blogher

Updated: Babysitter shares and beyond...

When I read these comments about BlogHer from one of the readers of Robert Scoble's massively popular blog, I had to respond.

Do you have additional thoughts? I would love to hear from you below...And I owe a huge tip-o-the-hat to Scoble for reminding the world that, yes, men are still invited on July 30. -- Lisa

Original post of 7.6.05:

A number of you have asked my help in hiring a babysitter for the weekend of BlogHer Camp Con '05, and I am here with an answer!

The good news is that the SF Bay Area has a great temporary sitter service, Town and Country Resources, where we BlogHers (and Hims for dads who are joining) can hire help for Friday night dinner, Saturday's conference and/or Saturday dinner.

The even better news is that I know the temporary placement counselor, MaryPat Powers, because she was once my nine-year-old's preschool teacher. MaryPat is as good at wrangling us parents as she is at teaching kids, I'm thrilled to report. Here's how to reach her for help:

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: 650.326.8570

Web site: http://tandcr.com 

One note of caution: Babysitting in the SF Bay Area costs--ask in $16 or more an hour--and, frankly, if it doesn't, you may have hired the wrong person! So I recommend that you use the comments area of this post to list yourself if you would like to share a sitter with another BlogHer. Please, please do not list your childrens' names. Instead, please mention below their ages and ask folks interested in a sittershare to email you. I think Town and Country will be okay with two little ones per sitter or three older children per sitter.

And just let me know if you have an improvement on this process, okay?

Heads up: Pre-conference prep session details

By planning this conference in public on this blog, and by asking some questions during the registration process, we have learned a lot about what people want from a conference.

While the answer to that is "lots of different things", there are some common themes that have arisen.

Themes like:
- We want to be engaged...and to participate
- We want to be able to hear passionate, differing, even opposing views, without hearing a lot of vitriolic rhetoric
- We want to have a conversation with, not be talked at by, conference speakers

So, how can BlogHer meet these and other needs expressed by our attendees?

Our idea is in the extended post...

Tag: blogher

Some interesting attendee stats

When (not if, but when) you go sign up for BlogHer you'll find a little questionnaire is part of the registration process. There are two reasons we did this:

1. we wanted to use this info to fine tune this year's Conference.
2. we thought it would help us plan future events, perhaps even including other geographies to target

I recently did a midway point compilation of the particulars of our attendees thus far and thought I'd share some of the interesting facts about who will be there on July 30th:

~10% are students
~15% men
~53% are from outside Silicon Valley
~54% have never been to a blogging conference before

More than 75% of attendees do care about either links or traffic or both.

Most attendees thought every reason we suggested as a possible motivator to come to BlogHer sounded pretty good and checked 'All of the above.' Among those who picked specific motivators, most seems specifically interested in meeting bloggers face to face...bloggers they know and bloggers they don't. (For all of our online relationships, we still jump at the chance for that f2f contact, don't we?)

Lastly, almost 40% listed "All Talk, No Take-away" as their least-liked aspect of other conferences they have attended. "Too Sterile/No Passion" came in second.

What do we get from this info?

-We're glad we planned several networking sessions/events starting the night before and through to the close of the conference.

-We're glad we've banned PowerPoint from most sessions! Poor PowerPoint, so scorned.

-We're glad we made sure to get alternate viewpoints represented in many of the sessions...by people passionate about their viewpoints!

Keep those registrations (and questionnaire responses) coming! [Remember, we have to close of registration on July 26th and cannot accept onsite registrations.]

Updated: Want to be one of our confirmed live BlogHers?

Updated again 7.12.05 - Thank you for your interest! We are very happy to report that we (make that Elisa Camahort and Mir Verburg, who have worked very hard on this program), have filled all our BlogHerShip opportunities for Conference 2005. Please don't hesitate to add your name below if you'd like to be considered for 2006. -- Lisa

-----Original post:

Great news -- Earlier this week, Miriam Verburg posted this list of the confirmed BlogHer live-bloggers at the beta community site. 

Even better news: She could use some more help! As I've written before, we're particularly interested in getting people to blog sessions in languages other than English. Here's the scoop: We'll pay for your $99 conference--yup, you get in FREE--if you commit to live blog one or more sessions. So if you'd like to live-blog a few sessions in exchange for a free pass to the event, please email Mir.

Here's Mir's update on who's live-blogging thus far--and who's doing what:

"Thanks to everyone for sending in your questionnaires promptly, I will update this post over the week-end to let you know which sessions you are covering.

Attendees

Gigi
blog: http://braindancing.blogspot.com
preferred sessions: any

Ndesanjo
blogs: http://jikomboe.blogspot.com || http://digitalafrica.blogspot.com
preferred sessions:
- What You Can Get Away With: Legal Tips
- Moblogging pioneers
- Get Your Word Out: Audio/Video-casting
- Advanced Tools
- Blog Crushes
- The BlogHer Debate

Tony
blog: http://www.buzzhit.com/buzzblog.html
preferred sessions: Advanced Tools and/or Women who want to fund, build etc...

Jeff
blog.softtechvc.com
preferred sessions: blogging for business

Ramadhani
blog:http://www.msangimdogo.blogspot.com/
preferred sessions: post-conference translation

Ellon
Blog URL: http://barbie2be.blogspot.com
Location: san jose, california
Language capabilities: english only (sorry)
Interest Areas:
I think I could help in the Blogging 101 as a relatively new, some what technically savvy blogger. Also with the How to get Naked session as I use my blog to talk about things in my life.

Jill Fallon
Blog URL: Business of Life blog/
preferred sessions: tbd

Agenda in html

Per many kind suggestions that our original attempt to display the full agenda in the blog body was painfully ugly and hard to read, and even kinder suggestions that having to download a pdf to view the full agenda was, well, sucky, we enlisted that all-around amazing volunteer Mir to help us create, instead, an html file that you can click to to view the entire agenda...and then click through to the various speakers' blogs or click through to the discussions going on about each topic right here on this very blog.

So, here goes...this is a test, this is only a test.

Here's the new agenda, is it beautiful?

5 who should be acknowledged now!

The BlogHer Team and the BlogHer Advisory Board are listed in the left-hand side bar. This Advisory Board has been anything but a silent partner, helping us on everything from the agenda to securing sponsorships. Each of these women are volunteering their time to make this conference not only happen, but be the best that it can be, as it were.

Now, I wanted to publicly acknowledge 5 additional BlogHers who have taken major tasks off our hands and are going to do their part to make BlogHer go off without a hitch.

Grace Davis: Grace is working with independent book sellers in the area on getting a book table for the vendor area.

Courtney Lowery: Courtney, as we already mentioned, worked with Jen McClure on our recent fabulous BlogHer edition of the NewCommunuications BlogZine.

Maria Niles: Maria is taking on Friday night, from our BlogHer training session in the afternoon to the dinner in the evening.

Ashley Richards: Ashley is working with some of our Advisory Members to create Discussion Guidelines for the conference. How to avoid the pitfalls of other conferences? Make audience integration and interaction part of the ethos for every session.

Miriam Verburg: Miriam has been doing yeoman's work for a while, corralling our Bloghership program!

Visit their blogs now, and visit them at BlogHer...to thank them :)

Gotten your hotel room yet? Here's some info.

As of today, here are the latest rates at five of the closest hotels to the conference center:

The Westin Santa Clara (right next door)
Lowest rate = $109

The Santa Clara Hilton (one long block)
Lowest rate = $99

The Santa Clara Marriott (about a mile)
Lowest rate = $99

The Santa Clara Holiday Inn (also about a mile, with shuttle service)
Lowest rate = $65

The Biltmore (SJ airport and free 5-mile radius shuttle)
Lowest rate: $89/night

If you're interested in room-sharing, you can post such an interest at BlogSheroes here.

The schedule keeps getting bigger and better

OK, it's been a while since we posted a new version of the Agenda.

So, trumpet fanfare please, here is the latest BlogHer Agenda, now in html, not pdf, YAY!!!!!

What's new? (Other than the recent additions Lisa posted?) Well...let me tell ya:

Mary Smaragdis from Sun Microsystem (perhaps you know her as Mary, Mary Quite Contrary) has joined our Blogging for Business session.

Marnie Webb is joining in on the Advanced Tools session.

And there's a good news/bad news update on the Politics session.

I'll give it to you straight first: Unfortunately LaShawn had to withdraw due to a family event, but the good news is that she personally recommended someone so good it will surely ease the pain, meet Ms. Ambra Nykol. With Courtney Lowery moderating Ambra and Roxanne, I think we are in for a rocking good time talking political blogging.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this new agenda is that it's your first peek at the Room of Your Own sessions that people have proposed.

There is truly something for everyone! As someone said to me...the only problem is picking which one to go to. Good thing we have those committed live-bloggers getting Blogherships so we can make sure the conference is thoroughly blogged to death.

Schedule explodes: ¡Lleguen las nuevas!

Saddle up, chicas, the BlogHer Conference schedule just keeps getting better. I'm frankly beside myself with glee to announce that these women are joining us to talk about blogging on July 30:

La Queen Sucia - That's right, author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. She will join Liza Sabater, Debi Jones and Ellen Spertus in the Flame, Blame and Shame panel. Don't miss her post today - her latest book, Playing With Boys, is coming out in paperback and has a gorgeous new design.

Noriko Takiguchi - I pounced on this journalist and author (Asahi Shimbun Newspaper, Nikkei Newspaper among others) at a recent blogging fete thrown by Renee Blodgett and she agreed to join our panel on Globalization. Nancy White and I are still fighting over her, though, so we'll see...

Patricia Nakache - Venture capitalist Nakache, a former Fortune magazine writer and McKinsey consultant, is watching the blog space closely from Sand Hill Road. She's joining moderator Mary Hodder and blawgging pioneer and attorney Denise Howell on the panel, "Women who want to fund, build and sell things."

Note to yourself: Time to register if you haven't already...

Elisa is working on a few other exciting announcements, so we'll update this one-page schedule soon...

We love the nightlife

Note: The Blogsheroes|BlogHer Beta is still undergoing tweaks, so let’s get this party started here…

Don’t think for a minute that you’re getting out of BlogHer Con ’05 Saturday night without a good time. After all, if Elisa's pillowfight is going to take place, we need to get on it!

Here’s the scoop: The evening of July 30, for those of you who are interested, we're continuing BlogHer's conversations, fun and games via small, subject-oriented dinners.

My question for you is: How should we organize our Saturday-night dinners? By birds-of-a-feather? By session? By favorite cocktail? You tell me.

Yup, I’m on the do-ocracy kick again. Like a broken record. Only this time I want to know what topic you’d like to discuss with your new BlogHer friends. Dinners need six people for us to make the reservations for you, so feel free to openly recruit in your comments below.

I’ve gotten the party started with a Citizen Journalism dinner. By the time July 30 rolls around, I may re-name it Keggar-w/TexMex-for-Suffragette-Journalists-and-Friends. If you'd like to talk about women writing news of any kind, I would love to clink glasses with you!

So - what dinner to you want to hostess and/or what dinner do you want to attend? (Hostesses will get to select the restaurant, so g'head and grab the opportunity.) Please provide:

Name: ?

Email: ??

Dinner topic: ???

Hostess: Indicate yes or no

... Oh, and bring your own pillow.