blogher

Come visit our new site: http://blogher.org

OOPS - if you're looking for the BlogHer '06 Conference site, you've come to the wrong place! (This is the historical record of our 2005 conference.)

To find out more about BlogHer and our 2006 conference, join us here: http://blogher.org.

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.

Day One Schedule and Call for Speakers

I am thrilled to unveil our BlogHer Conference '06 schedule for Friday July 28th, Day One of the Conference.

First a word on Day One's purpose:

Day One is about the 'education' part of the BlogHer mission to create an opportunity for all kinds of women bloggers to pursue exposure, education, and community. After last year's conference we received a lot of valuable feedback, and we got some very strong feedback that you wanted more and deeper technology discussions...and hands-on learning. That's Day One.

The Day One Keynote:

Day One Keynote is a conversation with two great technology leaders. BlogHer Marnie Webb will engage Caterina Fake (founder of Flickr and currently with Yahoo!) and Meg Hourihan (founder of Pyra, which became Blogger) in a conversation with the audience about "What's Next?" We'll talk about what's next in tech (and hopefully hear whether they think "Web 2.0" is hype? Or hip?) We'll also talk about what's next after you grab the brass ring...how do you find your next challenge? In the BlogHer spirit we will be collecting questions and comments beforehand and during the session, so this will be a Keynote Conversation, not a coupla Keynote speeches.

Day One Logistics:

First: when we get our online registration site up you will note that Day One and Day Two will be available as separate days or as a two-day conference. So, never fear, if there are those of you who don't want to take a Friday off to get geeky all day long, but can't wait to show up on Saturday, you will be able to.

Second: every session will be focused on learning how, and doing hands-on. For some sessions (e.g. audio, video, photography) we will publish an equipment/software list beforehand. We will do a series of repeated workshops, so people get an opportunity to attend as many of the sessions as possible. We will have not just a primary instructor, but additional mentors available, so people can get help during the hands-on portions of a session.

Call for Speakers: Deadline is 02/15/06:

You'll note that only a handful of these sessions have pre-assigned instructors. We are in talks with other folks, but mostly the opportunity is wide open. If you are interested in speaking, or want to recommend a speaker, for a particular session, please contact me ASAP. Remember these sessions will be hands on. Every attendee should leave a workshop feeling they did something with their own two hands.

The deadline for submission will be 02/15/06. We will be ready to announce the full schedule in time for BlogHer's descent on Austin for SXSWi.

What about Day Two?

Day Two is still percolating and its draft will be published soon. Day Two will have both BlogHer-defined programming and Room of Your Own opportunities, just like last year. And there will be a call for speakers and panel submissions for Day Two as well. Stay tuned.

What about Conference registration:

It's coming. Expect our new flexible conference registration site to be up within about one week.

OK, let me have it: your feedback, your speaker ideas, your wish list for what you would want to get out of the sessions that will be part of BlogHer Day One.

Bay Area BlogHers: Net Tuesday Event this week!

This announcement from Britt Bravo at Tech Soup:

On January 10th, join Bay Area web innovators and social change agents for casual conversation + drinks at Net Tuesday!

Jason Schultz, Electric Frontier Foundation's staff attorney will talk about EFF's work defending our freedom in the digital world. Myles Weissleder, VP of Public Affairs from Meetup, will share some new ways Meetup is connecting folks.

Doors open at 6pm @ Varnish Art Gallery & Wine Bar, 77 Natoma St, San Francisco. Let us know you'll be there at Upcoming.org or Zvents.

Help me guest-interview Global Voices co-founders Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman?

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's Yi-Tan conference call, in which I'll guest-interview Global Voices Online co-founders Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman one month after their second annual summit. These two are doing an amazing job of raising the profiles of women bloggers around the world.

I hope you'll join us (here's how) -- and I welcome your questions on the Yi-Tan wiki or via email. Here's more about Yi-Tan and more about Founder Jerry Michalski. And here's the teaser I posted on the wiki (see link above):

Listening to Global Voices
Yi-Tan Weekly Tech Call #66
Monday, January 9,  2006

• "Images from Palestine: School Book" posted by Haitham Sabbah
• "Egypt: The Massacre of the Sudanese Refugees" by Mostafa Hussein
• "No Longer a Bridge to Caracas" by Iria Puyosa

You won't find these stories by tuning in to the BBC or to CNN. In fact, if you search Google News, chances are that you won't even find a story in the mainstream media about the citizen journalism site that delivered these stories. Yet Global Voices Online is an award-winning news destination of choice for more than 300,000 international visitors a month.  An IRC Chat will be available during the call, here.

Lisa Stone is looking forward to guest-hosting Monday's Yi-Tan call, in which we'll talk what's next for Global Voices Online. Called "the United Nations of blogging" by The Guardian, Global Voices reports on arguably more countries than the BBC, leveraging cheap, easy blogging technology to write about bloggers around the world. A little over a year since it launched, the site gets 300,000 visitors a month. In a conversation with co-founders Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman one month after their second annual summit, we'll ask:

See you Monday at 10:30am Pacific, 1:30pm Eastern time.

• What does it mean to be a "conversation community"? Are you an alternative world news agency? A stage for global activism? An international collection of diaries? Will your site always be English only? Take us down the road three to five years.
• How does this "conversation community" take its next steps, when so many bloggers live in countries that lack a free press? How about when many of these countries are at war?
• What do you want and/or need from the first world and why? Money? Attention? Feedback?

Technical fix for BlogHerRoll issues in IE

Thanks go to BritBlogHer Improbulus from Consuming Experience for bringing this issue to our attention. (I, being a Mac user, never view things in IE and had no idea there even was an issue.)

Is your sidebar dropping to the bottom of the window in IE - yet it looks fine in Firebox or other browsers? Usually that's because IE can't properly handle something that's too wide for a particular section of your webpage...

For example, say you display a blogroll in your blog sidebar (e.g. the BlogHerRoll in mine) by inserting some Javascript code in your template. Well, just one blog in the blogroll list which has too long a title for the width of the sidebar may make your entire sidebar drop to the bottom of the window, in Internet Explorer.

Improbulus provides sample code to add to the BlogHerRoll javascript code you've already added to your site to fix this problem.

See her post for the details.

Thanks again!

UPDATED: BlogHer seeks contributing editors

Newsflash: Earlier today Yesterday, BlogHer announced openings for contributing editors to post fantastic, insightful updates on a new BlogHer Web site launching later this month. We've received so many strong applications that half the many openings are considered filled for launch. Check the complete post (below) for remaining opportunities. Thanks.

Opportunity: BlogHer seeks contributing editors to write BlogHer's surfing guide to blogs by women. When we relaunch our site later this month, we're organizing our blogroll into 20+ popular topics. The contributing editors will blog short, fantastic, pithy guides to their favorite posts from  5-10 blogs listed in BlogHer's blogroll for that topic. We ask editors to commit to posting two to three times a week, Monday through Sunday, to help tell the world about the latest breaking news, commentary and buzz by women who write about this subject. Here's an example.

What BlogHer will do for contributing editors: These are volunteer positions. In return, the BlogHer site will work hard to promote all contributing editors and their blogs, including a profile page on the new site that is uniquely branded. We want to give all contributing editors a high profile on this well-trafficked site.

How to apply: Please add your name and the topic you'd like to edit in the comments below, or email me directly with a subject line that reads, "Topic: (Topic name), (Your name)". Please also list your blog(s) and links to any posts you think are particularly relevant to your writing about a topic. I recommend you sign up ASAP if you're interested -- there are so many terrific writers in this network that I'm planning to assign topics on a first-come, first-served basis.

List of topics and contributing editors thus far: Here's the list below, and the names of bloggers on our board and team who have signed up thus far. I realize this list of topics (below) is not a comprehensive taxonomy. We don't want it to be – these categories are designed to aid as a surfing guide to the latest, greatest posts by women who blog. Here's the list:

UPDATED: The BlogHer has landed! Announcing our 2006 conference site.

Get ready to party with the BlogHers, because we have secured the perfect spot for our 2006 2-day Conference on July 28th and 29th: the Hyatt San Jose.

Let me introduce you to some of the features of the Hyatt San Jose. First, there are a number of conveniences for BlogHers coming from out of town:

-Only half a mile from the San Jose Airport
-Free shuttle service from the Airport to the Hotel and back
-On-site Hertz rental car center
-Full service Business Center
-2 restaurants, plus room service until midnight
-Free WiFi in all public areas
-In-room high speed Internet
-Full re-model to be completed by the time of the conference
-Pool and whirlpool
-On-site Fitness Center included
-Plenty of free, on-site parking for our local attendees

And, drum roll please, we have been able to secure a rate of only $75/night for BlogHers! We have a block of 200 rooms set aside for the night of Friday July 28th, but the great part is that they will extend the $75 price for up to 3 days before and 3 days after that date for attendees who want to turn their stay into a longer vacation. The deadline for securing this rate is Saturday July 1st, so mark your calendars now.

The reservation number is: 408 993 1234, and they will also be setting up a special web page for BlogHer reservations. Our group name is: BlogHer. Stay tuned for the web link as soon as they set it up.

As for their accommodations for our conference itself, there are a few more details I'd like to share:

-Power strips to every table
-There will be both WiFi and plenty of actual Ethernet connections, to eliminate not only the bandwidth, but also the authentication bottleneck.

And perhaps my favorite feature of all: networking events out on the patio by the pool!! Yes, there is a large outdoor area at the center of all the Day Two meeting rooms...complete with mucho greenery and a large outdoor swimming pool. It's a very tropical feel and should be lovely on an evening in July in California!

We checked out several places for BlogHer this year, including convention centers, but we loved the fact that BlogHer will really be able to take over the Hyatt. We'll be the only event there, and we will probably represent a majority of the people staying there for those couple of nights. So that is why I said the BlogHer has landed...the Hyatt had better ready themselves for a BlogHer invasion in late July!

UPDATED: Everyone is going gaga for the $75 price , so I really have to give credit where credit is due. BlogHer Team member Maria Niles (who organized last year's festive pre-conference dinner) did the legwork on the Hyatt San Jose, and that $75 price was in place before any of the rest of us even checked it out. Thanks Maria!

Color me not surprised.

Happy New Year everyone!

Just thought I'd point you all to the latest Pew report on Internet usage, broken down by gender, in case you haven't seen it.

Coupla high points:

*Young women outpace young men (that's 18-29 years old, incase you were wondering about today's definition of "young") 86% to 80%.
*Among African Americans, 60 percent of women are online, compared with 50 percent of men.

One low point:

*The only reason men still hold a 68% to 66% overall advantage is that in the oldest age segment (65 and older) men lead women 34 to 21%. Ouch. That'll be a stat we'll be talking about at our SXSW Interactive Respect Your ElderBloggers session.

There's other interesting info about adoption patterns, and I thought something else too: with women getting online as much, and often more, than their male counterparts, it's clear that developers need to care quite a bit about our perspective, no?

One last key data point, pulled not from the news story about the report, but from Pew's site:

"Still, our data show that men and women are more similar than different in their online lives, starting with their common appreciation of the internet’s strongest suit: efficiency. Both men and women approach with gusto online transactions that simplify their lives by saving time on such mundane tasks as buying tickets or paying bills.

Men and women also value the internet for a second strength, as a gateway to limitless vaults of information. "

Bon Voyage, Evelyn Rodriguez

We'll miss one of our West Coast BlogHers, Evelyn Rodriguez, who starts her sojourn to Asia today, the next phase of her citizen journalism project around tsunami-struck regions.

Evelyn writes: "I embark on pilgrimage to talk to tsunami survivors and relief workers - from monks to fishermen to journalists to the bungalow operator that saved a guest family's kids to the photographer from Palo Alto that shifted his career to start "Operation Playground" for tsunami kids and much more.  I'll be going to th tsunami-struck areas of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India (including hopefully the Andaman Islands) for two months on a solo backpack journalist foray - live blogging along the way."

You can see Evelyn's updates at TsunamiAnniversary or sign up for her email dispatches here.

If you want to help fund Evelyn's project, micropayments are being accepted here.

Have posts that are relevant to the TsunamiAnniversary Project? Share them under the tsunami2005 tag here.

We wish you peace, love, smiles, and stories, Evelyn. See you when you get back!