Thoughts on the Blogosphere/Meatspace collision

I’m back from the Live from the Blogosphere. I’m home, I’m warm, and I chatted with the wife for a bit. I checked in on the kids in bed and finally sat down at the computer.
I checked the regular places and news from the Blogosphere event is leaking out. I’ll attempt to collect my thoughts.
I arrived after the event had started, around 8PM. I assumed there wouldn’t be many people there and was completely suprised to find the place was packed with no room on the inside. There were chairs outside, but you couldn’t hear anything that was going on inside.
Here’s looking in on the action…


Thanks to the SoCal WUG guys, the event was being video and audio streamed to the net. It took a bit of messing about to get the streams up, but I did.

The video stream was almost unintelligle. The audio stream was clear, but my laptop wasn’t loud enough to hear well over the crowd outside. The studio location is in Chinatown and there must have been seven or eight open gallery showings. People from these showings were walking up and loudly trying to figure out what was going on. Since I was the guy with the laptop making some sort of sound, people kept asking me what was going on inside. I did my best to explain and most people understood right away.
There were a few others connecting to the wifi network and trying to hear what was going on. None of use were having much success. Brendan wrote a series of posts while sitting about 10 feet away from me.
I kept making an effort to actually listen to the audio and hear what they were talking about inside. The one line I remember is “what would happen if Brad Pitt started a weblog”. Several of us outside discussed this a bit.
It was quite frustrating to be so close to the event and yet so far away from it. If I was only a mere 15 feet closer, I could have heard everything.

Overall I was having fun, but I was really missing out on the panel’s discussion due to all the conversation outside. I guess that it wasn’t so important to hear every snippet. Weblogging is about the conversation.
Here’s someone outside the door taking donations. Note the elaborate and costly donations box.

A couple of guys walked up to me near the end of the event and asked if they could see something on the net. The asked for evhead.com and pointed to the link on the page. That’s when I saw the news. The guys were from audblog.com and had come from San Fran just for the event. They said they saw him blogging when they were inside and wanted to see what it said.
Evan’s post linked to the Dan Gilmor article about Google buying Pyra Labs. In the weblog world, this is huge news. HUGE.
I talked to the audblog.com guys a bit more and they explained that their site/service was about using a phone to make weblog entries. The basic idea is that you call a number, say your entry, the computer turns the voice to text, and then posts the text on your weblog. I’ve been wishign for somethign like this for a while. What I really want is the ability to send text emails with my voice. They assured me they’d have it all working soon. Here is an example of what they can do today. That was recorded live at the event as well.
Interesting stuff if you ask me. As soon as they have it working with Movable Type, I’m signing up.
After the whole thing was over, I gave a little donation to Xeni & Beverly, the gals that ran the event, about what was next. They didn’t have any specifics, but said they were happy with the turnout.
When I got home, I saw the news was already up on Metafilter. I submitted the story to Slashdot, and amazingly, the accepted my submission.
To sum things up, I think the blogosphere needs more of these type of events. Interacting in meatspace is important. It’s much more gratifying to talk to a person and hear them thank you for your knowledge than endlessly refreshing your weblog hoping for comments and checking for new referrer links.
I think my earlier statement applies to both the event and the blogosphere in general. “The blogosphere is loud, packed with people, and you can’t hear the people you want to hear.”
It’s now 1 AM and I’m going to bed. The girls will be awake in less than six hours…
Next Day Edit: I’m told that’s not Xeni in the picture. Maybe I didn’t meet her after all. Can someone clear it up?

Things I notice

Here are a few things I am noticing at the Live from the BLogosphere event:
Bloggers like to wear black clothes.
If you have a laptop running outside the event, people will ask you a lot of questions. Lots of hot chicks will ask you questions as well.
No one minds if you plug into a power outlet to keep your laptop running.
People that go to art galleries like to smoke.
Always bring a jacket. You never know when you will be stuck outside with only your ‘oh so hip’ Kozmo.com t-shirt on.
More later.

Pyrhic success

Well, I can get the audio and video streams, btu it’s way to loud to hear anything.
People like my wifi setup and ask questions about it, but I can’t follow much of what’s going on inside the room 15 feet from me.
My kingdom for a set of pc speakers…

Blogosphere

The blogosphere is loud, packed with people and you can’t hear the peopel you want to hear.
I’m at the Blogopshere event and there are way too many people here.
The inside of the space is packed and people are milling about outside. A few of us are trying to get the computer to play the audio via wifi, btu laptop speakers are painfuly weakl compared to a crowd outside.
MOre later.

The Cooties

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. We had some fun in the morning and both girls had mini parties at school. Instead of a party at work, I had another five hour long meeting about Media Asset Management. Let the good times roll!
Michele called me during the day to explain that Zoe had kissed ‘Ethan’ on the cheek today. Zoe had been describing how ‘cute’ Ethan was the night before and how she was going to give him a valentine. During the day Ethan had given Zoe a valentine of a large tube of M&Ms with a heart on top.
I wondered what Ethan’s intentions were. What was his major and plans for a career?
After work, the family headed over to the Diggs house for dinner and playtime. Martin made some excellent pizzas and Michele managed to piss Casey off via instant messaging. Of course, pissing off Casey is not hard to do.
After dinner, Zoe started to complain about feeling hot. After all the adults touched her forehead, the women agreed that she had a fever and the men said maybe, but probably not. When we got home I took her temperature with the super whiz bang electronic ear infrared thermometer. 102. Zoinks, she was sick.
We gave her the Tylenol and put her to bed. I kept checking during the night and after an initial drop, it went up to 104 at 3AM. More Tylenol. Temperature drops. Whew. The idea of giving the child a cold shower at 4AM was not appealing.
This morning it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Zoe kissed a boy.
Zoe gets sicks.
OMG! Zoe got the cooties! She’s sick with the cooties from kissing a boy!
I can’t remember the specific cure for cooties, but I need to find out quick.
Michele suggested that this could serve as a long term boy-deterrent if we explained it to Zoe.

Much Love

Happy Valentine’s day to all Cruft readers. I wish you a happy day with plenty of smiles and fun.
Capping yesterdays news, here is a picture of the invasion. Note the small 1/2″ by 1/2″ chip that the ants found under the toy chest.


The ants fought a running retreat during the day as MIchele kept up the defense. She tried to utilize the effective vacuum & cedar spray method, but int he end her blood lust got the best of her.
When Michele goes into ant berserker mode, she grabs the scotch tape. Hard to believe, but it’s the weapon of choice. She takes the tape and crawls around picking up the ants with the scotch tape. Why? I have no clue. My best guess is that she views the strip of captured ants much like a necklace of ears from dead enemies. When she pulls out the tape, I go to another room. I can’t watch the carnage.
The aforementioned cedar spray oil is our chemical weapon of choice. Michele does not allow true pesticides in the house, so I found an ant killer based on cedar oil that works well. Supposedly the girls could eat this stuff on toast and not get sick, so it’s acceptable.
This morning we are busy, mainly because Michele is making not one, not two, not three, but FOUR quiches for a party at preschool.

That’s a lotta quiche.
Later, I gotta go. Enjoy this wonderful post at Being Daddy. Also, Brad is addicted! Muah-ha-ha-ha! Soon he’ll be asking about what other games are out there and if broadband really makes a difference…

Gotta scoot

There’s a big meting at work this morning I have the pleasure of chairing. Mor stuff about Media Asset Management, Digital Rights Managment, etc. I know you are all jealous.
Rather than fresh tasty …
[NEWS FLASH]
While writing this entry, I heard screams from the front. The ants had attacked. I just spent the last 20 minutes battling them with my daughters acting as spotters while I counterattacked with the vacuum and cedar oil spray.
The rain drives them in, and I drive them out. Victory will be mine.
You will have to wait until later for stuff. OKay, at least go check out Casey’s latest ramblings…..