BlogOn 2005 Quick Takes

Just a handful of random opinions and observations from two highly-caffeinated members of the Voce Nation attending this week’s BlogOn conference in NYC.

First off, congrats to Chris Shipley, Suw Charman, Mike Sigal, and the Guidewire team for another great conference.

The best presentation?  It’s a split between Peter Hirschberg’s lunchtime conversation “The Big Brain” and David Weinberger’s “What Not to Blog About.”

The best interview? Gil Schwartz.

The best demos? Techdirt and Sxip.

What worked? The panels, a nice mix of topics and speakers, also Seth Godin’s keynote.

What didn’t work? the wi-fi and the count them: one, two, three disco balls.  Weird.

Hardest working podcaster? John Furrier, the dude’s an audio machine.

Hardest working New Yorker? The "shoeshine guy."

Hardest question to answer: Can marketers and bloggers get along?

Easiest question to answer: Does the Juicy Fruit Blog suck?

Big observation: There was a lot of talking about listening; transparency and trust too.

Small observation: small nametags = awkward stares; small coffee cups = angry stares.

There’s a webcast here.  Photos here.  Blogs here.  And good selection of hair dryers here (don’t ask).

Some additional thoughts: Everyone thinks Mike’s Mexican. Ronald McDonald is not Mexican, but he blogs. Keith O’Brien should blog. The conference social networking tool was pretty cool. The conference audience was pretty mixed. There are 19 different flavors of Oreos.  There are 19.2 million blogs. And ~30 people wrote conference blog posts that were much better than this.

– Mike & Stacy

BlogOn2005

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