Monday marked my second BlogHer live event and did not disappoint. Why does BlogHer hold such anticipation and appeal?
- Making offline connections with online friends. Getting to see and meet Lindsay (a.k.a. Rock and Roll Mama) was a highlight. I originally found her by searching for other Moms who had written about the WOM-worthy Rody toy, and have been enjoying her blog since. Getting to make that connection real alone was worth the price of admission. It was also a great pleasure to see the BlogHer’s political director Queen of Spain and DC’s own PunditMom discussing their roles covering the election. And always a pleasure to see @jillfoster and put a real life person to the wit at Nurse Ratched’s Place .
- Being turned on to new blogs & Tweeters: @digitalsista, @dcconcierge (very helpful website by the way), @thewino, @cecilyk, @blogdiva, @resourcefulmom, @thegreenparent are all well worth a read and follow! Check out @blogherdc for a more extensive list.
- Meaty conversations. In this case, the angst revolving around blogging’s relationship to mainstream media permeated multiple panels. I don’t know that there is a shared vision right now for what that relationship “should be”. At some moments there seemed to be pent up desire for respect and integration with the mainstream media (MSM). At other times, the annoyance at being “used” by the MSM was palpable. I have started following @ricksanchezcnn after the event! I think this is a complex, rich topic that we’ll see BlogHer digging into long term. Another (un)controversy surrounded the term “mommyblogger”. Some embrace the term. Mommies like me who blog about business sometimes bristle at the term, but the conviction with which I heard “My name is X and I’m a mommyblogger!” has made me reconsider my feelings about the term.
And, because of the timing and location, BlogHerDC offered some lively discussions about politics and the coming election. There is great consciousness about how candidates and the MSM are actively trying to use bloggers – unfettered by the need to feign journalistic balance – as pot stirrers. Lesley Stahl, of CBS fame and her internet venture Women on the Web talked about the old days of presidents rearranging their schedules around HER deadlines because they knew the nightly news was a communications tool. Now, she posits, they are doing the same with the Internet, but the path to making it happen is less clear. I would love to sit in on one of the “blogger phone calls” being held regularly by both candidates.
Also on the political front was BlogHer’s careful treatment of politics on their site. As @LisaStone said, BlogHer is omnipartisan, but their editors aren’t. Opinions from PUMA (former Hillary supporters who formed Party Unity My A**) have been welcomed on the site. Even though @QueenofSpain is a vocal Obama mama (and Michelle Obama blogs on BlogHer), the need to foster a place that encourages free speech and multiple views is critical for the success of their political discourse. Check out all the BlogHer Election coverage here.
Thanks to all who passed the word along. The situation has come to a very happy closure and she is now home.
Like many other voices in the social media echochamber, I am part of a panel that us up for consideration to be included in the 2009 edition of SXSW Interactive. The Viral Garden’s Mack Collier has assembled some humbling company for a panel that he calls:
Co-Created Marketing: Embracing Your Customer Evangelists Online
Helping brands, associations, social change initiatives, and any other group of people with a purpose identify and embrace their evangelists is something about which I’ve learned a lot – through both successes and mistakes – and I would love the chance to share some of that live in person.
I am not sure what I could say about fellow panelists LinkedIn Chief Blogger Mario Sundar and Church of the Customer / Society for Word of Mouth’s high priestess Jackie Huba that Mack did not say better here, so I will simply leave you with the info on the panel and a request for your vote. The Panel Picker will close August 29!
1. Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register
2. Fill out the form and submit it
3. Check your email and follow the verify link
4. Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/2006
5. Give the idea 5 stars.
Hope to see you there.
I was lucky enough to talk to Tanya Lewis from PR Week a few weeks ago and to have my headshot and a few paragraphs appear in this week’s PR Week. The article profiles 4 “creatives” promoting greater understanding of social media in PR. Because of the Aug 4 timing, I was very excited to do this as I could discuss the work my team will be doing covering real long-tail athlete stories on the ground in Beijing over at http://summergames.lenovo.com and at www.twitter.com/lenovo2008.
The online article is behind a subscriber-only firewall and the print article is on Page 13 so, being new to PR, I pretty much assumed this would be the veritable tree falling in the forest. Not so. Here’s what I learned this week:
- Print is alive and well in certain sectors – evidently, I have a lot of colleagues and friends who comb every page of PR Week.
- News of print coverage travels fast online through social media. Change blogger and former colleague Qui Diaz was quick to tweet her congratulations and I have received emails from a range of folks I hadn’t heard from in a while.
- But most interesting? Everyone who wants to be perceived as creative has their headshot done in front of a brick wall. ALL 4 individuals from the article had done this. I was lucky that mine looked slightly different as it was taken in front of a “Beware of the Dog” mural in an alley in Greenville (thank you Brains on Fire). Evidently, I’m going to have to think of something really nutty – swinging from a trapeze? – to set me apart from the rest of the “creative” PR set. Any suggestions?
Today’s Sunday Washington Post features a comparison of the “word clouds” created by John McCain and Barack Obama’s respective blogs. The immediate point is that Obama is the biggest topic for both blogs, but that’s not why I care. 
We know that reporters use blogs for story ideas and leads on quotes, but seeing something as run of the mill in Web 2.0 as a tag cloud appearing in the Sunday print edition is a very visible example of convergence. Now if only I could somehow use the print terms to sort reading the rest of the zillion pages in the Sunday edition, we’d really be in e-business.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that these lovely clouds are the creation of Wordle.
