JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Highlights of the Welcome Session:

– Three questions to answer at the end: What have you learned? What would you do with this information? What would you recommend to others around the world who can’t be here?

– Blogher statistics are intriguing: for example, more than 50% were attending a conference on blogging for the first time!

– Great video of quotes and blogs that stirred up spirit in the room

My detailed liveblogging notes follow below.

[Explanation of my Blogher liveblogging style: I attempted to do my best to capture as many direct quotes as possible. I did not capture every sentence or word. Occasionally I may have paraphrased a few words in order to get the idea down quickly. Please feel free to correct what is written here, either by commenting below or emailing me: harrowme AT yahoo.com. Official list of Blogher livebloggers here (I was not an official blogher one). ]

Main characters during this session included:

Blogher organizers:

Lisa Stone

Elisa Camahort

Jory des Jardins

Lisa Stone:

Focussing specifically on moving the conversation to a whole new level, a whole new galaxy…beyond “where” to the fact that we represent 40 – 50%…you see that women are blogging loudly and enthusiastically and proudly about every subject under the sund

building community, yes additional exposure…even though we’re embracing [technology]

Given that, the question is how do we serve the needs of hundreds maybe thousands of women…

what we’re going to do, is try to build the mother of all to-do lists.

we’d like your help in maintaining three questions

what have you learned?

what would you do with this information?

What would you recommend to other women around the world who can’t be here

We want to thank two groups that have made today possible:

You

We acknowledge the power of women and blogging

that led to the support we’ve received from sponsors

Elisa:

We started the whole process by putting up a blog

When we opened registration we had quite a significant survey

The number of people who took the time to answer every single question was overwhelming

For any of you who have ever done surveying…it means they wanted to share, they wanted to communicate

Now I’m going to talk about some of the specific statistics

The responses in that open box why do you blog were just fantastic and we wanted to show you some of that right now

Where are the women bloggers

80% women, 20% men

1/3

(video presentation featuring quotes and blog designs to represent those quoted)

“to get my ideas out there:

“to shock and awe”

“to find out what it’s really like to get older”

“because my husband will only listen for so long”

“to learn how this medium…”

“for fun and profit”

“got a few hours?”

15% newbies

more than half outside the Bay Area

52% never attended any kind of session or panel on blogging

a lot of new people who wanted to talk about it

So when we asked our questions in the survey, they were thinly-veiled (of our three-pronged mission)

education, exposure and community

42% all of the above

30% meet bloggers

15% education

75% of respondents say they care about traffic, links or both

You want your voice to be heard

You want to be accounted for

Of the remaining 25%

40% I don’t play that game

What you didn’t want from a conference

37% too much talk

25% too sterile, no passion

25% too much like school

You wanted to participate in the conference

Jory

so you don’t want school

we’ll do our best

we’ll be posting our discussion guidelines

we drafted these intially for the panelists

Ashley Richards (did the discussion guidelines)

you’ll notice in the sessions, we will not have powerpoint

The moderators will do their very best to keep the discussion respectful

We do know we have a lot of opinions in the room but we want to keep them respectful

These are entirely contingent upon you

What do you have to say about that?

the take-aways

We encourage you to break in if there’s something you want to throw in there

This is a do-ocracy, you are allowed to create the content

Elisa

There is power strips

There is wi-fi you should have no problems with that

Google has stations to check email etc

Key to what sessions are in that room

We’re turning the men’s bathroom that’s over there into a women’s room..

During this open session and debate

BOF – anywhere in the atrium, anywhere outside,

2 drink tickets thanks from Yahoo

Pick up lunch in the restaurant and you will bring it back here if you want to watch Flame, Blame and Shame

Everyone is press

but you are entitled

If you’re an anonymous blogger than you’re entitled to stop someone from taking a full-on picture of you