A roomful of non-blogging bloggers?
Steve Safran September 9th, 2006
Only one criticism of the WKRN blogger meetup here in Nashville – it’s at the audience, not the sponsor. How is it that, in a room of 25 – 30 local bloggers, nobody is liveblogging this? Come on, gang. A local station is reaching out. It’s worth writing about.
13 Comments Add your own
1. Katherine Coble | September 9th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
I believe you will find that at least a half-dozen of us have blogged the event, albeit NOT live.
Unfortunately (as I have also pointed out at my place) one of the truths of this New Media Revolution is that some of us have guns and some of us have pitchforks.
While you are blessed with your gun–i.e. laptop–not every blogger is fortunate enough to own one. Some of us had to make due storming the gates with our lowly pitchforks. Er….desktop computers.
2. SistaSmiff | September 9th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
I was hoping Mr. Rosenblum, who was fabulous, was going to surprise us by presenting us all with our own laptops.
3. Safran | September 10th, 2006 at 5:43 am
I understand not everyone has laptops. I dare say some do. But we all have pens and paper. And I wonder how folks can blog an event they have attended without at they very least taking handwritten notes. Didn’t see that going on, either.
4. Sarcastro | September 10th, 2006 at 6:13 am
Good thing Homer carried a pen and paper with him when he went to watch the Trojan War…oh, wait.
Folks can blog an event they have attended “without at the very least taking handwritten notes” by using a little thing called episodic memory.
See, we don’t exist for the sake of our technological gizmos. They exist for our benefit. We can blog to our hearts content, after we have finished socializing with our online friends and foes. It is hard to appreciate a good wisecrack or anecdote, usually at someone else’s expense, when you are furiously pounding away on a laptop like a macaque on meth.
When the party is over, and if you FEEL like writing about it, you do so. Going to these meet-ups and wondering if you are going to get called out by someone who is a little “bloggier than thou”, isn’t the point of it all.
Unless, of course, you are shooting for the title of “Biggest Nerd”, then by all means, get out your pencil and paper and live-blog your little heart out.
5. Safran | September 10th, 2006 at 7:00 am
I like how quickly “macaque” has become part of our national dialogue.
6. thetehranchannel | September 10th, 2006 at 7:29 am
sounds like everyone had a GOOD TIME to me.
7. thedetroitchannel | September 10th, 2006 at 8:20 am
on a more serious note, can i say one thing about nashvilleistalking?
that
page
is
a
mile
long.
some designer needs to lend a suggestion on how to categorize things to obtain a very clean homepage and thereby “create” the backend pages necessary to carry the ads they seek.
the idea of a collective approach is great… not a surprise who is behind it.
8. thewashingtonchannel | September 10th, 2006 at 8:27 am
i was really hoping someone from nashville would have coined a domain name (in the vein of vita.mn) for safran’s one day trip there to cover it…
gonebutnotforgot.tn
9. Kay Brooks | September 10th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Well, there are a couple of reasons.
1. I don’t have a laptop. I was the one that saw you on the front row with yours and joked, over your head, with Mike Sechrist about each of us getting one free from WKRN and how it would have made a great door prize.
2. You didn’t see me and my pad, I suppose, because I was sitting directly behind you.
3. WKRN’s efforts and blogging are not the focus of my blog. Those readers won’t care about a blogging conference. My attendance was to benefit me, not them.
Now if you’d like to send me a machine to live blog the legislative education committees and BOE meetings–I’m willing to receive.
10. Safran | September 10th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Kay:
Thanks. I’m not singling any one blogger out. I was surprised that a room of 30 bloggers didn’t generate a liveblog. That’s it.
I’ve been to a lot of blogger conferences, and always found a few liveblogs that came out of them to be very fun and informative. It seems I’ve really pissed off the Nashville bloggers, and obviously that wasn’t close to my intent. I thought your wonderful audiences would benefit from learning in real time what was going on. That’s really all I was trying to get across.
Mostly, thanks for your positive response, I’ve been getting, well, hammered. And I admit to being a little baffled. It was not a bomb throwing. People who criticize the media should be open to criticism as well - as long as that criticism is sent with respect, which mine certainly is. God knows I get uppity here, but it’s usually when people lose that respect for this space. Not everyone responds to a critique as honestly and kindly (and with a smile) as you.
Steve
11. newscoma | September 10th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
I couldn’t make it but everything I’ve read sounds very interesting. I do have a laptop, but it’s getting pretty ragged. Don’t know about the “hammering” but if you come back, I’ll listen.
The real job took over.
Damn.
12. Katherine Coble | September 10th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
We’re not meaning to hammer you. If I seem defensive, it’s because the way I read the article led me to infer a couple of things.
1. The accompanying picture–taken prior to the start of the talks, I believe, makes us look like a bunch of inert and disinterested yokels. Thank God you can’t see me in the back. I think right about the time this picture was taken I was jawing with John H. about The Corner on HBO OnDemand.
2. Most of us were completely unaware that this meet-up was different from the others. This is the 3rd WKRN sponsored meetup, and about the sixth official one overall. Every other occassion has involved standing around with drinks and laughing and joking. Not one person I spoke with (including Brittney) seemed to be aware that this meetup would involve the sit-down lecture structure. Hence, no laptops, even among those who do have them. We expected it to be more informal.
3. I think it’s ironic that in your advancement of the art of Liveblogging you missed things that I was able to see. Without burying my head in a laptop or a pad and pen I was able to see you liveblog, Kay’s pen and paper, CeeLCee’s Treo, Elizabeth’s videography a couple other note takers and I was also able to fully pay attention to the reactions of most of my fellow bloggers. I felt like I got the feel of the room better than I would have had I been banging out a transcript of Mr. Rosenblum’s lecture.
13. Sam | January 18th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Wow, thanks for the excellent information!
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