July 30, 2005

My computer has been given the silent treatment by the techmarkets network, which is why there hasn't been too much from me, but you know what? I was also totally overwhelmed.

It's down to the take away which is turning into a slightly evangelical feel-good session. Which is okay I think every "first-time" event deserves its evangels.

And if I weren't writing this I would be listening to Mary Hodder make a call for a group or list of womens with their expertise.

I wanted to make a self-prop. I was interviewed by the SF chronicle, and they made me soundlike a montrealaise littlest hobo of sorts. cool. But I am not just a student. I am mostly a web developer.

There is alot of discussion of being outside ones comfort zone and doing stuff that pushes the boundaries of their normal zone of interest or experience and I find it interesting, because I am not certain that I have ever been inside the bounds of normal.

I am not sure yet about the idea of what normal means in the blogosphere. As someone from the mommy-blogging crew stands up to represent. I am reminded that everyones voice here is unique and pretty different even if it is just a difference of degrees.

I feel like my thread that is, the one question I seem to come back to; is why is a person or a blogs relation to the "normal" the point of reference.

Now there is an idea to smartmob the male-dominated conferences. I think I should end on that. I am feeling scattered an exhausted.

Lynne D Johnston is a Manager at Vibe and spin magazine. her blog a day in teh life covers hip-hop culture froma feminist perspective.

Okay the bad news, I arrived late, because a volunteer, didn't show. So here is a summary of what i did hear, followed by a short Q and A with Lynne following her presentation.

During the presentation

nota bene: The Q's in this section come from various audience members

Q: kids listening to offensive music watching nelly videos. (Girls and boys what are they learning - volence and sexual objectification etc..)

There meme about the effect of raps on kids etc.. and Lynne says maybe this is something I should write about, but also, relying on enetertainment sources to raise our kids is not something that parents whatever their culture or their belief system should be doing.(paraphrase)

A: I don't think rap music should be banned but these people ( puffy jay-z) the fat that they are still singing thses kinds of songs, I mean come on you;re grown now..

But they won't change because then the market wouldn't push them, I mean forget hip hop. Have you seen jessica simpsons video for dukes of hazard.

Q: Do you mostly critique mainstream Hip-hop or do you also feature more progressive rappers?

A: I like to feature positive stuff, Artists like Jean Grae and Mos def are doing good work, and I write about it.

Q: Whata re some good sources for progressive Hip-Hop

A: Positive rap stuff.... okayplayer.com, they are doing jean graes new website and feature a lot of stuff like mos def etc.

Q:can blogs change that?

A: Yes, cuz when I hear good music I link to it. I thought when I started that the web would be the breaking ground for all these positive artists but the mainstream has stepped in.

Q: Is there a top 100 for alternative music sources.

A: There are several good mp3 blogs, such as the one by Oliver Wang. soul-sides.com. He's like a crate-digger he diitizes a lot of stuff that he finds. also hiphopmusic.com a gentleman who has a radio station on wpbr.com in new york.

Q: Can you tell us whats in your mp3 player?

Lynne D's play-list:

r kelly
faith evans
slum village
elephant man
wutang clan
ty tribett
miles davis

Personal Interview notes:
Questions here are all me, or Rene who was vblogging the whole thing.

Q: can you summarize the main themes of your presentation?

A: I wanted to address what my blog covered, the notion of being a feminsist hip-hop blogger is kind of an oxymoron when it (mainstream rap) is so sexist and mysoginistic.Basically what I said is that I am a humanist. Hip-hopp is what I grew up, so it's am. I have a hip hop sensibility and I think no matter how old I get I will still be hip hop and I will pay attention. I am also an educator and I have a responsability to educate the other (primarily male) writers in my community on feminist issues in hip-hop culture.

Q: has this presentation been a good experience?

A: Yes definitely. To be honest I didn't think anyone would be in here, because there was so much other stuff going on. And I was supposed to have a panel but those people couldn't make it, and I got great feedback people had a lot to say.

Q: It seemed that there were three different lines of inquiry feminists, confused/desperate parents, and hiphoppers who wanted to learn about hiphop. Could you respond to those categories?

A: I didn't think I could, but it looks like I did...

Q: How long have you been writing your blog

A: I started in July 2001. So I Am 4 years old.

Q: Do you have problems with being pigeon-holed?

A: At times yes. Since I write about other issues, still Vibe labels my blog "of beats rhymes and feminism."

tags: Blogher

I was late. Which is normal for me. : (

The debate has started and the main subject is whether popularity counts. "The top 100 debate" if i wanna give it a name.

I am a little scattered and frantic trying to do some last minute emailas about volunteer stuff so I will leave it up to the fabulous live-bloggers to summarize this fascinating conversation.

The debate is getting hectic. I wish the microphones had been set up in an easily accessible place. Right now Lisa is having to navigate really tightly packed tables and chairs and it isn't the easiest for her, and it's actually making the debate seem choppy because the questions aren't following a logical train.

Oddly the discussion is about how do women bloggers network and does it result in what we want. But the lay-out of the room, and the organization of the debate is an iteration of the problem. If for example the room were laid out so that more people could get access to the mics on their own without waiting for Lisa to notice their raised hands, then we would have increased autonomous cocmmunication paths and addressed the access and audible voices question even in the design of the physical space.

IMHO there are two memes: The first, how do we get the traffic/status? The second and less discused meme, is how do you address the rules. The structure of the a lists and the inbound linking "legacy" as Mary put it.

July 29, 2005

I just jammed a giant peice of banana bread in my mouth and added a BLOGHER category to theflink. I guess it's time to rev'er up.

Where Am I? At a nify wifi cafe in the mission district. I have a little while to brainstrom my live-blogging tutorial (embarrassing personal admission - I have never live-blogged before. I have no idea what to tell these people... I think I am going to make this a non-heirarchal learning opportunity , of neccessity)

Here is an unorganized list of some things to think about when you are covering your session:

Top ten things NOT TO DO

#1/ Don't tell anyone what the name of you session is or what conference you are at. Let them figure it out by clicking around, and, off your post.

#2/ Waste time on innoucous details such as; I am wearing my favorite yellow argyle sweater to this session . The banana bread at this conference is great, moist and not to sweet. DO get to the important details of the session and do your best to be concise even if it's not second nature.

#3/ Don't publish your post until the session is well-over. In fact spend about two hours after the session polishing off your language. Because "live" really means, when ther are no more spelling mistakes.

#4/ Don't spend more time explaining your opinion of what is beng talked about then what is actually said by the other people in the room, including the presenters. I mean, it's your blog, why waste time on reportage? If the other participants want to be heard, let them blog about it themselves, right?

5/ Whatever you do don't summarzie and don't try to give an impression of what the session highlights were. Just write a huge post where the important parts are buried inside expository paragraphs about a nit-picking argument between two participants overheard during the smoke break.

What you should try your best to do

1/ DO answer the 5 w's in the first paragraph.

2/ Do make use of summarizing sentences for presenters main points or themes.

3/ DO try to keep your paragraphs under 250 words (I think, this is one of the journalism standards things I haven't had to think about since I stopped writing for the university paper).

4/ DO publish your post at intervals during the presentation so that people can see what's going on as you are writing.

5/DO expand on the major threads of discussions that occur. Try your best to do some summarizing of those as well though, rather than giving a play by play.

*6/ MOST OF ALL. Remember that you are not writing for the people who are already at the conference, you are writing for the people sitting at home, so you need to be clear. Try not to use acronyms or jokes that are conference specific. if you refer to events or themes outside the scope of your session, reference them via links or tagging.

7/ Here is a decent article on using technorati for tagging in posts The tagged web and using Technorati. This explains the basic principals and gives a how-to. The tags are "blogher" and "bloghercon".

8/ Trackbacks are just a simple way to tap a post on the shoulder and say; "hey I am writing about this post." It's the way we will be getting excerpts of your entries to appear on the page about your session. For a better explanation take a look at this page of the Movable Type documentation.

Technorati tags: Blogher, Bloghercon,

Flickr tags (Same principle used here as in Technorati):Blogher, Bloghercon

Good luck everyone and I am looking forward to seeing you on Saturday if you don't make it to Fridays training session.

Photobloggers

Maybe we can talk briefly on saturday. I am less than a hobbyist as a photographer, so I probably don't have much to tell you about how to take good conference photos.