Being Amber Rhea

A few things I should mention:

• The recording of my “Podcasting and Beyond” session at ConvergeSouth is now up as an episode of (un)ConCast.
• In a new “talkie” episode of Mostly ITP, Rusty and I discuss Halloween, social networks, sex clubs, and group sex ratios. We also announce a few upcoming events and promise to do an interactive episode soon.
• Check out the latest GA Politics Podcast. It apparently caused some drama in the local political blogosphere, but I haven’t been involved in that. All I know is, as a member of the live studio audience (ya know, at Manuel’s), I think it was the best episode yet. Lots of energy and good discussion.
• I don’t think I ever linked to these, so here are some photos from my Level 5 pole dancing graduation. I didn’t bother with photos during the routine this time, so these were taken afterward.

Happy Friday, all!

Rusty and I are back from our 4-day road trip to the Carolinas. It was a good combination of planned and spontaneous; I just wish we’d had a few more days.

First we went to Greensboro for ConvergeSouth 2007. We got there in time for about half of the final session of the day, wherein Jason Calacanis demonstrated the power of Twitter by Twittering his phone number and then Robert Scoble called him. Based on what I’ve heard and read, people seem to be split into two groups - those who thought this was cool/amusing/impressive, and those who thought it was obnoxious. My reaction falls somewhere in the middle, but leaning toward the “obnoxious” side, I think. Part of that is just because I’m non-starstruck with Scoble.

Speaking of which… well, I’ll get to it in a minute. Friday night we went to the ConvergeSouth barbecue at David Hoggard’s house (and they actually had veggie burgers!) and met BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort and contributing editor Laurie White. They were both so nice, funny, and down-to-earth; I really enjoyed hanging out with them. Oh, but how this relates to Scoble… well, somehow he came up in conversation, and I mentioned being disgusted with his behavior at ConvergeSouth 2006. Elisa said she’d seen he and Maryam give the same presentation at a different conference, but they were very much co-presenters. We wondered whether she had seen them after I had, and maybe Scoble took my criticisms to heart. Later that night I did some research on Google and it turns out, Elisa did see them after I did. Ha!

Saturday we had a good time at ConvergeSouth; I liveblogged Elisa’s keynote and did a bit of Twittering throughout some of the other sessions. Of course, the inevitable J-School/B-School session - otherwise known as “journalists vs. bloggers” - got ugly pretty fast; but I’ve yet to be in one of those sessions where it doesn’t turn ugly. At 1:00, I led a session entitled Podcasting and Beyond. It seemed to take the folks there a few minutes to understand that they weren’t just “the audience” and I wasn’t going to talk at them for an hour; once that became clear, we had a good discussion. I recorded it and will put it up as a podcast soon.

Sunday morning, we left Greensboro and headed to the Carolina Raptor Center. This is a place just outside of Charlotte where they rehabilitate injured birds of prey. Their goal is always to release the birds back into the wild, but some birds aren’t able to be released, due to the nature of their injuries. These are the permanent residents at the CRC.

I highly recommend this place to anyone who has even the remotest interest in birds! (Which should be everyone.)

After leaving the raptor center, we decided to head to Columbia, SC. We’d been meaning to go there eventually anyway, so we figured there’s no time like the present. Columbia turned out to be a pretty neat town. We didn’t have as much time as we would’ve liked to walk around taking pictures, because it was almost dark by the time we got there, and on Monday I spent most of the morning doing research at the courthouse. I’m trying to track down some family history there… but I’ll do a separate post about that. Rusty did sneak away and photograph two Kress buildings for me, though:

We’re planning to go back to Columbia the weekend of December 8th. At that time, I’m sure we’ll take five million photos.

On the way back home, we stopped in Augusta for lunch with my parents. It was a totally last-minute decision, so I was glad they were available for lunch!

So that’s what we did on our 4-day vacation. I love road trips, and I’m already ready for another one. Hopefully we’ll be able to get in a few day and weekend trips between now and December.

Saturday Keynote: Changing Your World with Blogs

It’s the second day of ConvergeSouth (and the first day that Rusty and I will be here for the entire day). Sue Polinsky is introducing Elisa Camahort, and I’m going to attempt to live-blog it, until my MacBook battery dies, anyway. Sue is saying there aren’t a lot of women bloggers with “credentials,” so it’s hard to fill panels with women. I disagree… there are tons of women bloggers with all kinds of credentials out there. Next Sue said, “Or maybe we just don’t know about them.” That’s more like it!

9:17 a.m. - Elisa points out that they had 136 women speakers at BlogHer ‘07.

9:21 a.m. - Blogging is good for your health, because of the connections you make. Elisa cites the example of Millie Garfield’s blog.

Blogging (and podcasting) offers us the opportunity to have a record of our lives, our parents’ lives, and our grandparents’ lives that we never had before. Elisa says she wishes she’d had an opportunity to record her grandmother’s story before she died.

9:26 a.m. - What’s the definition of a blog? If someone is an active commenter but doesn’t have their own blog, are they a blogger? What about Twitter, or Facebook? The definition of what it means to be a blogger is changing and evolving, because it’s all about the community that forms.

9:32 a.m. - Elisa addresses the (sometimes flip) sentiment, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” So what’s wrong w/ making money from your blogging endeavors, if you can? Blogs are changing the way we do business.

Now Elisa is talking about Chloe Spencer, “teen pro-blogger.”

9:36 a.m. - Elisa disagrees w/ what a lot of tech bloggers say, that unless you have a very specific niche, it’s hard to build an audience. She says it’s about having a unique voice and a way of telling your personal story that makes people laugh, nod their heads, or just be interested. I agree.

9:40 a.m. - Is it going to be harder to make a living via blogs as the blogosphere becomes more saturated? Elisa is talking about Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes, who makes six figures per year from her blog. Of course, the part people don’t mention as much is that Elise started her blog four years ago when there were maybe ten food bloggers, and now there are tens of thousands.

Other people are using blogs to move their careers forward in other ways - not just making money via ads on their blog. Example: Megan Garnhum got her dream job w/ WeeWorld after she was inspired to do something she loves (write a blog about shopping) which made her visible and gave her her own playing field. That visibility got her recognized by WeeWorld, where she now works.

9:47 a.m. - Politicians are starting to realize that they ignore people outside the political blogosphere at their peril. (Answer to rhetorical question of why did Elizabeth Edwards come to BlogHer ‘07 even though it was not a huge media opportunity for her?)

9:51 a.m. - Example of blogs impacting real-world action: Grace Davis started a Katrina relief blog after a woman in Mississippi posted on Craigslist that she could drive around to different shelters in Mississippi, but didn’t know how to get the word out; all she had was her car and her cell phone. Grace called this woman and said she’d start a blog. The woman in Mississippi then would call Grace and tell her what shelter she was at, its address, how many people were there, and what they needed. People would see it on the blog and ship directly to the shelters. Because of this blog, supplies were getting to the shelters before FEMA.

9:57 a.m. - Guy in the audience says he thinks people in their 20’s and early 30’s don’t need face-to-face connection. I spoke up, of course. Heh.

As a nice on-point epilogue, Elisa used Rusty and me as an example! ‘Cause you know, we met via reading our blogs, and look at us now.