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Triangle Bloggercon grows

The word is out: Dave Winer mentioned the conference on his popular Scripting News, our local cable company posted news about the conference on its new local bloggers directory, and Cory Doctorow has even posted to Boing Boing.

We’re up to 50 61 expected participants for the Triangle Bloggers Conference, which means I’ve got to start looking for a backup location knowing we’ll be growing (the j-school’s conference room holds about 60). Looks like we’ve got at least one New Yorker coming, and my buddy John Ettorre will be driving down from Cleveland. (Hope Jack can join him.) Oh, and Dan Gillmor will be here, too.

UPDATE: Paul has arranged for Murphey Hall 116. I’ll post new directions to the conference wiki. Shortcut is mistersugar.com/triblogs.html.

The idea for a bloggercon in Chapel Hill was to give us North Carolina bloggers a physical forum to discuss some of the exciting issues, trends and activities happening on and between our blogs – blogs and journalism, and blogs and politics in Greensboro (read Ed Cone), online communities (Paul Jones teaches an excellent seminar each fall at the UNC-CH j-school), blogs and local governance (Orange Politics), podcasting (Audio Activisim among others), and numerous attempts to aggregate the very active bloggers in our state (see the wiki page for the conference intersession).

I just know that we’re set to have a great dialogue, and the contributions of the out-of-state blogges will be welcome.

As our conference grows, though, I hope the bloggers in South Carolina don’t feel we’re stealing their show. There was talk last fall about a bloggercon in Myrtle Beach. I hope that still goes off, because I think that an ongoing series of regional bloggercons could really help the blogger community – blogosphere, if you will – keep a human face to our cyberspace activities. (And, no, I’m not fishing for a date. I’m happily married to my college sweetheart, who just turned to me and said, “I don’t understand the world of blogging that you inhabit, but those phrases you come up with – wiki, blog, boingboing, bloggercon – are funny.” The terminology, she said, sounds like words from our three-year-old.)

So how about it? After the triangle, a bloggercon in Myrtle Beach. Then one in Tennessee (that’s you, Glenn), and one in St. Paul, and one in Tempe. Then we can all be like Dave and be on one roadtrip after another. (Dave, hope you can join us.)

lunch time on 01/13/05 in "Blogging" | permalink | Send to a friend
  1. Myrtle Beach sounds just fine. ;-}

    What are you doing to make sure the conference stays locally-focused and doesn’t get overwhelmed by the magnitude of Dan Gillmor?

    I wouldn’t be surprised if we get another 50 more people signing up now who mostly want to talk to, talk about, or hear from him. I know I’m already distracted by and looking forward to meeting him. — Ruby Sinreich    Jan 11, 12:08 PM    #
  2. Ruby – good question. Moderators will be crucial to our discussions, especially since we’ll have a large group and lots of voices that want in on the dialogue. I’ll set the stage in my welcome remarks – the discussions should retain the local flavor and flair, but if the trail meanders, no problem. The theme of the conference is community, and community can span distances small and great. I hope you’ll have a lot to share about local community through local blogs – and I hope Dan and all other visitors listen to you. I contend that even the least well known among us can offer insight as to how to build community. — Anton Zuiker    Jan 11, 02:00 PM    #

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