At Chicago Blogher07 - a fascinating place so far

After the incredible delayed plane and luggage hunt, Chicago emerged as fielding the wet-warm-towel humidity that makes you wish you didn't have sweat glands. Fortunately, there were two drinking events to make up for it.

I've managed to reconnect with Aliza Sherman, founder of Webgrrls way back when and current owner of www.babyfruit.com. When Robert Scoble talked about the mommybloggers kinda owning Blogher, it's true -there's a definite strong contingent of moms with a strong voice here. Katherine Stone talked particularly movingly about the struggles women face after a pregnancy and how not everywhere do people understnad what happens in postpartum depression. It made me feel like if I wanted to really stay hip in the space, I'll have to spawn. On the other hand, tis a crowded field. And I'm especially curious to see what happens with Maryam Scoble. I feel like she will capture some nurturing essence more than I would if I went mommyblogging.

I'm not sitting right now where I put all the business cards people gave me to rattle off all the names, but I'll try to do more of a roundup tomorrow. Izzymom.com sponsored the second shindig at the W.

Another area that was fascinatingly hot is food blogging. (Take that, all you fatbloggers! FOOD - SCANDALOUS SENSUOUS FOOD -  is it! !!!!)

The woman from simplyrecipes.com talked about how popular the blog is getting, and then Susie Bright came over (the noted sex columnist/speaker/activist) and while I won't tell you what her buttons she was handing out said (...yes, my mom DOES  read my blog) I will say she found some of her blog posts that contained recipes were more popular then the ones about sex.(!!!) I am not sure what this means for the future of Western Civ as we know it, but food for thought, that.

Linda Evans of body.aol.com came by  a group I was in, and was completely charming. They sponsored the first shindig. I am spacing on the woman's name from Yahoo but she runs the Exceptional performance team at Yahoo and is speaking on how to optimize your blog pages. So the tech girl crowd is also represented.

The other thing I noticed about this conference is that even though people stand around in groups, the circles don't close. If you are alone ,someone will come chat you up, If you bust in on a circle, they will include you in the conversation. I've had to work harder at Tech Ed to finesse chatting up strangers and as a former reporter, I will (and have) introduced myself to anyone standing around. In this case at Blogher people just...are nice. It's like the opposite of junior high.

It is cool.

Another thing that was wild was Aliza came to the events tonight in short braids - not as long as Pocahontas, more like Pippi Longstocking but flat. And she was continually photographed because she's a blogger with braids. There is some scavenger hunt that required it, and well she was one of the few people could find.

That never happens at TechEd.

Ok, more later. Must pass out for early morning wakeup call.

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 27, 2007
  Sitting in your BlogHer panel enjoying your comments. Btw, there are LOTS of non-mommiebloggers blogging about a myriad of other topics including politics, technology, economics, science, the future, higher ed, physics, social change, art, etc.
• Anonymous
  July 27, 2007
  Ya, that's true...there are people blogging about tons of things, and some not very quantifiable genres - "it's about my daily life, but I am X Y and Z". When we did the round robin speed date I got to talk to women still thinking about what their first blog would be about. That's an exciting time.Dang, I gotta write my second post from Blogher now - yesterday seems so outdated! :)Thanks Melanie! I recommend anyone reading this comment thread to check out Melanie's blog which has an interesting machine creativity post up now.Cheers!