Last night’s BlogOn panel clearly was only to whet the appetite of the crowd, so I’m looking forward to today. While I and other other panelists did need to prepare, beyond bringing our brains and tongues (and hopefully connecting the two), the panel didn’t feel much different from other public discussions. We were really only getting started, and lots of the audience wanted to get involved… but I think Chris and the organizers had a schedule to try and keep, and energy to pour into today.
One unfortunate part of the discussion was the usual broad brush strokes. Various people, most notably Jason McCabe Calacanis of WeblogsInc, tried to pretend that “bloggers” can be grouped together as a class of information or people. That’s exactly what bloggers are not. The whole point is individual voices getting a platform on which to stand, and then individual talents take over from there. Some bloggers are interesting, some are … less so. Some bloggers focus on a niche, others wander broadly across whatever grabs their fancy. The makeup of the panel encouraged a bit of rivalry, deliberately I’m sure, between “big media” and “bloggers” — but it’s not in opposition, and the lines are crossed every which way. And the positions change pretty radically pretty quickly.
As usual, meeting the people whose blogs you’ve read is always interesting, and I wish the attendee list we were all given had people’s blogs. I’m more appreciative of those blogs that have a picture of the blogger on them now… but no promises about adding my own any time soon.
Here are a few posts I found about last night, via Feedster:
- Heath Row, conference blogging for Fast Company. Seems like a pretty accurate transcript to me.
- Chris Jefferies noted the comments on brand.