I swear I’m going to write soon about how fabulous BlogHer was! I haven’t caught up with real life yet. Here I am all dressed up with my roommates Shauna and SJ! ( Not Sarcastic Journalist, the other SJ. )
I spent most of BlogHer looking stuff up on the net, being sort of boysick (remarked up on by SJ), and yearning fruitlessly after various cute flirty bloggers who would go ONLY SO FAR. Those mommybloggers who drink a little and then start kissing me! Arrrrrgh!
The panels I went to and the ones I was on were good. I went mostly to very fuzzy idea/conversation/community panels, but the one I enjoyed the most was probably Gina Trapani and Barb Dybwad‘s demo of blogging workflow tools. It had me totally drooling because I do blog in many different places — and I thought about starting a blogging workflow blog a while back with Violet Blue but then abandoned the project when I got two “real jobs”. Plus I have an attention span for new projects of about 2 days and then if I am not really going to do it I don’t; if I’m going to then I spend years on it. The plan was to interview people and videoblog or screencast their blogging workflows. A lot of people reacted to this idea by saying “But doesn’t everyone… JUST BLOG?” No! No they don’t! They all use different tools and have different ideas about how it’s best to do it.
Anyway, the tools that Barb and Gina presented are listed out over here on a very handy wiki! Take a look, and don’t be afraid to download this stuff and experiment with it. I can recommend ecto, especially for working offline, keeping drafts, keeping copies of your old posts, and making it easy to post to multiple blogs on different platforms.
Then! The parties! I think that mommybloggers really add to things by being super party animals. They are busting out! They’ve got 4 kids (well, I don’t) and they’re out on the town on their own in a swanky hotel for the first time in forever! They’re witty, tipsy, slightly wild, they’ve all had pedicures, and they’re super geeks! They have bad attitudes! They are loudmouthed!
Especially my roommates!
The unconference on Sunday was a perfect wrap-up for the conference. I think about a hundred people were there in the morning and early afternoon. For most of it, I talked with small groups in the corner about wiki software and using wikis. We edited the BlogHer entry on Wikipedia a bit (and I invite you to do it too! Add something, create a profile, log in). It was unstructured, or loosely structured, with a lot of space for reflection and deep conversation in small groups. So, that was just perfect.
If you want to get a taste of that sort of thing come to some of the events I’m organizing this month! I’m mixing up my mommyblog and my real job here… forgive me… but I thought you might want to know. Next week is Wiki Wednesday at Citizen Space in San Francisco. And August 18-19 is BarCampBlock in Palo Alto! Maybe the Silicon Valley Moms Blog folks will come — I need to write and invite them! We could have a BlogHer meetup in the midst of BarCamp – that would rock. Take a look at the BarCamp page and write me if you want more details.
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