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BlogHer Audiocast #5: Flame, Blame & Shame

Next in the series of BlogHer Conference '05 session discussions published by IT Conversations, our audio partner, is:

BlogHer Audiocast #5: Flame, Blame & Shame

Liza Sabater moderates a panel including Debi (aka Mobile) Jones, Ellen Spertus and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, exploring the down sie of letting it all hang out on the web. (Original audio recorded by Susan Kitchens.)

From the IT Conversations recording description:

The panel discusses whether men and women react differently to flames and whether gender even matters. They talk about ways to create a respectful dialogue with readers, whether there is a constructive place for anger and how to set boundaries. This lively discussion offers opinions, examples and solutions to the downside of open conversation in the blogosphere.

As always: if you want to be automatically notified when IT Conversations uploads each BlogHer '05 session recording, you can subscribe to an RSS feed to the series here.

BlogHer Audiocast #4: Suffragette Journalists

Next in the series of BlogHer Conference '05 session discussions published by IT Conversations, our audio partner, is:

BlogHer Audiocast #4: Suffragette Journalists

Lisa Stone moderates a panel including Anastasia Goodstein, Chris Nolan and Evelyn Rodriguez, exploring how the media changes when we can all be the media. (Original audio recorded by Susan Kitchens.)

From the IT Conversations recording description:

The panel addresses the different types of online journalism and offers concrete tips for bloggers who want to become more involved in traditional media. Recent examples of breaking news around the world demonstrate the power of blogging as a way of sharing information and this discussion opens the door for interested bloggers to become more active and have their voices heard more widely.

BTW: if you want to be automatically notified when IT Conversations uploads each BlogHer '05 session recording, you can subscribe to an RSS feed to the series here.

On the BlogHer Bookshelf: Kim Ponders, Anastasia Goodstein

A BlogHer's book hit the bookstores this week, and there's one on the way...

The Art of Uncontrolled Flight, a Novel. Meet Kim Ponders, Air Force veteran, blogger of Femme La Guerre, and the author of The Art of Uncontrolled Flight, a Novel. I first "met" Ponders after Hurricane Katrina hit and I read her posts on the need for national leadership (here, here and here).

What's this book about? On her blog, tongue firmly in cheek, Ponders describes her book as "part of the long-standing tradition of muddying the glory of Great Literature with sordid stories about military flying." I call it (with the caveat that I haven't finished the book yet) the story of a woman's coming-of-age via a military career. Ponders has credibility - she flew with the 552 ACW E-3 AWACS wing for six years, from the first Gulf War through the mid-1990s, and serves today as an officer in the Air Force Reserves - thus far, for this reader, her experience shows. My favorite review of the book thus far is from a School Library Journal I found on Amazon, where reviewer Susan H. Woodcock writes:

"As six-year-old Annie helps her mother get ready for a party, her father, a decorated Vietnam pilot–hero both to his country and his daughter–roars up their driveway in a new sports car to take them for a ride. That night, her mother awakens her, and they flee from her philandering father and their Boston-area home. They get as far as Connecticut before Annie's mother, running out of gas and gumption, calls her husband to retrieve them. Annie's identification with her father continues into her adult life. After the breakup of her parents' marriage, she lives with him and various female companions in homes ranging from Texas trailers to society mansions. She enters the Air Force Academy and becomes one of the first female pilots during the 1991 Gulf War. She also is unfaithful to her spouse, and she, too, becomes a hero. As she attends her decoration ceremony, she is disturbed because she had let her plane wander into enemy territory rather than piloting it to safety under hostile fire. Only a press photo and a good-news-starved public-relations machine created a heroic flight out of action that deserved court-martial. Annie discovers that she might resemble her father more than she knew and begins to reevaluate her priorities. Readers will find insight and wisdom in this compelling novel."

I also recommend Ponders' frank Q&A with Mad Max Perkins on BookAngst 101 about her first novel, her own military experience, and her no-baloney approach to classic questions about women in combat. You can track Ponders' book tour through New England, Chicago and Miami here.

Meet Judy Jetson: Decoding the 21st Century Teen. Meanwhile, the founder of Ypulse, Anastasia Goodstein has fantastic news about her own pending non-fiction book. In an email, Goodstein writes:

"I officially am writing a book for St. Martin's Press, which will hit bookstores in winter of '07. It's tentatively called: "Meet Judy Jetson: Decoding the 21st Century Teen" and will focus on how teens are using technology to do all the things teens do (and then some!)."

Next steps for the BlogHer Bookstore. Yesterday, Elisa, Jory and I began our discussions for a next iteration of this Web site. It's going to be a long-term process, but there are a few things we can do quickly -- such as an Amazon affiliate relationship to launch a BlogHer Bookstore on this blog. It's coming soon: Watch this space for some improvements.

If you're a BlogHer and you've written a book that you think we should promote, please add your title and link to Amazon in the comments below. (If your book was one of the titles we asked our conference bookseller, Books, Inc., to sell on July 30, then we're aware of it. But that shouldn't stop you from advertising it again here!)

Many of you write fantastic book reviews as well -- are there enough reviews out there to begin tagging them as BlogHer book reviews so that we can all benefit? Look forward to your thoughts and suggestions...

London Calling: Geek Girls & BlogHers MeetUp for dinner 10/11

Sarah Blow writes from London to ask us to let everyone know that they are planning a "girly geek dinner", their second one. It will be held at the Texas Embassy on the 11th October 2005.

Sign up and find all the details on their wiki.

So all you BlogHers who attend, be sure to write your recap and track it back here, so we can see how the BlogHers party on the other side of the pond.

Do you attend Carnivals?

Here's a question for BlogHers who are interested in the "exposure" part of the BlogHer Mission: do you participate in Blog Carnivals?

I ask because this week's Carnival of the Capitalists is up, and a cursory glance indicates that BlogHers are sparsely represented.

First things first: you may be asking, "What's a Blog Carnival?" I'm going to quote a definition from a great post about Carnivals at freemoneyfinance:

"A blog carnival is a traveling post around a specific theme (for example, the Carnival of the Capitalists has posts about capitalism -- business, politics, money, etc.). The post is made up of article submissions from blogs all over the blogosphere."

The second question you may be asking is, "Why should I care about participating in Blog Carnivals?" And the short answer: it's reliably open way to get more exposure for your ideas and regular spikes in traffic to your site.

More in the extended post...

BlogHer Audiocasts: BlogHer attendees at PodTech.net

As you might have noticed Jon Furrier of PodTech.net had a station set up in the atrium at TechMart during BlogHer, and he was having more informal chats with BlogHers throughout the day. Everything they said could and is being used against them, as he is now posting those audiocasts on his site!

The first two up are:

Halley Suitt and Kaliya Hamlin

Mena Trott

The session audiocasts can help those who weren't there get the value from the BlogHer program. These audio casts can help you feel even more like you were really there.

BlogHer Audiocasts: #2, #3 and an audible "feast"

The crew at ITConversations has been busy producing more audiocasts of BlogHer sessions--as has a program that taped a conversation about BlogHer with Amy Gahran and Koan Bremner. Read on:

BlogHer Audiocast #2: Debate -- Play by today's rules or change the game?

Hear the debate between Charlene Li and Halley Suitt that launched a million posts -- see here, here, here, here, here and here for starters. (Original audio recorded by Susan Kitchens.)

BlogHer Audiocast #3: Audio and Video Blogging

Learn. This. Now. Master Lisa Williams and Ryanne Hodson deliver an outstanding how-to. (Original audio recorded by Koan Bremner.)

And a "feast for your eyes and ears..."

Koan Bremner announces today that:

"The interview for KGNU which Amy Gahran and I did back at the beginning of August (and which I previously wrote about here and here) has finally made it into the "On The Internets" podcast!"

The sound quality is fantastic. More here.

What are the best blogs in the world? Tell this jury about your favorites.

Now that many of us have spent the summer debating—and debunking—sites that rank blogs by the number of incoming links they receive, I’m excited to be involved with a competition that values quality of writing. As I recently wrote on my personal blog--and I'm cross-posting here to recruit participation by as many women bloggers as possible--I've accepted an invitation to join the jury of journalists judging The BOBs: The Best of the Blogs Awards, hosted by Deutsche Welle International. Our job is to select a baker's dozen of the world's best current-events blogs.

I'll describe the categories in a moment. But first, as a shameless user advocate, I need to address the question I expect every BOB nominee and BlogHer and Web user to ask: Who are we twelve as jurors to say who's best?

That's exactly what I wondered when I was invited to join the other jurors. As you'll see, they're an impressive bunch of journalist-types. I’m a little different. Unlike many of the other jurors, I blog in one language only. Unlike all of them, I'm American. And, unlike them, I’m female.

Despite our differences, I'm going to make an assumption that we jurors share one thing in common: A belief that our ability to identify the best blogs depends upon you. In other words, I'm asking for your help -- help us make sure we see the best of the best. The BOBs are soliciting nominees for each of the categories outlined above. Please, nominate a blog that deserves one of these awards -- whether it's yours or someone else's. Complete this suggestion form by the end of the month, and your nomination goes into the hopper and onto the official Web site. As Julien Pain of Reporters Without Borders (you know, that freedom of speech organization that makes this reporter feel like a bon-bon eating lightweight for investigating under the protection of the Freedom of Information Act) wrote at the end of his intro ”Blog for Freedom” in the jurors blog, “I look forward to discovering new blogs, new people and new ideas through these Bobs.”

Amen. The public nomination process is the big reason I'm interested in these awards. At a time when international events demand and deserve authentic, independent writing, reporting and insight about current events, bloggers around the world are chipping away at rhetoric to deliver the real thing. Take Katrina -- you want commentary about real people and news of how failed policy affects everyday lives? These blogs have it.

So if there's a deserving blog out there and we don't know about it, it won't be for lack of asking. Tell us -- we've been given until Sept. 30 to recruit blog nominations for these awards.

Thanks. Now, for a description of the categories, click here.

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BlogHer Volunteer continues her giving ways...and lands on KRON

See BlogHer valued volunteer Grace Davis doing a great job on KRON explaining her current volunteer efforts-Hurricane Katrina relief.

Now how do you suppose KRON found out about this inspiring and very effective grass roots volunteering effort? By throwing themselves into the blogging world in a committed and consistent fashion.

And if you haven't checked out Grace's Katrina Relief blog yet, do it now!

Follow a BlogHer as she volunteers in Texas

BlogHer badgerbag has flown to Texas to help with the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Armed with her laptop, a wireless connection and sheer fortitude she is trying to help people at the Astrodome find out if their loved ones are OK and get them connected.

She is blogging her experiences here.