Opening Discussion: How are your blogs changing your world?
Sitting here now in the Mediterranean Ballroom, waiting for the session to begin. Bear with me, because connectivity is still an issue.
Elisa is welcoming the group - says we are 2.5 times as large as last year. Lisa and Jory joined her to welcome us to BlogHer. Today we have over 700 people - of those people, a vast majority have never been to a blogging conference before. So this pulls you out of your blogging in your pajamas to be with real people - here's to face to face interaction.
Demographics of the attendees:
60% of us say we have onlky one blog (slide show with wonderful quotes from our attendees' blogs)
The music isn't working - so the audience is singing "All You Need is Love." (APPLAUSE)
Elisa - going over logistics.
Lisa: - guidelines. Thank you for the past year, it is a wonderful experience to be back here one year later. Important thing to have today is a fantastic discussion. We want to invite everyone to join us in the spirit of civil disagreement, we love to disagree - but don't character assassinate here. If you look at the community guidelines on the BlogHer site, you'll see that.
Everyone needs to use the microphone when talking for the podcasts that we are creating for the hundreds of women who can't be here. Also a chat linked from the front page of BlogHer.org. We also want to make sure that you are aware of the live bloggers.
INTERNET WENT DOWN AGAIN. LOST MOST OF THE WELCOME SPEECH.
Elisa: We've brought the servers to their knees - that's the power of blogging women.
(They've advised the live bloggers to use Ethernet connections, but I had no luck with that yesterday, either. AAARGH. Will have to type this in Word and then paste it into my blog later.)
After the sponsorship - introducing more women whose worlds have changed through blogs. Found them through the questionnaire filled out when registering.
The first person introduced is Cooper Munroe, who will talk about how blogging changed her world.
Elisa: - asked her how it's changed her world and the blogging community,.
Cooper: I share a blog called Been There with Emily McKhann. It's a mom blog we've had for two years. On the day Katrina hit, we were talking on the phone, realized the damage and screaming at the TV because nothing is happening. It didn't feel right, we wanted to do something more. We went to different sites and started to see people donating housing.
That act alone completely blew us away. We started talking about 9/11 and how well meaning donors sent things to New York and how it was just sitting around because there was no distribution system. So we put a post on our blog and asked people to make comments about things they could donate. Our hope was that we could get the word out to the organizations. This was two days after the levees broke and then a miracle happened, because of the people in this room. Jenn Satterwhite, Mindy Roberts and so many others - you came to our site and you posted to your own sites and in just two days - we went from being mommy bloggers to running a relief agency. In just two days. It was so freaking cool.
So it just grew and grew and grew and what happened was these two moms in the Midwest came to our site and they were trying to load up a car with medical supplies and they publicized what they were doing on our site and within a couple of days they had enough stuff to fill a semi-truck. We got them down there, medical supplies, water, the whole nine yards. On Friday, the president got on TV and said the relief effort was inadequate. If only moms had been in charge.
People were offering used Audi's - everything you can imagine. We hooked them up. It started to work. We heard about women pushing strollers to stand in line to get formula, walking three miles back. We were devastated. One woman wrote us to say she got a box with her name on it. And she sat on the floor and cried all day long because somebody cared about her.
And now it's still growing. So the cool thing is that to this day, we are still getting tons of people and we are still helping them. We're going to try to get you guys mobilized so we can grow some grass for the kids to play in New Orleans.
What I learned from this experience and this community - that women bloggers can change the world, truly.
(APPLAUSE)
Elisa mentioned the outreach blogging session that will be held later today.
Audience: do you know what your readership was at the time?
Cooper: we had 200 readers a day and it went in 24 hours to 20,000.
Audience (Mary Hodder): Blogging for me has been very personal as well as very public. On a personal level it allows me to talk about things without yelling.
Lisa: - I find your writing very loud. Go to napsterization.
Mary: we launched Dabble this past Monday and it was incredible - if I hadn't started blogging several years ago I don't believe we would have gotten that support. We had several hundred blog posts - because we built up a reputation in the blogosphere. On a personal level, being a blogger, I could both participate in and study what people did with this medium across the Internet. So I was able to fold that information, that experience, back into what I do. It's been on multiple layers something that completely changed what I do as a person, and to be successful. I think a lot of women want to do these things but don't think they can really do it.
Elisa: - so Mary's speaking about leveraging blogs to establish yourself as an expert, get credibility, start a business. Now - Jenn Satterwhite - who in the last year has created a blogging cottage industry. How you can use blogs to change your professional world, your economic world… from Mary to Jenn…
I wanted to ask Jenn - how are your blogs changing your world and how much risk taking figured into that change?
Jenn: Last year, I was that close to not coming to BlogHer. I had one blog, semi traffic. I did the mommy blogger panel last year, which had a phenomenal response, it was incredible. So I joined Jenny and Meghan and started Mommybloggers.com because there are so many women out there who are amazing writers and they're mothers.
Elisa: I think the question I wanted to ask you is that it seemed like it took some leaps of faith - like partnering with some women you met at BlogHer and started a business.
Jenn - it is risky, but it took 10 minutes to realize I could trust them with my life. And Lisa, Elisa and Jory have coached us. So it is a risk, but you've just gotta trust, that's what it comes down to. I don't think any of us thought it was a risk, because we loved what we're doing. Because if you have a passion for something, it's not a risk. Because you're going to succeed.
Elisa: who's done something that was a risk and has paid off?
Question: Food blogger - but I'm a professional chef and what's really interesting about blogging is that in my profession, people don't know how to use computers at all and if you send in a resume it can't even be an attachment because they don't know how to open them. So when I became a blogger, I consider food really political. I think it has to do with class and culture and race and history and no one wants to talk about that, especially in the fine dining world.
But I recently posted a very emotional post about the May 1 protest, even though it was a long time ago. Because my industry is supported by people who are not documented, and it gets bigger and bigger because culinary schools are expensive. I feel like - when I started blogging - I didn't get that it was that big. People would write to me about how to make piecrust and I would say come to my class and then they would say I'm in Indonesia. I really feel like it has gotten me out of the kitchen and I've gotten to meet people. Blog: Eggbeater.
Question (Joan Gelfand): - I'm a poet and a writer. A culture blogger. One day I took a risk and wrote a post about my stepdaughter graduating from high school because I had some feelings about her graduating from an all girl school and still not feeling good about herself. Well, her mother found my post and demanded that I take it down and it created a maelstrom. I refused to take it down and my husband negotiated with me. But it's still up there and two years later I still get comments about that post.
Lisa: Prior to the conference, I participated in BlogMe. One of the questions was, Is there anything I wouldn't write about? And it's about my stepkids.
Elisa: - a common thread throughout all the responses was about being heard.
Jenn: everyone of you who has a blog - you're the risk takers. Because you're opening yourselves up. It's a risk to put yourself out there. And we're all doing it.
Elisa: - getting your voice heard was a common thread across all kinds of people, across the generations. So I wanted to ask Erika - there are these changes and it's just identifying it and articulating it. And I wanted to ask Erika - how is blogging a different kind of space for women online than other spaces.
Erika: - My blog is chicanista.blogspot.com - a term I self identify by. In 1994 I worked for anitaborg.org - institute had a panel at the tech museum and Halley Suitt was there and she talked about her blog and she made it sound interesting and fun and I checked it out and signed up for an account, but I didn't do it for a year.
I thought about what to do - thought of having a political blog because I'm an activist. Then I thought about a technical one. But I didn't want to make the commitment. So then I decided to do a personal one. It's kind of like an electronic scrapbook. I blog about music I listen to, or the Lord's Prayer - or pictures. It's about me, but it's not all of me. And I'm very aware that what I post is public. But it's all something I'd be willing to tell a stranger. So writing a personal blog made more sense to me because I don't have to do research and I can use my authentic voice or humor. I can just take a moment of my life and capture it for whatever it's worth. Just a way to take a snapshot of a moment.
How it's changed my world? I think if I think about it concretely, it has enhanced some of my real life relationships. I have a longtime friend who lives in Nebraska and I let her eavesdrop on my life through my blog and it's brought us closer. And I've met other people through the blog. But on a professional level, what I've been asked to do is create an online community for my organization. As we move to web 2.0, we know that users are going to have an active role and because we have a more active role there is a greater potential for action.
Blogging gives people the opportunity to really bring themselves in an authentic way to a community space but it doesn't necessarily give us an equal ground with everyone else in the world. For example, if you go to an open source community, that's a majority of men. Compare the different technologies - the relevance of how we use technology affects its impact on the world. Blogging is a political statement in that sense, regardless of our technical background, we can use it and be part of the decision making and how it affects our world. It is a radical act and has a great potential to impact the world in ways we can't imagine.
Elisa: - something we've been saying yesterday is that we were overwhelmed by how many people wanted to attend the technical session (as well as today's conversation). Blogging is like the gateway drug to technology. I should have used myself as an example because I didn't know a stitch of html when I started.
Audience: just come from the open source convention - open source communities are fascinating, because it's so cooperative. I'm really scared there aren't enough women involved. And I know you all - if you have any inclination in building the future - just start showing up. Find women who are already in those communities, find men who will be willing to teach you.
Audience: my name is Halley. I'm really glad Erica decided to blog. I face a lot of risks and I've gotten the kind of notion that no one wants to hear what women want to say? So who cares? Keep on writing. I want to keep hearing your voices.
Audience: I can tell you that putting up blogher.org was an absolute learning experience in what developers don't understand about user communities.
Liza Sabatier: I just want to build. When I started culturekitchen in 2000 it was a static html page. I spent two years looking for something that would make it easier for me to host my articles. In 2002 I found the tool - it was Movable Type. My husband, who is a software programmer, told me 'I'm sorry honey, I get paid for this so you're gonna have to figure it out yourself.' So I did. And I tried every single piece of software out there for blogging. And I found drupal and fell in love with it and then someone introduced me to civic space and I use that.
I am a self-taught geek, I actually have a background. I'm not only a homeschooling mom but a selfschooling mom. And I taught myself html css and how to deal with these programs. I can be a bitch on wheels on these open source email lists.
There's not enough women. The reason why Movable Type and Typepad are so successful because of Mena Trott. And Blogger had Megan Hourihan - and I believe the reason why these programs have revolutionized this world is because women were involved in it from the beginning. We not only need women of color, we need women of all kinds - we need estrogen! The men don't understand that if any of you can't use the software, it's not good.
Elisa: Millie Garfield - how are your blogs changing your world and how has
Millie: it has changed my routine. I like certain routines and for years, I take the Boston Globe and drink my coffee. But now, I go to my computer and I have to check my comments and see what's new. Not picking up that Globe first thing, that's something.
Elisa: - do you still drink the coffee?
Millie: later. The other thing is that I'm always thinking, will that be a good blog.
About three years ago I did see an article in the globe about blogging and I asked my son, what is it. And he explained it to me and said why don't you do it. And a friend suggested I call it Thoroughly Modern Millie. And gradually it just grew and grew and now I have friends from the us and Canada and London and Paris and Australia and south Africa and one of the ladies from Paris is coming to the us in October and we're getting together. So my life has just gotten completely different, it's just wonderful.
Lisa: - the stereotypes about women pale to the stereotypes about older women. What has blogging
Millie: - I find that there are a few other ladies who are older too and we can talk about the past. It has made us all closer.
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