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.

BlogHer '05 Survey Results

Thank you, all of you who endured took the time and effort to complete the BlogHer Conference '05 Decompression Survey. Here is a brief synopsis of what you said -- and we listened, as you'll see in our first BlogHer email news bulletin coming this week.

What did we learn? You want another conference, we learned from sifting these responses. You want a two-day conference. You want the very best people to speak and you really, really want these speakers to be women. You want the conference to be near you. And you have incredible, supportive things to say about each other and the experience of coming together.

On a personal note, I need to add that I was unprepared for one facet of your feedback. I've been administering and reporting on women's opinion surveys for many years and know for a fact that women don't feel a need to pull their punches in this format. So don't ask women for their opinions if you don't want a frank answer! But when I opened these responses, the survey feedback felt like a huge group hug. Yes, you administered a few sharp raps to our knuckles, and we deserve them (longer sessions, more time to socialize and no more Shania Twain videos, damn it!). But most of your suggestions were qualitative, specific, strategic, and amounted to an incredible outpouring of enthusiasm and support. I provide some samples below.

To wit: 76 percent of the people who responded to this survey volunteered to help out with BlogHer '06. Now for that, I know, Elisa, Jory and I will happily burn the midnight oil. Again, thank you.

I've selected and summarized these questions in the following order if you click through to the extended post. Here goes:

1. BlogHer attendee demographics
2. Please rate your satisfaction with BlogHer overall on a scale of 1-5? (5 is high, 1 is low; please choose one)
3. Do you feel BlogHer fulfilled its mission of creating greater community, education and exposure for women bloggers? Why or why not?
4. How would you rate the overall quality of the sessions? (5 is high, 1 is low; please choose one)
5. How would you rate the overall quality of the discussion guides/moderators and speakers at BlogHer? (5 is high, 1 is low; please choose one)
6. How important do you think it is for BlogHer to maintain an all-female speaking roster?
7. How well did the conference do overall to involve participants rather than having traditional panels?
8. How would you rate the overall quality of BlogHer's approach to networking and getting to know each other, e.g., at Friday dinner and Birds of a Feather meet-ups?
9. Would you be interested in a conference that lasted two or more days? What would be the optimal duration to cover everything at a BlogHer conference?
10. Do you prefer that BlogHer Conference 2006 be held on a weekend or a weekday?
11. In case you haven't had the opportunity to address this question above, what did you enjoy most about BlogHer Conference '05?
12. In case you haven't had the opportunity to answer this question above, what did you dislike most about BlogHer Conference '05?
13. Bonus question

More...

Transcripts of BlogHer's global chat

The Americas. UK. Spain. France. China. India. That's a starter list of the countries represented in BlogHer's Global Chat, run and donated by Laura Scott and her business partner Katherine Lawrence. In a moving post about her marathon day, Laura wrote:

"The chatroom was an unqualified success, despite the last-minute challenges (which I'll write about later). I don't have any official numbers, but the room was busy the entire time. Late morning and early afternoon seemed to be the peak times, with some 30-40 people in the room chatting all at once. You almost had to speed-read just to keep up. I was also pleased to see some eminent bloggers check in and stay a while. With the sensational live bloggers like Socal Mom, Spanglemonkey and Mary Beth (whose shoe blogging was a hoot) giving us near-real-time reports from the scene, we truly felt connected; the Santa Clara meet-up became a global event. With little gestation time (and a whole lot of effort), BlogHer was born with a loud cry heard worldwide." (Read the whole thing here, as well as Laura's belief that the next BlogHer Conference must go well beyond chat.)

Here's a taster of some of the chat dialogue, from Transcript #4 of six total (which I copied from the text file into Word for easy reading):

bucky4eyes says to  (2005-7-30 14:25:24): howdy! 

Rachel says to  (2005-7-30 14:25:40): I tend to use flame as a negative, but there's not a single word for a positive statment - I'd use something like constructive criticism 

larkspur says to  (2005-7-30 14:25:49): You can have a huge argument without flaming. 

Karen says to  (2005-7-30 14:25:54): That to me is flaming. Saying personal negative things. 

norbizness says to  (2005-7-30 14:26:0): 

Rachel: Or, at least, "willingness to dialogue"

Shelley says to  (2005-7-30 14:26:3): The dictionary refers to flame as an intense or negative emotion 

redsaid says to  (2005-7-30 14:26:28): Yeah, when people start making personal attacks outside of the original content of the argument. 

larkspur says to  (2005-7-30 14:26:33): I think the online meaning of "flame" has refined it somewhat. 

larkspur says to  (2005-7-30 14:27:3): To mean almost exclusively an unfair or purposefully hurtful attack....

You'll find all the transcripts here. And, while all these thank yous seem inadequate to the contribution, we want to offer a huge, heartfelt thank you to Laura and Katherine for offering this megaphone to women and men who weren't able to be in the room with everyone else. I think Laura's recommendations for fixing that next time are on the right track...

Your personal to-do lists

While we work on the "mother of all to-do lists" that started yesterday at BlogHer, some of you are already posting your personal post-BlogHer to-do lists.

Ashley Richards, she of amazing Discussion Guidelines fame, kicks us off here with her Post-BlogHer To-Do List.

If you post your Post BlogHer To-Do List just trackback to this post, or if you don't do trackbacks, put the link in the Comments section.

I look forward to getting ideas from you because my head was a sieve by the end of yesterday!