BlogHer 2006 : The good

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 ...

Feminist were out in full force. I finally met the infamous Lauren of Feministe. She was there with Lindsay Beyerstein (who oddly enough is absent from my blogroll, WTF!). While chatting with them I also met TW and her loving-half, the goddess behind Daily Dose of Denise. They are a happily coupled couple of feminists and blogging homeschool moms with whome I bonded immediately. TW & Denise know Lauren, they live in Florida and have met JJ Ross, and I had no idea but ... they love culturekitchen!

'Tis another network that never ceases to amaze me how I end up having one or degrees of separation from many of their members.

Moments before meeting TW and Denise I also met Debbie Notkin and Laurie Toby Edison of Body Impolitic. I've seen Laurie's work at a photography show here in NYC and was struck by how classic in their aesthetics yet radically disruptive the images are. They had more than a few things to say about the images and take away from the conference and I will address those in BlogHer: The Bad.

Moving along.

I had great conversations with too many people, so slap me if I missed yours (given that I was indeed nursing a headache/gut problems and hangover on Saturday).

Marc and Lisa Cantor are up to some interesting social networking goodness with People Aggregator. It was marvelously refreshing to talk with people about the next marketing and technology trend in the 'blogosphere'. I had Marc completely wrong when I met him about 3-4 years ago. Marc is a big guy who can be a bit loud at times but I have to say, he's never been patronizing like some of the other guys in his network. It does not stop people, especially women, from complaining about him.

Robert Scoble was there at Blogher in his new TechCrunch hat. It was weird to see him shooting video and getting down and dirty with the non-techie masses and ... ahem ... LOVING it! I blamed him for the demise of Microsoft and he rambled off some linking and traffic stats he got from his announcement --with a wickedly pleased smirk on his face. So I joked with Scoble about what the hell he was doing there since he was one of those guys that don't link and he immediately laughed something to the effect, so you're on Shelley Powers' camp! Dude, I am always on Shelley's camp.

Another guy I met was Phil Hollows, the founder of Feedblitz --the provides y'all with email updates of our site. It was funny because we were standing in line for drinks. Scoble was in front of me and Niall Kennedy, formerly of Technorati scooted along to say hi as well. Phil almost had a heart attack when he realized who I was speaking to. "You know Robert Scoble?" No, but I bump into him A LOT in these kinds of conferences. Heh.

After the geeks panel, I had a great love and bitchfest about Drupal with Mir, Kaliya and Laura Scott. I swear, it would have been heavenly perfect if Lynn had been there. One of the actions that came out of the panel was to create a mailing list for the technologrrls of BlogHer and a tech support group that will serve non-techie women. I offered to be a mentor since I will be a mentoree in business matters. Can't wait!

Speaking of women in business technology ...

I bumped into Mena Trott coming out of the bathroom ... heh. I had no idea she was going to be there with ... gasp! Meg Hourihan and Catherina Fake. Hello! Who forgot to send me the frigging memo? Which takes me to the sad realization that I know I am forgetting a lot of really good conversations at the moment.

If you read this and know we spoke ... please, please, puuuh-leaaaaaaaase, drop a note in the comments with your links. Because, seriously I don't want to miss out on anybody.

Next? BlogHer2006 : The bad followed by BlogHer2006: The Ugly. Stay tuned.

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