First thoughts from BlogWorld 2011

What is there to say about BlogWorld 2011?

So much and this is just my first thoughts, I’ve got a lot of notes, audio and interviews to go through yet. There are a few more posts to come.

This is my second BlogWorld Expo, last year it was in Las Vegas and was a really entertaining three days. And while LA may be the center of the media universe, Vegas really was a blast last year so this has a lot to live up to.

OK, so what’s BlogWorld? Simply put, it’s largest new-media conference in the world. It’s a massive coming together of social and new media types for three days of meetings, sessions and parties. It’s about meeting people (good god I hate to call it “networking”), spending time with friends and understanding where we are as a group, what’s changed and finally a little crystal ball glazing as to what’s next.

I came away with a huge long list of things I want to try; both here and on another couple of projects I’ve ben working on.

For me it’s the learning and meeting people, I do this for fun and don’t want to be a blogging superstar. I just don’t have the energy or creative talent that those people do, but it’s always interesting to talk to them and see their take on the world. It’s quite frightening how much energy people like Ewan Spence, Kevin Pollak, Cecily Kellogg, Kelby Karr or Srinivas Rao have.

Friday night I ended up drinking with some people from my new favorite publisher. It’s a long time since I’ve been up that late drinking, Peter and Shannon from Wiley came close to drinking me under the table, I missed a lot of the Saturday sessions dealing with a hangover. Thanks to Wiley publishing for the pile of books, the advise and encouragement. It was an awesome night, but either you guys can drink, or I am a total lightweight.

The best session was probably the Friday night keynote by Ford CMO Jim Farley. He started talking about his role in leading Ford into the world of new media, how a company has to give up control and let the consumer’s message become the companies’ message. That’s the big-company issue, to engage people in an authentic way means the same people, both inside and outside the company, get to be part of the telling of story of Ford and their products.

From what I’ve seen Ford is years ahead of most in recognizing the value inherent in social and new media. They were at BWE last year promoting the then new Ford Fiesta through the Fiesta-Rally reality TV series and social media promotion.

As cool as the big company stuff is, I went there for things that are aimed at my level. I met a number of great bloggers from all levels. Some did this for fun, others because they had a message to deliver, a couple were starting out and a few made their living doing this.

It’s been nice reinforcement to meet people familiar with what I’ve had to say here, that was incredibly rewarding. I know I am read by a far wider audience than my sister-in-law and a couple of friends, it was wonderful to have people look for me this weekend and say hello. I did the same, there were plenty of people whose writing and podcasting I got to play the annoying fanboy role.

And that brings up one of the issues I see for this community. There are a lot of people reading each others blogs, there is only just so much navel gazing this industry can get away with before it become insular and looses the dynamics that make it so special in the first place.

As I’ve said that there are some people creating incredibly dynamic, interesting and funny content out there. I added a couple more to the list of blogs I follow this weekend after meeting the authors and discovering some very, very interesting people. So to DJ Paris, Marty Coleman, Derek Featherstone and the many, many other I met, thanks it was an absolute blast.

There is a lot more to come on this.

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