Year: 2002

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Vancouver, B.C. Canada 2003

con-fer-ence (knfr-ns, -frns)
n.

A meeting for consultation or discussion.
An exchange of views.

I hesitated to use the word ‘conference’ because of its association with the costly, corporate gatherings that have become so common. But conference does mean, among other things, “a meeting for discussion…an exchange of views”, and I can’t think of anything else what describes what I’d like to see happen within the weblogging community.

Is it possible to bring people from around the world to one place, to break bread together, to lift a cup (filled with water or wine) in salute ? Is it possible to gather people from around the world in one place, to meet, to talk, to exchange ideas? To gather together views as diverse as the people themselves?

And to do so without having to have a whole lot of money in advance?

The last is the rub, isn’t it?

The city is Vancouver, B.C in Canada. The time is sometime in 2003. The purpose is to bring together weblogging folks — technologists, philosophers, business people, artists, and writers (which includes all of us) — together in one spot. To meet, to socialize, to exchange ideas and views and knowledge; in essence, to see how far we can take this medium.

And to do so wtihout having to have a whole lot of money in advance.

I know that the Blog-Con organizers were able to do have their ‘convergence’ primarily by focusing their get-togethers within attendance-based social venues, such as restaurants. Without having to rent conference space, the preliminary expenses could be kept down, and the costs would then be absorbed by each person paying their own way.

However, restaurants and hotels rooms only work to a point. You need rooms for ‘working sessions’ for want of a better term. For instance, getting weblogging techies together with consumers to strategize technology advances in the next year or two. To have several ‘birds-of-a-feather’ sessions centered around various topics in individual rooms, in addition to panel discussions amidst an audience that is encouraged to participate.

I’m not talking formal speech, with row after row of tables and chairs, and crews with microphones and lights and canned music. But I am talking about rooms with chairs and privacy and the ability for people to speak out without the clash of dishes and the worry of disturbing other diners. Add to this is the need for some technology to enable communication, both within the sessions, and without — to share the events with those who cannot attend

And sure, we’ll also have time to meet friends never met; to have dinner in small groups and large; to walk about, to see the city, to take a boat ride, and to view the Orcas, because weblogging is more than just ‘computers hooked up via the internet’.

This is all doable, but is it doable without organizational ownership? Can we pull this off by ourselves, using our own ingenuity, and manage to keep the costs down so that those who want to attend can afford to attend?

As a start for ideas:

Could we get enough people interested in attending to fill a conference hotel that will then give us the conference rooms gratis? Are there colleges in the area that would be willing to let us use rooms? How about restaurants — do they have meeting rooms that we can get for the cost of the meals?

For those of us who are driving, are we willing to share our cars for the ride? I’m coming from St. Louis, and I have room for three others in my car.

Dave Winer mentioned ideas for a conference, and he used the term adhocracy in reference to it. We got all excited and managed to push the idea up the Daypop flag pole. Now that we’re all calmer, what do we need to do to make this work, without depending on the traditional conference machine?

Update I don’t want to start up a counter-conference conflict. Dave mentioned in the comments that there people working this already, possibly being held at a university.

I’ll focus on the book instead, with appreciations in advance to those who are working this quietly behind the scenes. However, I do have a suggestion: put the thoughts, efforts, and planning online in a weblog; get others involved.

 

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

No matter what our culture or country, each of us has our own favorite comfort foods. These are the foods we eat when we’re not feeling well, or when we’re feeling lonely or sad.

My own favorite comfort foods are quite prosaic: macaroni and cheese, chicken stew with dumplings, chicken pot pie, and egg custard or Crème Brûlée. When all is well with the world there are other foods I love, but it’s these foods that I return to, again and again, when I’m out of sorts.

I was enjoying AKMA’s posting about Mr. Magoo, and the Christmas Carol, and the cartoon adaption of Cyrano, when I thought to myself that I needed to mark this post somehow so I can find it again easily in the future. Then when I needed a little cheering I could go to posts like this one and others like it, to read them again and feel connected to the author and comforted by the writing.

To prevent the loss of such posts, I’ve started recording my favorites in an RDF/RSS file, here, accessed through a page, which I’ll link to my weblog. I’ll be adding to it from time and time as new ones are written, and as I’m able to rediscover ones lost to the past.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Since this is weblogging and we do everything bass-ackwards, I thought I would put the postscripts at the beginning of the posting instead of the end:

Speaking of exclusivity: I’m up for a weblogging get together in Vancouver. We don’t need to formalize this, to tack on ‘conference’, or find a sponsor. We just need to agree to get together and pick a date and time. So, who’s up for a get together in Vancouver, BC in 2003?

Final, final note: I’m going to sic Zoe, the trained attack kitty, on anyone who types that obscenity Barney’s “I love you” song in my comments. I mean it, I’m gonna have to hurt ya.

Now, on with the show:

In the comments attached to my Elitist only need apply some good points were raised. In particular, Dan Lyke brings up the question about elitism and blogrolls. This coincided with some private correspondence that addressed this same issue. Repeating some of that here:

Blogroll associations are no more elitist than friendships or love. I don’t choose my friends because I think they’re superior to the world at large, or more beautiful, erudite, and definitely not because they’re richer. And I don’t link to anyone based on status, but for some indefinable attraction. I choose them and/or they choose me because there’s something that clicks, that attracts, that connects.

In weblogging, putting a person into a blogroll is our way of saying that we read the person’s weblogs for the pleasure of the words, a pleasure that re-occurs daily. We cross-post and comment in a give and take that comes with any friendship regardless of the medium in which it is spawned — a virtual evening out at the pub if you will. And since this is weblogging, anyone can pull up a chair and join in the conversation.

There are webloggers who post mostly about technology, such as Sam Ruby, Phil Ringnalda. Joe Gregorio, Mark Pilgrim, and Dare Obasanjo, who read my weblog; yet I don’t post all that frequently on technology. In fact, my choice of subjects for this weblog is quite eclectic. Sometimes incendiary. So why do Sam and Phil and Joe and Mark and Dare read me? Not because I’m one of the technical elite or because I’m rich or famous; not because they think I’m beautiful or brilliant. (Well, I wouldn’t mind if they thought that.) And we know that it isn’t because they always agree with me.

We just connect. This isn’t elitism — this is the magic that occurs through this ‘social software’ we call weblogging. This ‘connection’ is repeated with every person who comes to my weblog on a frequent basis, and with every weblog I visit. It crosses political and social and religious membership, and transcends boundaries of state and country.

Take a look at my blogroll. One of my favorite webloggers is a folk singer from South Caroline, Shannon at Pet Rock Star. Is she a techie wiz? Is she rich? No. Though she is talented and I love her music, it was her wicked sense of humor, her honor, and her goodness that attracted me to her. I adore her. But she’s not ‘elite’, not as we know the word ‘elite’. And my putting her on my blogroll doesn’t imply ‘elitism’ — just that I like to read her weblog frequently. I connect with her.

I, an openly non-religious person, converse with and link to AKMA, a minister and professor at a divinity school. Now AKMA could be considered elite in some circles, but not in all circles. Definitely not in the techie realm I spend most of my time. It wasn’t his academic standing that attracted me to him on a regular basis — it was his humanity as demonstrated by the silliness about the Dishmatique cross-posting (Google on Dishmatique, you’ll see what I mean). That silliness was so charming, especially when interspersed with sophisticated and extremely well-written postings on postmodernism and theology.

That’s not elitism; that’s one of the purest forms of connectivity this world has ever seen.

I could go on, but the point is that we don’t link to people because they’re ‘elite’; we link because we like to read them on a regular enough basis to keep their links handy. Connection.

At this point, you might be saying, “But doesn’t that list form an exclusiveness? Aren’t these people made elite because you’ve linked to them, isolated them from other webloggers?” My answer to these questions is, No.

My blogrolling another weblogger doesn’t mean a reader is restricted to only reading that person; or, conversely, is restricted _from_ reading that person. Existence in a weblog blogroll doesn’t imply exclusivity. Existence in a weblog blogroll doesn’t even imply excellence, though I want to hasten to assure all of those people in my blogroll that I personally think they’re wonderful.

I wrote once a while back about how links can become a weapon; not linking to a specific post can shut people out of a conversation. I still believe this: when a conversation among webloggers occurs around a specific topic, deliberately not linking to another person is shutting that person out of the conversation. That, to me, is elitism. That’s also why I support technologies such as Trackback and comments — to enable others to include themselves in the conversation whether I choose to link to them, or not.

Blogrolling a person, or not, does not shut them out of conversations.

Most of the weblogs on my blogroll are there because people have pulled up a chair and joined conversations that have occurred at this weblog. That’s how I’ve met them. That’s how we’ve met them. I didn’t invite them, they invited themselves. We connected.

Half of the weblogs I visit relatively regularly aren’t even on my blogroll, primarily because I haven’t updated it or because I can easily type the blog URL without needing the link; or because I visit them when I see them in weblogs.com or blo.gs. For instance, you don’t see Scripting News on there and I visit it relatively frequently. Does my not having them in my blogroll make them less elite? No, just means I haven’t updated my blogroll in a while. Makes me lazy, not elitist.

(Between us, don’t think Dave’s position in the blogging food chain pages is suffering because his weblog is not on my roll. )

There is a world of difference between weblog blogrolls and conferences that only encourage or allow ‘the elite’ to speak or question. The former is nothing more than a convenience; the latter is nothing less than a closed door.

As for any of us discovering new weblogs, drop a comment and introduce yourself. The door’s open. Everyone’s welcome.