blogher

IMPORTANT: Server and domain changes over the next 24 hours

As part of the Beta launch, we will be changing some domain and server settings. Some of these will be instantaneous. Some will happen over the next 24 hours.

Until all domain settings are changed, you might experience difficulty in accessing and/or using the site here. It takes time for domain registration DNS settings to propagate through the worldwide web -- meaning your ISP might not "see" the new BlogHer.org settings right away. Please be patient. Everything will come back together rather quickly.

The end result is that by sometime Monday -- but most likely sometime today -- you should be able to reach a new site by typing blogher.org into your browser.

UPDATED: BlogHer Registration is LIVE!!

OK, everybody, in honor of BlogHer being on the same weekend as the Grand Prix race, start your engines!!

BlogHer Registration is live!

You will notice several differences between this year and last year:

-We are a two-day conference, and we are allowing people to register for individual days or both days, as they so choose. Remember, Day One is techie and hands on. Day Two is culture, conversation and community...and will be the Day that supports Room of Your Own sessions.

-We are allowing people to buy evening cocktail party attendance separately. So if you only want to attend one day's worth of sessions, but want to party both nights, you can feel free. Or if you want to bring your significant other to the evening events, you can buy them tickets to just the cocktail parties.

Yes, there are going to be caps on attendance. I will certainly try to give people more heads up than last year! Right now we are estimating that Day One will be about the same size as last year's conference, and that Day Two could be up to double in size.

Stay tuned for an update on the hotel room situation.

Consider the flag to have dropped...and the start gun to have fired.

UPDATED: The Two-Day Student Pass option is now publicly visible. Thanks to danah for her sharp eyes.

Hotel Room update: Get 'em while they're hot.

As some of you have noted here, the online registration form for the Hyatt San Jose was no longer giving the $75 rate.

I spoke with the hotel this morning, and the truth is that you had blown through our initial commitment for room nights on Thursday night! After continued negotiation with the hotel, we have secured more rooms. So, here's what is still available, on a first-come, first-served basis:

We secured 75 more rooms for Thursday and Saturday nights. Friday night has even more nights available (160.)

There are only a handful of $75 rooms left on the outlying days (Tues./Wed./Sunday./Mon.)

When it comes to Thursday and Friday nights we should be able to increase the number of rooms again at the current rate, if needed. But be forewarned that, given the Grand Prix and other conventions in San Jose that weekend, the hotel cannot commit to any more $75 rooms for Saturday evening. They do expect to be sold out all weekend. (And their regular rate will likely rise to over $200 as we get closer to July.)

One more thing to bear in mind: their online group booking site seems to have an inconvenient limitation. Once one night you're requesting is sold out at the group rate, it kicks the whole reservation request out of the group rate. Some of you have already noticed this.

Apparently the phone operators can handle this better than the online site can. So, if you have a problem with not seeing the group rate, feel free to contact me to let me know, but you might also want to call the group rate reservation 800-number to get your reservation done: 1 800 633 7313

Last thing: I think at this point it is wise for us to start checking out room block availability at the other nearby hotels. Maria and I will work on finding a couple of other options within half a mile of the Hyatt. If we start to blow through these rooms at the Hyatt, we will post alternatives.

Thanks everyone. I can't tell you how pleased we are that even before registration went live we are seeing so many of you making your hotel reservations. We are obviously going to rock this joint!

BlogHer Beta Site Launch: 7 days and counting...

It's official: In one week, BlogHer is beta-launching a new site -- complete with tagline and brilliant contributing editors. Who are the editors, you may wonder? What will the new site mean for me? In one week--perhaps sooner--I'll update this blog with more information about:

- Your new opportunities to use the network to promote your ideas and writing;

- Who the editors are, what they're working on and how you can get involved;

- More about the Drupal deity who's coding her fingers numb on the site;

Let's meet-up Monday, Jan. 30, to toast it together (see details below). Please mark your calendars: I will join as many of you as I can drag out next Monday night to hoist a glass - real or virtual - to this hard work.

Where: The Thirsty Bear (see address, map and directions in the extended post)

When: 7 p.m., Monday, Jan. 30, San Francisco. As the hostess for BlogHer

Who: All BlogHers and our friends

Forgot to mention: women speaker stats at SXSW

I spoke with Hugh from SXSW on Monday night, and he told me they have 110 women speakers at SXSW Interactive this year.

w00t, if I may be so undeservedly geeky.

(Now, yes, I did ask "out of how many", and it's out of about 300, but still...gotta give 'em some props.)

One more SXSWi panel is under BlogHer's wing

After some participants had to withdraw somewhat last minute, Hugh from SXSW Interactive asked BlogHer if we would like to help him rescue a panel that seemed right up our alley.

Given that the panel is entitled "Increasing Women's Visibility Online: Whose Butt Should We Be Kicking?", how could we refuse!? We are excited about it because it is definitely going to be right up there with the other four panels BlogHer is co-producing...and featured some kick-ass women with a variety of viewpoints on the subject of women's visibility. Here are the deets:

BlogHer/SXSW Session #5: Increasing Women's Visibility on the Web: Whose Butt Should We Be Kicking?
Sunday March 12th 11:30-12:30

Where are the women online? Stop asking "where are the women?" and think bigger: Why don't women have a public profile equal to their contributions? And whose fault is it? To answer this question, BlogHer has recruited women who perceive the issue in very different ways...and therefore propose very different solutions.

Join Ayse Enginer in conversation with Liz Henry, Tara Hunt, Virginia Debolt and Jan Kabili, and the 5th panelist: the BlogHer audience.

Favorite BlogHim post about BlogHer of the day

Adam from Darwinian Web makes an observation about "chick blogs":

Based on my referrer logs I've discovered a valuable lesson. If you link to female bloggers and say nice things about them, they link right back. Weird. Guys don't do that. When is the next Blogher?

And here I am, proving his point.

Favorite BlogHer post of the day

BlogHers say the darndest things. (Am I dating myself with that reference...anyone remember that show. Anyone?)

Today I found this post from sarah marinara:

I just promised JP that I wouldn’t make her go to our 10 year high school reunion if we went to Blogher instead. We’ll see if that works out.

It better work out!

sarah marinara, who calls her blog the "ramblings of your average half mexican, half honkey mormon chick with an attitude and a perscription for Paxil" is so added to our BlogHerRoll :)

Clarification: How speaker submissions work.

It was suggested to me that I could be a little more clear with my description of how speaker submissions will work. So here is a more detailed description:

Day One is all about technical training and hands-on learning. We have determined the schedule, but we need instructors. I am looking for people to submit themselves or others as qualified to lead any of the sessions currently without named instructors. You could submit your resume, your applicable site URLs, other speaking experience or teaching experience...whatever you think will make the case that you should lead a session. If you do not want to be an instructor, but see a session where you'd like to be a floating mentor, helping people hands-on, particularly in languages other than English, you can let me know that too.

Day Two, which is yet to be published, is going to be more about the community, the conversation and the culture of blogging. There will be two kinds of sessions when released: those like Day One that are already defined, but need speakers, and probably 6 open sessions slots for what we call "Room of Your Own" topics...sessions that BlogHer the organization will not define, but are eager to let BlogHers in the community define for us.

When Day Two is published you can either, again, propose yourself as a speaker for a specific session, or if you think we're missing the boat by not having a session on _______ (fill in the blank) you can volunteer to organize one in a Room of Your Own track.

Last year some of the Room of Your Own sessions were among the most well-attended and buzz-worthy sessions the whole day...leaving some of the planning to you truly makes this the "conference the community built" and embodies the spirit of Do-ocracy that BlogHer embraces.

Feel free to contact me directly if you still have questions, or with your submissions.

Reality Blogging: A Courtship Dissected in the Blogosphere

When Danny Bonaduce made his couple's therapy sessions the stuff of series television I thought he was a a real attention whore, so starved for any form of notoriety he'd succumb to the drinker's equivalent of rubbing alcohol to fill his chronic need for publicity.

Yet when Love Coach Rinatta Paries told me about her blogging experiment with her client, Jodi, I could only think, how brave. Jodi has agreed to open her relationship coaching sessions to the Blogosphere, while she works on finding, and maintaining a relationship with, the man of her dreams.

Says Paries:

"Jodi will be getting complimentary coaching from me in exchange for her willingness and openness to share herself on my blog and hers. My biggest reason for coaching her publicly is so that the world, and you, can see what love coaching with me is like and how much love coaching with me can benefit your love life."

I met Rinatta Paries when I worked with writers at ThirdAge to develop the site's blog. She had never blogged before, but she was willing to learn and always looking for ways to enhance her content. Now she hosts her own blog in addition to contributing to ThirdAge.

I appreciate Paries's full-blown honesty about why she agreed to coach Jodi publicly:

"To be honest, I hope that you will find this experiment, and my coaching, so intriguing, appealing and powerful that you will be uncontrollably compelled to hire me as your coach."

But why had Jodi agreed to do this publicly? Because it's free? Maybe. Perhaps she is willing to allow others to learn from her experiences. I can only wonder what the man in this equation will think of all this; will he even find out? Perhaps he's not a blogger. Perhaps he's a dancer, or a sandbagger, and doesn't spend much time on a computer.

In any event, I'm sure single women--and men--will learn from these sessions. Perhaps that's why I like this better than Breaking Bonaduce: There's a shared outcome, something useful to be gained by being made privy to the conversation other than mouth-dropping disbelief that child actors can be so pathetic.

Click here for all the deets. Also note that, in addition to the email coaching, Rinatta's and Jodi's phone sessions will be podcast. BALLSY!