Bloggercon session ideas….
: I have some suggestions for Bloggercon session. Dave Winer suggested I post them here so you could react to/add to/send barbs about them.
I’ve registered for Bloggercon — April 17 in Cambridge. It’s free. You should go. Yes, you. (Already, 100 have signed up.)
My suggested sessions:
1. The reverse panel: We invite skeptical journalists (and perhaps business/political people) to question the audience about why blogs matter and what makes them so damned special. We’ve all made these arguments; let’s use these doubting Thomases to help bring our arguments together (or punch holes in them).
2. True weblog revolutions: Hossein Derahkshan (Hoder) and other international bloggers tell us how weblogs are truly bringing a revolution to their countries. Perhaps we can at least get Iraqi bloggers on a Skype conference for this — plus others from various nations in Africa, China, OhMyNews in Korea, etc.
3. The business of blogging: A collaborative session asking what it will take to make blogging work as a business (for those who want it to). I start the list with the need for better traffic and audience reporting (we can beat established media at that, if we try); content categorization of blogs (for sponsorship, advertising, and underwriting); and so on.
NEW: 4. Words: I’d love to see a session — or just a bulletin board somewhere — at which everyone can nominate new, human-level (rather than machine-level) names for the things we all hope lots of humans use: “RSS” (whatever happened to that contest to find a new name?), “aggregator,” even perhaps “blog.”