BlogHer

Photo Courtesy of George Kelly

Notwithstanding the flight from hell, the two days of gastrointestinal upheaval, the virtual dehydration due to the lack of readily available fresh water, a broken carry-on bag, lack of non-allergenic foods and the ensuing sixteen hours of allergy, dehydration and hangover induced headache; I can comfortably say it was good for me to go to BlogHer.

As y'all know I was stranded in the Mineappolis Thursday night. Friday morning, my flight to San Jose was delayed two more times; but maybe for a reason. Nancy Scola ended up in my flight! She and I had roomed in Austin during SXSW and keep on bumping into each other in a lot of tech and media conferences. So, knowing she's going to kill me for publishing this, I have officially declared us conference wives. I claim tops!

Imatellya ... the women who go to BlogHer are my peeps, my tribe, my community.

It was actually healing to have so many mommas looking after me. I was not on any panel this year and since a lot of BlogHers knew of Lydia's passing, the love was overflowing. I had women come to me with tears in the eyes to share their stories of loss. It was increadible and really overwhelming but this is why we build communities. We need this love, we need this sharing. I can't express how much I needed to be around people who understood why even though I am grieving I chose to be there.

Which is why I was in such a tribal and community building frame of mind.

I am not sorry to acknowledge my tribalism here at the moment, but outside of the fact that BlogHer is an estroswarm (the estrogen version of a blogswarm) of huge proportions, it shares with South by Southwest the distinction of being one of the few tech and media conferences I have gone to that strive to have a good dose of melanin-enriched and ethnic diversity.

The BlogHer triumvirate with the aid and abbetting of their lovely advisory board (which, btw, is unexplicably non-existent on the BlogHer site) has worked to make diversity not just a panel but an intrinsic part of what the conference is all about. They're efforts are moving in the right direction (although there is more to be done).

Which is why I called for a birds of a feather meeting of the digital ethnorati. At BlogHer and SXSW I've had the delight of hanging with my peeps Lynn and Tiffany as well as the fabulous George Kelly --one of the two or three token brothers at the conference ... HA! But I am totally excited because I got to finally meet Professor Kim Pearson, Kety Esquivel, Melanie Morgan or The New Media Collective, Kim Wickham of Mocha Momma, and Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks and Zadi Díaz of the Jet Show.

I also met Lakshmi Pratury, a former venture capitalist and digifeminist extraordinaire who created the Digital Equalizer project, an initiative to bring computers to the have-nots of India. I also met Annette John-Hall of Philly.com; Tarita Thomas, who is working to get her Bay Area famous "Pussy the Seminar" to a podcast near you. Last but not least, I was happy to reconnect with Mini Kahlon, Director of innovation for Level Playing Field, an NGO focused on promoting "innovative approaches to fairness in higher education and workplaces by removing barriers to full participation." She was there with Sean Aquino, a Creative and Technical Associate with the institute.

What an amazing slice of the digital ethnorati. I mean, let me show you how colored and ethnic technologists and early adopters are uber-connected.

The encounter with Karen was hysterical. I was introduced to her partly because she's a trini and ... you know ... carib people always stick together --and I am not being sarcastic. I swear, all the Trinidadians I have met --separately and independently from one another-- end up being from the same circle of friends. What's scarier is that Barbara, my soul sister, ends of being be connector. I am talking about one woman being the network of dozens of trinidadians I've met in politics, media, technology, entertainment and 'just because' social settings.

So I had to ask. "Do you know Barbara Prevatt?" No she said. "Well, that's because she doesn't blog. Then who have to know Georgia Popplewell, who runs Caribbean Free Radio. Bingo! Georgia is a very good friend of Barbara and she's been my acquaintance for ... ahem ... 20 years (Georgia, you're the one getting old, not me). Georgia knew I was going to BlogHer and told Karen she'd be meeting me there. Instanetworking. I'm telling, those trinis ... it's a mafia.

Speaking of mafias ...

So I have decided to go ahead and attend the BlogHer Conference; and part of the reason is that the lovely Grace Davis of State of Grace and the Katrina Relief Blog is taking in me as an East coast refugee.

If you are going to Blogher or are in the San Jose area, drop me a line. I am not attending any workshops on Friday so I am pretty open for meetings on that day.

See y'all in Cali.

Besides going to Amsterdam, I also have been invited to speak at or participate in several other events.

This Friday I start participating online in the Media Center's "Media Center Conversations". The Media Center is a media-technology-society think tank; and in this online collaborative project, bloggers and journalists get to mix it up to talk about culture, advocacy, public policy, etc. This will go on until their Global We Media Forum, which is happening in London this year. I'm penciled in to go. I don't have all the details about the online comings and goings but know that LittleJudy and Ron Mwangaguhunga from The Corsair are editors who have lined up evil geniuses like Perez Hilton, Ronni Bennett from Time Goes By, Nichelle Stephens from the Nichelle Newsletter, Ramiro Burr from the San Antonio Express-News and the fellas at Yahoo!Buzz Index.

On February 11th there will be a progressive bloggers "summit" here in New York City at the Grassroots Media Forum.