BlogNashville Afterthoughts

OK LAST POST ON THIS…

I decided that I’ll probably never carry a laptop into a session on blogging ever again. I think a lot of the people who brought laptops in, were either not listening to the topics, half-listening or blogging around the whole time and I caught myself doing all of that. I went to the sessions and usually got something out of it. In the case of Henry’s money session, I came to the realization that when you have a room full of people who are bloggers, basically people who want their opinion out there, you really can’t get a word in edgewise. You had people in there who said that they’d never have an ad or you had some guy from Amnesty Int…..if you don’t want to post ads, then why are you in a money session?

I’m also wondering why none of the “big” blogging companies didn’t attend? SixApart, WordPress, and Blogger, these are the three main blogging application companies as of now. Why didn’t anyone send at least a low-level representative who could get in the community? Anil Dash, you’re trying to get people to join a professional network and you had a captive audience, well on the dinners and breaks, to face these people and get them to your product. The WordPress guys…coming off of your recent “scandal” why weren’t you guys represented? Blogger, come on! You’re the largest, why not send someone?
Honestly, I’m fired up now and it just gave fuel to the thoughts in my head.
Ok. The Dave Winer session…. it was like watching a flamewar in real time and I was on the front row. Now Dave does get offended easily, the other dudes weren’t helping. Three of the 5 arguments were in dealing with fellow assholes. Don’t know if the video is online yet, but you gotta see it.
Who I Met
Austin Chase Founder & Pres. of Blogmedia (Retired)

http://www.blogworks.com/

(Austin, I was trying to purchase musicblog.com for years, did the dude finally take the cash?)
M. Roboto * Life of the party.
Henry Copeland Very knowledgeable and glad to help out us bloggers, plus nice to meet him in person.
Bill Colrus – The Chattanooga Pulse* fellow chattanoogan, never met before
Keith Troup Very good listener, fellow WordPress Geek and a record producer.
B.L. Ochman Marketing/Ad/Pr Geek, and that’s in a nice way.
Dana Blankenhorn * might be remembered at the guy who suggested that Ev leave Google…six months after the fact. Was cool and very knowledgeable during Dinner.
Lynnette Walczak
Jim Walczak** the main few people I got to tag along with here Jim and Lynette as well as Joe Lance
Joe Lance * fellow chattanoogan, never met before
Sean Hackbarth * Been doing this as long as I have, we’re a rare breed, 5 years is rare.
candace corrigan from – The Nashville Nobody Knows and her hubby Nick very cool person, very smart great to talk with.
Crap, I left out Dave of Baseball Musings
More Links
BlogNashville Ends
BlogNashville: A Respective Disagreement Session with (by) Dave Winer
Graffiti I found at a watering hole a few of us went to (Dave included), after the end of the conference and before the dinners.
Yes, she is a cutie, the photos don’t do her justice
And of course the list

This entry was posted by 2000-2005 on Sunday, May 8th, 2005 at 5:05 pm. It is filed under BlogNashville. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

8 Responses to “BlogNashville Afterthoughts”

  1. Mike
    Here is a link to part of the brohaha from the political teen.
    http://thepoliticalteen.net/2005/05/08/1360/
    You are right about bringing a laptop in to the site. It wore me out trying to live blog the session. I tried to keep my opinions out of the posts. It is very hard to do so. The time constraints and trying to get attributions correct with over 100 people in the session was very difficult.
    But it was very educational for me. and hopefully it can act as a tool for those who attended the session.
    Tom

  2. It was good meeting you. What “watering hole” did you guys end up at on Saturday?

  3. I was in a session about making money because I was hoping to (and did) hear some interesting ideas about making money blogging. I think ads are one approach, and there are probably lots of others, if we think innovatively. But lets not say that ads are the only route.

  4. It was across the street from the Thai place and ’bout two down on the left from the Java place.

  5. After BlogNashville
    Looking for what people have to say about BlogNashville? From live-blogging the sessions, to commenting on the discussions, to pictures taken at and after the event, go to Technorati.com and put “BlogNashville” in the search box. I did it just…

  6. Hey Mike!
    Great meeting you and hanging out a bit at BlogNashville together.
    I just wanted to let you know that I’ve linked to two of your quotes here:
    http://thefuntimesguide.com/movabletype/archives/2005/05/blognashville.html
    I couldn’t agree more — on both points!

  7. Mike,
    As you are “wondering why none of the “big” blogging companies didn’t attend?” let me give you some background.
    The core portion of the event – the bloggercon-style sessions on Saturday – was originally conceived by Dave Winer as a “user’s conference”. Like past bloggercons, the entire event was consciously non-commercial. We did not bar anyone from coming but after BloggerCon III the message was pretty clear that bloggercons are not trade shows and using them to market products is unwelcome. Note that none of our sponsors were in the blogging business. That is not an accident. There are plenty of places companies can go to market their services but events like BlogNashville are meant to be for/about/with the bloggers.
    On a related note, it has come up at past events – and did this again this time – as to why we did not have Blogging 101 courses. For the same reason, the event is for bloggers. Anyone was welcome to come to BlogNashville but the presumption is that you are already blogging and coming to add your experience to the discussions. There are plenty of resources out there for people who want to learn to blog and, quite frankly, it is so simple to set up a basic blog that it seems a waste to take time away from the event to teach people something they can learn in 2 minutes at blogger.com.

  8. I really liked your comments here. I hope you’re going to update your site soon. , Fantast author