The Community & The Conversation

Photo: This is what they look like.

A few things I liked about the Bigfoot Blogging Conference I attended yesterday at UW:

FOOD: Free lunch with real brownies. Never underestimate the power of free brownies, even when they're liberally laced with sugar and not marijuana or crack cocaine.

PEOPLE: Diverse 'keynote' speakers, with a thumbs-up to Chris Pirillo, who brought free t-shirts. Again with the free. It's like they know me.

CERTAIN PEOPLE: My girlfriend's ex-husband sitting behind me with his newer pop tart girlfriend. Not awkward at all. But a great future blog story.

Honorable mentions go to Karen Anderson over at Writer Way and Andru Edwards from gearlive.com for not coming off as self-aggrandizing advertisements for themselves during our interactions. A resentful (and respectful) shout-out goes to Monica Guzman, from The Big Blog, for being smart AND pretty (she's one of THOSE); her presentation was very thought-provoking.

That which I did not like:

TWITTER: My phone died, mid-Tweet, so no Twittering for me. While this isn't all that important, it was disappointing; everyone there was lecturing about Twitter, taking notes on Twitter, asking questions about Twitter, praising or slamming each other on Twitter, and physically Twittering throughout every presentation--and there I was being forced to actually listen to the speakers like an asshole.

TECHNOLOGY: I was one of two people who didn't bring a laptop, which Chris so nicely pointed out. He talked about our pens and paper with a laugh, and I could hear the phrase 'physical media is so obsolete' just floating on the wind. Next time, I'm taking my vintage Selectrix typewriter with me so I can do some LIVE LOGGING while people are actually LIVE BLOGGING, and all they will hear is CLICK-CLACK CLACKITYCLACKCLACK CLICK CLACK CLACK CLICKETYCLACKETY CLACK-CLACK-CLACK ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZING!! Then I will roll up my post, tie it with a string, and hand it to the messenger owl I plan on borrowing from Harry Potter; that owl will then deliver my post to The Internet in the time it would take you to purchase a home and pass the bar exam, but no matter--he will be useful in many ways, since I plan on using him for Twitter, too. A living, breathing bird is like the Original Tweet, anyways. Old school: that's how I roll.

BUZZ WORDS: Everyone with a presentation, with the exception of Tracy Record over at West Seattle Blog, talked in social networking buzz words, most notably about The Community and The Conversation. What "conversation", you ask? Why, the one that The Community is engaged in! And what Community are you speaking of? Well, the one that you're a part of, which is also a part of the ongoing Conversation! Okay, so where is this Conversation going? No one knows, except The Community, and they are the ones who are shaping The Conversation! WHAT BLOODY CONVERSATION?! And on and on. I understood what they meant--it was certainly relevant--and I get "The Conversation", I just don't like buzz words. ***Although I did get called out in the comment section about it; hoisted by my own petard, as it were. *LOL* Ironically, I did not feel like I was a part of The Community or The Conversation, but I still heard some great concepts and ideas, and met some interesting people.

Dishonorable mentions go to the time-sucking woman who knew next-to-nothing about her own blog or blogging, and to my neighbor, one of the guys from Metblogs, who was loudly poking fun at her. We were all doing it--listening to her was like slowly sticking a knife in my eye--but we were doing it silently. As if that were any better.

I'm hanging with Smarty McSmarterson (the man) and Potty McPotterson (the monster) in Gig Harbor today; also, there's a few good updates on my Convo Blog, check them out.