Bloggers Conference Redux

Dec 23, 2004

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SUPERUPDATE: Planning for the conference is now taking place at the Triangle Bloggers Conference wiki.
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Ed Cone and Dave Hoggard put together a great event, the Piedmont Bloggers Conference, a couple of months ago in Greensboro, and that city’s gone gangbusters about blogging. The conference was a good model—two morning sessions, open dialogue, some show-and-tell, loosely moderated. Theme was politics and government. [Edits: added Hoggard and link to PBC.]

Let’s do a similar blogging conference in Chapel Hill in late Jan or early Feb. Our theme would be community – we’ve got the academic expert (Paul Jones teaches an excellent seminar about online communities), the community doings success story (orangepolitics.org), the family portal (Zuiker Chronicles Online), the baby-blog-as-community (The Trixie Update), and others, I’m sure. Ed and the Greensboro mob would feature well, and Mathew Gross could talk about his Dean Campaign experiences and the new CivicSpace Labs.

What would the two sessions be? One on writing for community, one on listening to community, perhaps?

We could do this at the Journalism School on a Saturday morning. All bloggers in the state (and region) are welcome. Perhaps Paul can arrange for webcasting on ibiblio.

Who’s in, and what are your ideas?

UPDATE: Let’s do this soon, and keep in mind that there’s a proposal for a blogging conference in Myrtle Beach sometime in the Spring.

UPDATE2: Paul’s in. Suggests Feb 12th.

UPDATE3: Here’s an idea for a topic of conversation, via Andrew Sullivan: “a stigma against revealing others’ personal information may be the only way to reclaim an expectation of privacy,” or, blogging and the person.

UPDATE4: Considering these two sessions for the conference: Building a community around your blog, and Using blogs to build community. Also, look for a wiki in the next day or two, place to expand the conference planning and let others contribute.

Anton Zuiker ☄