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October 07, 2005

Greensboro NC - Day One - Morning

Two minutes, she said. Ten minutes later, I realized that she must have thought that I was driving. But I walked the distance from Downtown to NCAT where the conference got started. I was hoping to make it in time to get some sausages and orange juice. As it turned out, I found a nice lady, Ms Rose who was driving over to the conference center from the office of University Relations that I just happened by.

So I got here. But there were no sausages.

I caught the ending part of the opening session, and it became even clearer to me that this conference is definitely of some benefit to the NCAT students who comprised about a good third of the audience.

Voices from Iraq
Two young ladies spoke about their experiences with communicating with American soldiers. There wasn't a great deal of surprises in their stories. They were stationed in Baghdad inside the Green Zone and were decidedly about blogging about the lives of the soldiers. By avoiding the politics of the siutation, they tried to humanize the situation. Me, I need some hardball politics to get me interested, but there were some interesting revelations.

My quersion was bout the character of reporting and the contrast between American journalists vs foreign journalists. They said that they never left the Green Zone, and quite frankly I couldn't see either of these two young women wanting to even if they could. But that there were a good number of foreign correspondants who were going to the badlands.

After the sessions, a guy from the local Fox affiliate gave me a 5 minute interview. He had recorded some of my keystrokes for the audio track, and then asked me a few questions. Being the guy from Los Angeles helped, not to mention my photgenics. So watch Channel 8 tonight. You might see me.

Community Building
I know that I like Dave Hoggard for a number of reasons, but I can't remember the reasons. It doesn't matter because he's here, I'm here and we're happy to be here together. Tonight he's got the BBQ going, so I'll be happy to be there too. His was the first presentation in the Community Building forum. Dave is one of those people for whom 'guileless' applies nicely. His honesty is refreshing, and that's why he's the man giving the party. It turns out that there were people from all around who threw a party for his family to raise funds to help meet some cancer bills. Talking about a family member's cancer is not the easiest way to make friends, but one whiff of Dave's enthusiasm shows that he deserves it.

I think I finally understand Carnivals. I never even bothered to check it out. But now, thanks to a guy named Bora, I understand. I'm going to have to figure out how to get a few going.

It turns out that Bora is doing some interesting work to hookup people in the sciences through his connection to Tangled Bank. So the trick about Carnivals is that a different blogger will host a linkfest and rotate on a regular basis. You submit your best blogpost and that works anthropologically. Hmm.

Quote of the day "Glenn Reynolds is standing in the middle of the merry-go-round with his hands up."

I got into it a little bit about our conversation with each other that the blogosphere is enabling, very much in line with what I said in Las Vegas. Fortunately, Dave Winer piped up with the monkey wrench of the day. Unfortunately it happened at the end of the session just when time was about up, and then the room spilled over into his corner instead of to the dais. Since I have a bit to say on the matter, I'll take it up in a separate post. His question - "What difference does it make?"

A cat named Doug recorded a touch of our conversation. Winer's idea that died at the 'Altamont of blogging conferences' was about a couple of respectful disagreements as a blog. Left vs Right with respect. I could do that, and I believe that's what's going on at Begging to Differ. So while I grant Dave is not being disingenuous, I'm not sure what a public display of civility is going to do. Will people care?

Posted by mbowen at October 7, 2005 09:44 AM

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Posted by: Christy at October 8, 2005 07:24 PM