked about Lisa's video is that she put herself in front of the camera and just spoke so eloquently. I also like the titles that appear while the video was playing to insert thoughts she didn't vocalize. I'll have to put that on my to-do list.
Okay, enough about technique. Another question I have to ask is: How might nonprofits use vlogging, if at all?
Update: Village Girl posted her vlog of the vloggers birds of a feather session. A great resource site - free vlog was mentioned. And, I just had to experiment with some more and made my first Khmer language vlog ... and then I did my second one. Onto figuring out syndication and storage ...
Now, I'm ready to read the instructions ....
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I went to the Thursday Night Berkman Blogger Meeting and I saw this woman who looked vaguely familiar - it was Jory!!
That's Jill Fallon of Estate Legacy Vaults, Inc. (Jill is from Boston and she live-blogged the Political Blogging session. Jory had to catch a train, so she couldn't stay for the meeting. Along with Lisa Williams, Jill and I gave a report back to the group about Blogher. There was a lot of interest in the distributed nature of the live blogging (not a site that is roach motel of links) and there was discussion about what made it such a great experience. The notes are here.
People were interested in the speaker guidelines. Ashley Richards, who wrote them, posted them.
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Ponzi will be posting her audio interviews she did during blogher hopefully soon ... She did about 30-40 of them! Wow, I'm impressed. She rocks as an interviewer!
Read about her experiences doing audio during a conference session here. Seems like a debate or possible feud is brewing. I wasn't in the room, and don't want to get in the middle of this but I do want to say this:
I want to applaud Ponzi for being brave and stepping out of the
box in terms of her practice. Even better, reflecting on it her blog. She raises some really good
questions. The combination of personal experimentation and public reflection and community dialogue leads to
good practice.
Brava. Brava. Brava.
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Eath (Village Girl) just posted a video of blogher.
Excellent summary posts
Lisa Stone's post setting the context for the debate
One issue came up over the fact that women don't network. Well, that's bullshit. Actually, women are traditionally the maintainers of domestic social networks. They tend to network more than men. The gender difference concerns the style of networking. Men are more likely to gather many weak ties; women tend to work hard to maintain strong ties. Each have their value. But when it comes to technology like Technorati, there is a validation of weak ties over strong ties. Or more actually, there's an assumption that all ties are created equal, which inadvertently validates the weak ties over the strong ties.
My argument here is that we need to pay attention to the network structures. If folks are angry about their position in some purported hierarchy, they need to understand how the hierarchy works. And then change it. I'm not interested in having separate networks; i'm interested in making certain that people understand the gender bias they build into the network and that it represents a diversity of perspectives, is flexible to deal with a diversity of social structures.
After 45 minutes of intense anger and frustration from many audience speakers in the room toward Technorati link counts and top 100, I suggested we create a community based algorithm, based on more complex social relationships than links. It's something I've been working on for few months, trying to frame, about what this problem is and how we might solve it.
The first session was a debate about "playing by the rules" which refers to the inbound link count rules, where A-listers who've been around for a long time have so many links, and get the most attention and credibility due to the Technorati Top 100 list.
I pointed out to them that 4 or so years ago.. when there were only 100k blogs, that a relatively small group of people all linked to each other in blogrolls, and so those blogroll links are sometimes old and the networks dense, for A listers, and yet, Technorati doesn't do anything to express a blogroll link that is years old from a current blogroll link. They simply scrape the front page of a blog, and treat all links, old or new blogroll links, and current post links, as the same and then count them, for their rankings.
Halley Suitt's post about how gender differences affect conference environment/culture.
Wee Hours' analysis of gender differences between the visual stream out of flickr for Blogher versus Gnomedex
Charlene Li's take on the why A-List matter
Jay Rosen's notes
Words from the three organizers:
Elisa's post on the conference content and a blogher story
Jory's inside the blogher conference post
Bonus content:
JD Lasica's Interview with Lisa Stone and his flickr set
Susan Mernit and Julia Leung's Blogging 101 Presentation
Advanced Tool Session Blog
Lisa Williams Podcast
Renee Blodgett took these awesome photos at blogher.
I missed my family and they missed me. I got home to two wonderful welcome home drawings. Above, Harry (age 5) says he missed me. I thought the pink thing with the circle is his depiction of a mostly female technology conference, but my husband tells me it is our camping tent that they cleaned while I was away. Below, is Sara's drawing of Mommy at Blogher. I'm the one in the middle with the cross-eyes and pink purse ...
Time to transition back into my real world. Try to integrate the connections and energy that I experienced back to my day-to-day life.
Eath Chhon is vlogger behind the Village Girl Blog. (She is blogging her trip to California, taking a break from her life story which is a must view ...) She came to Blogher with her husband and daughter, Jampa only briefly. She spotted me because I carried my Cambodian bag (I did that on purpose). We embraced, hugged, exchanged words in khmer, but mostly so stunned to see each other face-to-face that we laughed and laughed .... We were so overcome with the emotion of meeting each other f-t-f - we don't have pictures! (We had left our respective cameras on the table) Eath lives in NY and I'm definitely going to take the train down spend some more time and go to one of their NY vblog meetings. (That's on my personal blogher to-do list) She has also encouraged me to do vblogging, her passion about it is contagious ... expect an interview shortly!
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I was beginning to wonder if I had attended blogher at all after stepping off the redeye at Logan at 10:00 a.m. this morning. But thanks to the blogher flickr stream and blogher participants with digital cameras, I found a few photos that documented my presence. It is also interesting to see other people's photos of events that you also shared and captured. Living in the moment at blogher and then seeing the images is almost like a conceptual art piece that disappears, but the digital documentation of it lives on.
Now comes the process of making meaning from all the loose fragments of digital memories. Its about making connections ...
Halley has written an excellent observation about the differences between she and he tech conferences. I wonder if you did a content analysis of the photo streams from she and he conferences which one would be richer?
Draw
Originally uploaded by George. (Here's "George" taking the photo of me)
blogging fun
Originally uploaded by image415. (See my actual photo and an interview with the person wearing these shoes)
Originally uploaded by Choconancy1.
I don't remember Nancy taking this photo, but I'm so glad she did.
Bloghercon
Originally uploaded by Choconancy1.
from Renee Blodgett
Halley Suitt
Originally uploaded by jdlasica.
As I was browsing the flickr stream, I found this stunning photograph of Halley Suitt of Halley's Comment by JD Lasica, a bloghim. ( His complete set of Blogher photos are awesome.)
During the opening session, she made the point that women should ask for links. (Great notes by Nancy White here)
Quotable quote: "If I have any link love on the web, it came about in the following ways. In the beginning of my blogs I knew people who became "A list bloggers", mostly men and asked them to link to my writing. Some days they said yes, sometimes go away. I ask again. I have this big pitch for this book "Women Don't Ask." I'm surprised how many people don't ask me to link."
A person in the audience raised their hand and said: I asked you and you didn't link. Halley just fixed that ...
And, I noticed that she has linked to me, too.
advanced tools
Originally uploaded by image415.
This photo was taken when Little Judy handed up her laptop to one of the presenters in Advanced Tools Session when there was a technical problem. Even though they gave her pieces of chocolate, it was an act of caring. I wonder if this would be one of Nancy White's indicators of a community?
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This is my stats for the week of blogher. Wow, it looks like a steep, sharp rising cliff. Web traffic rorsasch test: If it the numbers fall off as steeply as they rose after blogher, it will look like a .....
Now I have a big incentive to implement all the stuff on my to do list. 
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I'm still dancing on the edges between action and reflection, but wanted to get down some of my evolving next action steps and questions for reflection. It is hard, but if I don't do it now, I'm afraid I'll loose forever. These are in no particular order!
Questions
To Do List
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Thank you Lisa, Elisa, and Jory for your leadership, vision, and hard work for making BlogHer such incredible experience for me. Also, Miriam Verburg for that huge task of organizing the live blogging and training session that will help me with blogging technique in general. And, I know that there are many more people who volunteered their time, resources, and brainpower to make this one of the best conference I've attended. I also want to thank everyone who let me photograh their shoes, bags, jewerly, etc and ask them off-the-wall inappropriate questions.
The content of the sessions was superb and networking possibilities endless. The creative energy that circulated in this warm and caring community has energized me. I can't wait for next year's blogher!
Part of what made this such a great experience was the chance to meet many of the people whose blogs I read regularly. For example, Nancy White and Village Girl! And, to discover new people like Bev Trayner and Anina who blogs I look forward to reading. What was really amazing is that I was to connect with people who are passionate about some of the same topics I care deeply about and I probably would never of discovered them if not for this conference.
I don't get to conferences very often or do live blogging much any these days and this gave me a chance to use my rusty skills and reflect on how to do it better the next time. The content provided me with unlimited access to incredible expertise.
Thank you! And, now a few hours of relaxing before getting on the red eye back tonight.
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Meet Susan. Her blog live blogs the Atom bomb as if it were stuck in the 1940s. She admits to being a little obsessive, but does not own Fat Man and Little Boy shot glasses. What a fantastic concept for a high school history project - does have to be about the bomb, but any point in history.
The closing reception was a frenzy of business card exchanging. But the biz exchange gold award goes to Renee Blodgett, who by the way loves oysters. This woman can work the room .... She exchanged cards standing up.
and sitting down.
You can't really tell, but I was lying on the floor trying to capture a different angle in the biz card exchange techniques on Renee Blodgett and almost upskirted her ... Meanwhile, Renee pulled out her card and while people were throwing cards on me they almost downshirted me.
I suspect that Renee probably got more cards than I ended up, but I did pretty good for an introvert.
And finally, found a wonderful photo of Renee in flickr
Renee Blodgett
Originally uploaded by jdlasica.
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I only knew a handful of blogher participants, so I was delighted to see fellow Berkman Thursday night blogger, Lisa Williams. Her presentation on audio blogging was fantastic! It helped me move past my audio phobia and I'm going to do it, damn it!
Here is Lisa's opml blog with blogher coverage, including her presentation. Here's the session description with links to live blogger, Melissa Gira who took notes.
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Meet Liza Sabater
This is a woman I was dying to meet face-to-face and didn't have a chance until the ending session when I was lucky enough to ploop down at the same table. One of my other obessions is arts and technology, and in my book she is the technology goddess of the artworld. I wish I wasn't so brain dead when I interviewed her.
She has been an advocate for artists to switch from static portfolio type web spaces to blogging. She told me that Thundergulch is moving to blogs. Liza said that migration to blogs is moving slowly. Most because there was a wave of early adopters ten years and change is difficult. The artist reaction to blogs is little "Been there, done that." Liza is working drupalart.org - which will be a community blog/e-commerce site for artists.
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Mr. X, Amanda, and Mindy
The que behind at the google kiosk is about to kill me ... so expect many more belated reports tonight once I get a decent a pipeline. I am going to be linearally anal and back date the post so they are in the correct order.
(Note to self: It probably would have been worth for me to get the extra license for ecto for my laptop. That way I could have prepared the content offline and simply uploaded it later.)
Well, at least it wasn't something stupid I did. Looks like many others had the same problem.
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Meet Michelle McLellan who is the director of Tommorrow's Workforce at Northwestern University. She approached after I got the nerve to share my experience covering the Cambodian Blogosphere in the When Globalization is Good for Women panel moderated by Nancy White. (It does pay to open your mouth and get over the fear of vocalizing inappropriate thoughts) Michelle is beginning a blog about her desire to move back to Cambodia or as she said, "Cambodia isn't done with me."
Michele lived in Cambodia and taught journalism to Cambodian journalists for the Independent Journalism Foundation. While a job offer brought her back to the states, she has built a house there and plans to live there several months a year. The house sounds wonderful and might eventually have some guest rooms. It sounds like it is located near Roteang Village where TSF does its projects. I will add her blog to my Cambodia4kids blog.
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Look at these gorgeous rings and bracelets, but more importantly these are the hands that created the Blogher Logo!
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