Maiden Voyage

abandonment

oh bloglet! how I have left you, neglected, unattended to. Me and 2.5 million teenie boppers who thought we could handle the day to day pressures and responsibilities of blogging along with work, the dishes, recycling and the rigors of a phd program. How foolish we were! How naive! The appeal was tremendous. My very own blog! How cool is that? And yet, no body warned me...how would I ever find the time to keep up. It's not just the entries, no, it is the news, the other bloggers you are committed to reading...the endless pressure to be cute, to be pithy, to be wise, engaging...I cracked. What can I say? The pressure got to me.

I am deeply sorry to have been so cold, so heartless....I will try to take better care of you and consequently me, in the days and weeks to come.

here's to a consistently more regular relationship in the new year...to fun and folly, to a place to blow off steam and cease the seriousness of the academic pursuits.

post BloggerCon post

I left Harvard last night feeling exhilarated, exhausted, fried, frustrated and awed, all at once.

What I most appreciated about BloggerCon:

The amazing amount of work that went into organizing the event. Thanks Dave, Wendy and all those unseen and unknown worker bees who made it so.

Dave's challenge to keep things "optimistic" and to further the "win win" model.

Those tireless "disrupters" who insisted that it was not pessimistic to acknowledge problems and to think critically about what we were all about.

Those who continued, in spite of the dismissal, to remind "us" that we were a mostly white, mostly male cohort.

References to Socrates.

That you can get protection against libel through your homeowner's insurance.

The Ted Baxter philosophy: That if you link to people who are smarter and funnier and better writers than you are, you will lose them. I think this was Glenn Reynold's theory.

Jay Rosen's thoughtful, wise meta comments throughout the day, including the fact that readers are now writers, and that there are no masses, just a way of seeing people as masses.

Jenny Levine's tireless and patient attempts to remind and educate us about the amazing potential that resides in public libraries.

Patrick Delaney's dedicated and inspiring work in ,his palatable (to technophobes) concept of digital paper and his blog rats.

The question posed by somebody, " Should blogs be a lifestlye or is it like singing?

The amazing Rashomon like phenomenon of a room full of bloggers blogging their simultaneous experience of bloggercon as it was webcast, while they were discussing it on IRC Chat while they were experiencing it....

Scott Johnson, Feedster
founder and all around helpful and friendly guy.

Adam Curry's reminder that we, the US, are not the center of the universe, though in our ethnocentric way we like to think we are, his wonderful link to the Zen TV exercise, and his schoolblogs.

Christopher Lydon's elegant and practiced moderating and his notion that blogging is done out of love...."a soul and a heartbeat....that is the promise of the transformation."

The challenge I think is for this group of mostly very smart, mostly very white, mostly very male folks to pool their amazing wisdom and capacity for innovation and think seriously about issues of diversity and lack of access. To ignore these facts and sluff off remarks about lack of diversity as unimportant or an attempt to move away from the positive, diminishes us in our effort to truly effect some kind of transformation.

It was long, full, virtual, digital, analog, p2p, face to face, and more. While I would love to attend the free smaller workshops today, which span the spectrum from spirituality to how to blog, duty calls. Classes to plan, food to prepare, sins to atone for and a fast to begin.

bloggercon5

so my suggestion that there be some structure to facilitate audience questions getting heard was shot down....Dave made the point that those guys on the panel who know so much more about blogging and journalism had more important things to say than those of us in the audience....he wasn't worrried about people getting heard...

while I get that these guys are the "experts" in some way this flies in the face of the win-win theory....is it not possible that some audience participants have valuable contributions...insightful comments...pointed and fascinating questions? Is this just a who's in and who's out in the blogosphere?

I personally had nothing to contribute but the women on either side of me were struggling to get heard...that doesn't feel right....who gets to just "hijack" the conversation and those that are waiting patiently to speak don't get heard...

bloggercon4

so I can't figure out how come my blog isn't incorportated into the metablog for the conference...working on that!

the panel seems very interested in hearing themselves talk and since there is no built in format...now it is question time,... the folks around the room who are busting at the seams to participate can't get the mike...I am also aware that a) there are many more men than women...and the women have to stand up and wave their arms frantically to get the mike! what's that about???

I guess it makes sense...this is a room full of people who each think what they have to contribute is worth something....very cool...

bloggercon3

so someone is taking pix and compiling posts, etc....
check it...

bloggercon2

so I can listen to Joshua Marshall talk about this interview with Wesley Clark and I can get his weblog and the interview up and read it while I listen...how cool

bloggercon 1

okay, so I wish I had remembered to bring my camera! this is just a regular old classroom in the Harvar law library; people are scurrying around trying to connect, wifi and not, lots of chatting, we are also projected onto the front wall, just in case there isn't enough stimulation...some of us are already blogging, some are chomping on scones some are responsible for making it so and are working to get the technology on target...I am finding myself in the video and projection on the wall...the white haired lady behind the 17 inch.....sigh

and we're off...

Survived the kick off party last night at the Hong Kong,-sorry Bri no lap dancers- by going hog wild and ordering myself a Citrona. I am nothing if not a cheap date. Cocktail parties are just about my worst nightmare. I don't drink, I am a disaster at small talk, and don't do strangers very well at all. I knew I was in trouble when I found myself lusting after a spare rib on a stick. I haven't eaten meat since I was pregnant and was on a one hamburger a day regimen to boost my hematocrit...

anyway I thought at the very least I would muster up my courage and try to meet some folks from around the country. four out of five bloggers I managed to to speak with came from within a one mile radius of Harvard Square. I must have radar. There was a Josh and Omer-who aren't listed on the blogroll for the conference, Andrew, who is taking a break from his 2 year old daughter, whom he treasures, and Werner from Cornell who is using the same style sheet as me....him and about a hundred other folks: Georgia Blue.

It is still dark out and the conference has started so I better get my ass over there. More later....

tidbits

California Girl writes "Who is your audience? Is it yourself and
whoever knows about it? How do you decide what to include there? Does it mean that your entire psyche is like an open book. Or do you edit yourself and what you want to reveal."

Good questions. It is, starting out, a little lonely. And yes, I do censor myself and it isn't the free for all that might take place in my bound, private, hand held, analog journal. But for me I am thrilled to be writing again, about anything, toilets, tubs, toothaches and pig races. btw, this pix was taking by California Cousin Cary who could always best me at bubble blowing, jump-roping, roller-skating,( the antique kind with four wheels and a skate key), jacks and now photography... aren't they cute?

anyway, California Girl goes on to say "It also doesn't seem like a connecting activity unless, of course, you direct someone to it. Kind of like, if you are interested in me, read my blog." well yeah. That is the idea. But I guess when you are starting out and if you aren't a big muckety muck like Christopher Lydon or Dave Winer you have a small (teeny in my case) group of devoted (:-D in my case) readers and commentators. Hoping all the while to engender a conversation or dissent or even, at the highest levels, discourse about whatever strikes your fancy! The interactive function that is built into the software like Manila or Movable Type or Blogger do the work of setting it up for you so that you can ping people and alert them to your posts, they can post or comment, your posts are organized and archived automatically and so much more.

My excitement is mounting as the conference this weekend at Harvard, BloggerCon takes shape. I am afraid I am way out of my league here, but am particularly excited to see how others are using blogs in education and what we can implement at Simmons.

Hey California Girl! Do you know Dan Gilmor, from the San Jose Mercury News? He is presenting at the conference and has an eJournal. But even these professional bloggers have their detractors. From acomment on his blog by Jim Hill,

"Dan, I know you think we're in the middle of a sea change in the way the very fundament turns and perhaps we are -- but you're getting very close to turning the phrase "gets it" and its permutations into synonyms for "thinks like I do". Might I suggest retiring it, or at least giving it some bench time?

Time will tell whether the feverish linking to one another that the Valley's online scribes engage in turns out to be anything other than a self-congratulatory CB radio of the new millennium, doomed to fail when the audience realizes that reading the thoughts of a mutual admiration society isn't all that exciting after all. I suspect that it will if you keep pointing to each other while saying "Here's another one who gets it."

food for thought.
or for blogging.
speaking of...time for breakfast.

and oh, the score now,
tooth: 1 Zithromax: 1.
The pain is gone. Hallelujah.