Blogsboro Notes

ConvergeSouth was a success. Greensboro was beautiful and the people were terrific.

Personalities from the online community meet face-to-face and the effect is like a real-life browse through del.icio.us tags or blog-search results, only much richer. There is so much thoughtful sharing. Online community might not be able to lend you a cup of sugar or watch the kids. But that's not blogging and online community's core--they exist as phenomenon of communication.

I attended a talk led by Duncan Black(Atrios), heard Jimmy Wales talk about collaboration and Wikipedia, and Dave Winer led a discussion about the future of/and blogging tools.

Black's "Policing the Media" was very well attended. It was surprising, but he wasn't the lefty firebrand I'd anticipated--just a smart, thoughtful guy w/ rare insight into new media's impact and role in the news cycle. There's the mainstream news cycle that streams from the NYTimes/print journalism to cable news (loops), to radio talk shows(echo chambers)--blogs exist within and on the fringes of the cycle. Black argued for proportional representation in news coverage, not the familiar "objectivity" practiced by two-sided coverage of virtually every issue.

Jimmy Wales' session was less discussion and more talk/lecture. He briefed from powerpoint slides to present a thorough description of the community that makes Wikipedia possible. Apparently the binding ethos of the Wikipedia community is "Wikipedia shouldn't suck". I was amazed to learn that they only have two employees. Wales says he isn't paid by Wikipedia. The LATimes "Wikitorial" project bombed for several reasons, primarily, Wales feels, because they introduced an editorial about the War in Iraq as their inaugural wiki-piece. A wiki can't be launched; first build a community.

Dave Winer led us through a talk about blogging tools. The consensus is that they should be as simple and intuitive as possible, a position which few would argue with. >>I did think the conversation was somewhat sidetracked by one person, a very recent blogger (opened her blogger acount only the night prior), who had essentialy decided that blogging was already too difficult. I guess that's the way an unconference format works; but I could sense many in the audience wanted to get to the bleeding edge of blogging tools rather than give free advice to recent blogspots.

And this drifted into a brief tangent about how women learn differently from men; whatever--someone said she would like a video tutorial. Someone else said men have an unfair advantage--something like men aren't as busy as women who work and raise kids, and therefore (unfairly) have the free time to devote to blogging. >>It's amazing how some people can get away w/ generalizations like that, but anyway. . .I'm not disputing the challenges facing would-be female bloggers, but I do think she underestimates the ease with which most people can "get it" by spending a weekend setting up a blogspot account and practicing a few weekends more. I'd argue that's how millions of bloggers got their start. Oh, and I don't watch TV; could they handle that? Lose the tube and learn to blog. Reduce consumption of one media outlet, develop facilities w/ other, interactive formats like blogging.

Had dinner afterwards w/ Dave Winer, (the real) Paul Jones, and 9 other really good folk.

I hope there's a ConvergeSouth '06 already in the works. Kudos to Ed Cone, NC A&T, and other local new media pioneers who contributed to this outstanding weekend.