Sitting in the lobby bar & sandwich shop of the Westin St. Francis -- Caruso's.
It's sort of sad and I am no longer mistaken for a woman of negotiable virtue when sitting by myself in hotel lobbies. High priced of course!
Why the heck it is called Caruso's is beyond me. It serves generic sandwiches and basic drinks at prices that seem to harken back to other times of devalued dollars being carted around in wheelbarrows. Maybe I've become jaded. Moi? Yes, simply little Amish descendant farm girl me? The last trip I made was to San Diego and I stayed at ------- a very sheeshee trendy chic place that was a bit higher on the luxurious scale than here -- and this is a rather nice place. As my old friends at Brazen Hussies would say.... you can bet your Lancome I would come back.
Thanks to my attendance at BlogHer '08 I've decided I will blog a bit more personally here than I have recently been doing on my other blogs. After all my best writing shows off my absolutely fabulous personality. Truly. All allusions intended.
I'm so please to have been here at BlogHer again -- the balance between social blogging and professional blogging is so fuzzily amorphous as to be non-existant at this event.... and this is good. Women writers. Nothing more, nothing less.
Children and parents were everywhere this year -- babies and elders and everyone in between. Mothers brought their babies, Daughters brought mothers.
These women behind BlogHer are amazing. They've grown this thing smoothly and quite rapidly. Attendees bitch about all sorts of inconsequential things, even me--can you imagine that? I met all sorts of wonderful women and if I were pitching for the home team I'd have been absolutely agog. Every conceivable type of female was represented here. Really. The Mommy Bloggers were out in full force. All this rather misleading moniker means is that you are a blogger with a child. Hellfire and damnation, I could be a Mommy Blogger -- I still have a child at home -- although my absolutely stunningly premature silver hair might mislead at first. The majority of adult women are mothers.....so just what is a Mommy Blogger anyway? If anyone has a clear understanding of the nomenclature, please do fill me in!
I primarily wore two hats at this conference (and both looked smashing, thanks for asking, almost as smashing as that lamp I barely bumped that has the audacity to topple and disintegrate on Macy's floor at a stage party. (Yeah, let's have a couple thousand women crowd into purse, shoe, lingerie and furniture sections of a store and serve them copious amounts of alcohol.... well like duh, of course stuff is gonna get smashed.) Do remind me to talk about the swank KY counter there later. Ut oh, I've digressed. The hats were political blogger and virtual world blogger.
Let me get my bitching out of the way first, then I will go on to all the wonderful stuff. Years and years ago before I dumped the study of psychology because of an absolutely narrow minded reductionist class called mental measurement. Anyway it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that
The political blogging outranked the virtual world stuff, although I did speak on a panel in a virtual world about the interface of Second Life and Blogging. I made it to all but the first panel session on politics, because my "in-world" session co-occurred with it. I all the political panels occurred under the rubric of "what we believe."
I believe there are political bloggers that are not journalists and who do not aspire to be journalists. If I'd have wanted to be a journalist I've have taken a college up on one of the journalism scholarships that were offered to me. I didn't then and don't now want to be a journalist. I don't believe in impartiality. We all have perspectives, we all frame data so as to make it become information. To pretend impartiality is deceptive, at least it is IMHO. Everything comes through a viewpoint. Often information has been filtered through innumerable viewpoints before it gets to any given individual. I personally would like to have the focus in the political blogging section be a little less highbrow. I think this is why I didn't go out to dinner any night of the conference. The sessions just didn't promote getting to know other regular old women with political opinions. The political small group session was with a Congresswoman and the online director of the RNC.
Maybe we should sign up for birds of a feather a bit before the conference and we can read the bios of the people who will be in the session so we don't take all of our time introducing ourselves. I didn't really get to know any of the political bloggers. sniffle sob Really I would have liked to get to know more women like me -- I don't think I got in a single political discussion with another political blogger. No, I didn't get in any arguments either. Perhaps there should be smaller mixers in the evenings for different types of bloggers? Or different color badges?
In the major blogging keynote addresses it was frustrating to have industry folks asking nearly all of the questions from the audience and "regular" bloggers not having a voice. I am not sure how to differentiate the two groups without creating a false dichotomy.
I'd still like to have a track system that is slightly different in that subject is less emphasized and process a bit more important. Maybe: Social, Technical, Passions, On the Horizon... I'll keep thinking about it.
Before I stop ragging about things that we less than perfect....I have to mention the stale water crackers at Macy's. How gauche! The repackaging of lunch's asian chicken salad into to go chinese take home boxes was also a bit tacky. Didn't get the emphasis on North Beach Diet either... oh well. One doesn't become an intellectual heavyweight (ahem) by worrying about such things. Physical heavyweight... welll... maybe.
And even though this may blow my image as a tough cookie, I have to mention the amazing number of absolutely fantastic things about the conference.
Knowledgeable speakers.
Proper room size for the folks interested in the topic most part.
Good moderators.
Smooth check in.
Attention to recycling, minimizing waste, and focus on not creating it in the first place.
The food, alcohol and fun were flowing at the sponsored events. (Too loud though.)
Birds of a feather.... room of her own at least at the ones I attended were well populated which means topics were well chosen.
I was extremely moved by the group/series of individuals keynote speakers. This is a keeper.
Relatively little drama. :)
Great venue as hotel was the conference center -- although a bit confusing in layout.
Session length and breaks worked well.
Enjoyed the yoga!
Vendors were good.
The unconference/ Open Space was once again the place where serendipity brought extremely valuable information my way. Wouldn't miss it.
Great job BlogHer divas and devotees!
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