Blogging Roller

I attended the Triangle Bloggers Conference 2005 on Saturday morning in Chapel Hill. The meeting was held in a classroom large enough to accommodate the approximately 150 people in attendance, power in every seat, and wireless internet. The agenda was divided into three portions, but the conference was really one long, seamless, and very interesting conversation between audience members and the speakers. The theme was using blogs to build community, how to build a larger readership for your blog, how to use blogs in grassroots journalism. Here are a couple of the things I wrote down (these are not 100% accurate quotes):

• David Hoggard: You've heard of 'dancing like nobody is watching' -- you've got blog like nobody is reading if you want to get your authentic voice out there.
• Dave Winer: Why do you care about being popular? Bloggers don't need readers. Bloggers are documenting the human knowledge base and making expertise available that was previously only available to the press and big institutions.
• Ruby Sinreich: blogs will never replace the mainstream media, their role is to watchdog the media and that is a good place to be. Few people will get their news from blogs, but those that do are journalists, politicians, activists -- people who can make a difference.
• Matt Gross: On the Blog for America site, approximately 5% of visitors would click on the comments link and 1% would leave a comment.

I also got a chance to talk to folks about corporate blogs at SAS and IBM (both have some internal Roller sites) and student blogs at UNC. I also spent some time talking to Roch Smith, the man behind the Greensboro 101 community aggregator. All and all it was a great experience. I learned a lot about blogging and I feel a little more connected to my hometown and the Triangle in general. Thanks to Anton Zuiker, Paul Jones, and everybody else who helped put it together. More information, check here and here.