BloggerConIII: Newbies Session

The discussion leader was Rebecca MacKinnon. Because BloggerCon is an “un-conference”, there is no presentation or pre-set agenda. She asked people in the room what they were interested in. There was an interesting mix of pure blog newbies to blog veterans (meaning those who have been blogging for over 2 years ;-). Some were interested in finding out how to start blogging, others how to push a corporate blogging agenda, etc. Lots of different perspectives and levels of experience/expertise.

A few people were working for blogging tools vendors, but they did not really speak out because of the BloggerCon policy of not allowing vendors’ plugs (which prevented these very experienced users from sharing their expertise — Niall has a great post on this).

Rebecca pointed the audience to her blog that contains useful “Blogging for Newbies” resources, including definitions, a “cookbook”, and a wiki she has set up to gather this information.

Topics of interest related to bloggers’ motivation: why bloggers are spending time publishing diaries, journals, etc., as opposed to meeting people face to face. Dave McClure (who also posted about this session) stated that his interest surrounds how to move blogging into the mainstream of web publishing of multiple media: text, audio, photos, videos, music, etc.

The overall message to vendors from the Newbies: if it is not easy enough to 1) generate content, 2) publish, and 3) syndicate/get traction then… they won’t hesitate to switch. Kind of obvious, but there are people in the room who are already into their third blogging tool in a few months.

“Blogging: what is it about for you?” This is the central question to ask yourself before starting blogging, as opposed to how often you should post, which tool you should use, and your commitment level. Blogging takes time, energy, and has potential implications, as a gentleman from HP points out. When you blog, you become a “public” person, which might impact how you are perceived in your corporation (even with all the necessary disclaimers, etc.).

Julie Adair from the BBC refers to an experience they have implemented: Island Blogging, where they have provided PCs and narrowband connections to people on 17 islands on the borders of Scotland, in order to enable them to blog about what is happening in their lives and environment. This has been successful, and the BBC plans to expand this to other places in the UK.

Rebecca then described the difficulty of managing a MovableType or WordPress installation, publishing HTML, etc. She explained that the reason she moved to a deployed version from a hosted one was that typepad.com was blocked in Korea and China, and she had a South Korean related blog. I explained that this is really challenging to do, and that is why there are easy-to-use hosted offerings for “basic” usage and deployed solutions where you have more control.

As I raised the issue of starting a blog through pictures, Mie shared her experience of only blogging through her mobile phone, snapping pictures and expressing herself that way, rather than using her PC to publish a text blog.

People in the room are asking for ways to get introductory classes, tutorials, etc. about blogging and how to get started. And that concluded the session.

There was no real structure to the session (and to this post I am afraid), even though Rebecca did a good job at trying to get questions answered. We did not really touch upon issues of getting started in corporations, or the evolutions needed for the current generation of tools — which are still too complex, etc. It would have been great to have a list of pre-reading materials for the audience so that at least basic definitions we spent time on (trackbacks, RSS,...) were covered.

Update: Rebecca, the moderator, has posted her summary and take-aways of the session.

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