Being Amber Rhea

One thing that really annoyed me at BlogSavannah was when, during the Women and Blogging session, this one woman got soooo incredulous when I was talking about the importance of “putting it out there” - she visibly and audibly guffawed, rolled her eyes, and generally refused to hear what I was saying. (This was also the same woman who accused Gennie of “not being honest” because she doesn’t use certain language in front of her young son, so, you know, consider the source.) Finally I got exasperated and said something like, well, this is important to me; it’s not important to everyone, and you don’t have to “get it,” but there it is, and it’s not going to change anytime soon. (Once we post the audio from that session, you’ll get to hear this in all its absurd glory.)

Anyway, via Sexerati, I found this New York Magazine cover story: Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy. The subhead does a good job of describing the mental roadblock the obnoxious BlogSavannah woman was hitting:

As younger people reveal their private lives on the Internet, the older generation looks on with alarm and misapprehension not seen since the early days of rock and roll. The future belongs to the uninhibited.

One clarification I would add, though, is that although this is often divided along generational lines, it isn’t always the case. Plenty of the people at BlogSavannah who were insisting that anything you say on the Internet is a reflection on your employer were around my age. Basically, I think what it boils down to is, some people get it and others don’t. The “a-ha!” moment comes at different points for different people; and for others, it never comes. But when it does come - hyperbole alert! - it’s a beautiful thing.

In lieu of a substantive post, here are a few photos I took on our road trip:

Close-up of berries and Spanish moss on a tree in Savannah (best viewed large; click through to Flickr to do that)

Expensive sweet tea

Old depot in Fort Valley, GA

Rusty live-blogging at BlogSavannah

Also, here’s some stuff I’ve bookmarked in del.icio.us and tagged “toread” -

• Unhappy Meals - New York Times article about the (common sense) problems with the Western diet
• “City” means city - Bloglanta has some questions for wannabe Milton County
• Book Distribution in America: A legacy of corruption with incalculable costs - Violet Blue shares her thoughts on “book culture”
• “Blogging for Choice Day” - Belledame’s wrap-up of stuff from all around the blogosphere
• Podcast about SoCon07 - Interview with organizer Sherry Heyl. SoCon07 is coming up in less than two weeks!

I’ll be back with the postin’ and the commentin’ soon. And I still have to catch up on reading other people’s blogs!

Well, it was a jam-packed weekend! Where to begin. Rusty and I had a blast at BlogSavannah. A lot of the sessions were centered around the intersection of blogging and business, or blogging and mainstream media. Those were interesting but also at times infuriating, especially when one person kept trying to dominate the conversation (clearly some people don’t understand the concept of an unconference!). The Women and Blogging session was good except some of the people kept trying to derail it, and I was just sitting there in awe wondering what the hell crawled up their ass and died. This one woman kept accusing Gennie (the session leader) of “not being honest” because she cusses on her blog but doesn’t cuss in front of her son IRL. She wouldn’t let it go… she said it like 5 times and then was like, “But, you don’t have to defend yourself.” WTF?? Oh, I’m just going to rake you over the coals; but no, it’s not like I’m asking you to defend your choices. I wanted to really go at it with her but I didn’t want to take the session even further off the rails. Also, a lot of the people were really big about “if you blog and you get fired it’s your own damn fault, employers can do whatever they want and you don’t get to complain or have an opinion!!” That floored me as well. Oh, and then, the best, was when this one woman said something like, “If you work nights as a stripper, of course you should get fired from your day job.” Oh lord, how I wanted to tear her a new asshole. But, again, didn’t want to derail. Instead I just looked daggers at her and said I didn’t see why that mattered. Also I called Drew out for not letting the women speak at the Women and Blogging session; with any luck you’ll hear that on the forthcoming podcast. Look, it’s nothing against him personally; I think he did an amazing job organizing this whole thing, and I will surely be sending him a bunch of emails picking his brain for nuggets of wisdom I can apply to PodCamp. But, if you’re a man in a session called Women and Blogging, and you start trying to dominate the conversation, well, I’m going to call you out on it, because that’s some shit and you need to recognize that you don’t get to dominate every single conversation.

Oops, I just realized that I’d been writing in one big long paragraph. Sorry… it kind of reflects my train of thought at the moment though, as I only have a brief window of time here at work to write this. So if this recap is somewhat jumbled, that’s why. Anyway, overall, BlogSavannah was awesome, we had a lot of fun, and met some really smart, interesting people. Oh, and thank goodness we were with Phil after dinner Saturday night, when we discovered our car had been locked in a parking garage. :P He tracked down the person with the keys for us! My BlogSavannah photos are on Flickr, along with about 250 more in the group pool. (I’ll post more photos soon.) Sherry has good coverage of a lot of the sessions.

Moving on… Saturday morning we drove to Vidalia to meet with Wilson Smith of What Is Goin’ On? It was great to finally meet him in person, and Vidalia appears to be a quintessential Southern small town. After our super-secret meeting of which I can reveal no more, Rusty and I were off to Andersonville for an investigation with the Henry County Ghost Hunters. Yep, we got full access to the prison site and cemetery, and spent about four hours wandering around with digiral recorders and flashlights. We got scared at one point by what we thought was a ghost, but it turned out just to be a possum. Anyway, soon there will be a podcast up from that night, and hopefully it’ll include some EVPs!

Also, podcasts from BlogSavannah will also be up in the next week or so… we’re going to start a GAPN network program called (Un)ConCasts where people can put recordings from any conferences they go to. In the foreseeable future we’ll be posting stuff from BlogSavannah, SoCon07, PodCamp Atlanta, and further down the line, Dragon*Con and ConvergeSouth 2007.

Okay, that’s all for now… gotta get back to work. Maybe later this week I’ll actually catch up on reading blogs. At the moment I’m avoiding eye contact with my BlogLines account. BlogSavannah

Well, Rusty and I are here at the BlogSavannah Un-Conference ‘07. Right now the guy who’s kind of in charge of the thing is talking about how most of the bloggers in Savannah didn’t know each other, and he’s about to start explaining what an unconference is. Of course, I already know all about what an unconference is, so I can sit here and multi-task.

Rusty will be live-blogging all day (or until his laptop battery dies, at least); for the moment I’ve commandeered his MacBook Pro, but I probably won’t be doing so many updates throughout the day. Anyway, we’ll also be recording some of the sessions for a podcast. In particular I’m really excited about Podcasting 101 and Women And Blogging.

Okay, that’s all for now… just wanted to check in. Keep checking Rusty’s blog for updates throughout the day! If nothing else, I’ll post a recap tonight. BlogSavannah

This Friday, Rusty and I will be in Georgia’s oldest city for the BlogSavannah Un-Conference ‘07. There’s a Podcasting 101 session, which we will (hopefully) record and make available for download, tagged “recursive.” Check out the full schedule and the list of who’s coming (note there are several Atlanta social media rowdies listed).

Since this is yet another unconference, it’s free. So if you’re able to make it down to Savannah this Friday, come say hi!

[Cross-posted on my Georgia Podcast Network blog]