BloggerCon Dessert

BloggerCon IV succeeded because the art of personal web publishing and multimedia integration that is blogging has advanced and the adoption of the tools has broadened enough that it may be fair to say that blogging is just “so 2024.” A “blogger conference” is no less than a gathering of media creatives in the areas of audio, video, and text. That definition can be refined. Tool makers and the readers/viewers/listeners are also interested, but the BloggerCon format as defined and enforced by Dave Winer is generally free of commercial complications. Vendors are welcome, but not to flog their warez.

This mp3 speaks to much of what happened and didn’t at the shew. (Thanks to Leslie who wisely removed herself to the south of France, out of the fray, as it were… but found time to post a really cute puppy picture in her sidebar none-the-less).

A few of my friends have asked for my perspectives on the interplay among the strong personalities who gathered for BloggerCon IV. They want the dish. I thought to send an email, but I recalled the caveat not to put anything in email that you don’t want to share with the world, so all things considered, why not just post about it?

This is a personal post in a public space regarding public figures as they presented themselves in a professional context during the recent BloggerCon meetings in San Francisco. There are a million stories in the naked city, but only about eighty at BloggerCon. The subject matter is delicate because personal criticisms may be inferred. It’s not my intention to skewer anyone. Rather, I’d like to discuss manners and through the discussion improve relationships, not erode or destroy them. Along the way I’ll likely find out a few things about myself.

At dinner Friday night we were joined by an attractive young couple from Vancouver. These people – and Esme Vos and David Weinberger – were among several who were attending Supernova or other events, not BloggerCon, but who joined us, the bloggers, for dinner. Speaking of Esme, and this relates, just don’t ask me how… there’s a hamster cage in my head where the wheels are always spinning and the point I want to get to is that I met Om Malik at BloggerCon!

And returning to David for a moment, he says, “The thing I like least about Supernova is its devotion to the panel format. Panels are how you make interesting people boring. It works like magic!” I could echo this regarding the “unconference format.” Slavish devotion to a single method of interaction or presentation is sure to suck in the long run. If there is a BloggerCon V, I vote that we pay attention to Lisa Williams‘ suggestion that some papers be presented, papers by experts addressing issues of interest. Not powerpoints.

Anyway, at dinner Friday I happened to be seated to the right of a man with a strong personality who is not always real tolerant regarding other peoples’ points of view when they don’t line up with his own. The young Canadian across the table was happy to share his own sense of how blogging fit into his enterprise, a social networking qua matchmaking operation.

As chance would have it a friend of the fellow to my left arrived late and was seated at the far end of our table. After we had all shared several delicious Thai courses, served family style, something strange occurred. I don’t know, maybe it was the tofu (I think that’s a Grateful Dead song too) – or maybe the strong-minded fellow had grown suddenly dyspeptic, but it appeared to me that he deliberately set out to antagonize the fellow from Canada, his wife and their seat-mate, a guy from Perth, Australia with an interest in a social network for young parents, minti. What we had was the “old bull” from Berkeley facing down the “young bucks” from the British Commonwealth across the table.

Okay, now you’ll have to trust me that I could make this really funny if I wanted to be careless of feelings and simply flame the old bull, because what ensued was a classic scene from an Edwardian comedy of manners. The old bull was restless I think because he wanted to excuse himself and attend to his friend at the far end of the table. He took umbrage with the Canadian’s observation regarding the utility of blogs as an offshoot to the development of social networking in the dating space. The young fellow made some commonplace observation about Shirky’s power law analysis, and suddenly the game was afoot.

I’m sure that deep in his interpersonal tool chest the old bull has a fine set of manners to deploy: courtesy, civility, gracious charm. I know this because I have been treated to decent behavior by the man. Rather than rummage that deep into the tool chest though, he simply hauled out the trustworthy twosome, anger and hostility, and made short work of the young man from Canada before pushing back from table and retreating to the far end to converse with his friend. When he did that I felt ashamed and embarrassed and a sense of loss. The goodwill and friendship that had been building as we enjoyed our meal together was destroyed , and we were left in silence staring at each other across a platter of cooling tofu and vegetables.

Scraping these ill feelings away was for me a matter of moments, because I have been blessed with the opportunity to both practice detachment and be the object of someone else’s practice. This matter of detachment was something that wasn’t discussed in the “oh pity me for my trolls” core values session, but perhaps it should have been.

I don’t think anyone will change based on what I write, nor do I believe that what I have to share is particularly important, yet a nuanced reading of what follows will hopefully yield some food for thought, nourishment for a little meditative personal reflection, something to chew on. Maybe it will help me understand better the feelings I had during two particularly stressful sessions on Saturday, feelings that were undoubtedly colored by the fact that I had just received news that my beloved two year old dog had been hit by an ambulance and was at the veterinarian’s being x-rayed and doped up and shaved and stitched-up and bandaged and yes – thank you – the news today is that she made it through the night and is drinking water and is enjoying her medications administered concealed in rolled up thin sliced ham.

The “unconference” is nothing new in the universe of professional meetings. We call this type of gathering a facilitated discussion, and the success of the gathering often turns on the quality of facilitation. I think it’s fair to say that Dave often behaves like a controlling person. Previous conferences had been multiply tracked, with simultaneous sessions occurring in each time slot. At these previous conferences, Dave found himself moving from room to room to assure that all went according to plan, that no unfortunately self serving commercial messages were sent, that all the facilitators were facilitating properly. BloggerConIV was single tracked, so he could sit at the front of the room throughout the proceedings, all day, each day, through each and every session, interjecting wisdom as required and keeping things moving smartly along.

Not all the facilitators were evenly matched. People with strong personalities who are unwilling to subordinate their own point of view in the interest of moving the group forward toward the development of a common understanding and ideally a shared vision make poor facilitators. Mike Arrington and Elisa Camahort have strong points of view, and they seemed more interested in proselytizing than facilitating yesterday.

Elisa led “Building Bridges” and Mike led “Core Values.” I think the “Building Bridges” session ultimately succeeded perhaps in spite of the facilitator’s strong point of view. The give and take was impassioned and the outcomes were friendly. The “Core Values” session was a low point for me. Arrington, through hard work and a position of privilege, finds himself at the top of the valley punditocracy right now. Yet he seems unable to listen to criticism and absorb what’s valid and detach from what’s bullshit. There’s a lesson there about the adversarial training that lawyers get, I think. If life is a game to be won, then how do we handle setbacks? If every transaction is zero sum, then how can the balance sheet of relationships ever be improved besides through coercion?

I had a good talk with Liz Henry for like five minutes… In the room, Liz was wearing a hard-ass personna, much like Elisa. This is a success tool for women who want to compete on an even footing with the sharks. But out of the room, it was clear to me that she understood my point of view, that adversarial bullshit only goes so far and that relationships must be cultivated through good will and that the sun will come out tomorrow yadda yadda…

So one of my BConIV takeaways – don’t you just love the word”takeaway?” For me it has a special place like “learning.” One of my learnings… (I would like my inner asshole to shut up now and just use the words we mean)… A lesson I learned at BloggerCon, or perhaps a bias I had reinforced, is that when people are posturing aggressively, I feel uncomfortable around them, and while I have as loud a voice as many of these people, it’s no fun to play their little reindeer games. My voice is better used yodeling or singing in the shower than battling through issues with contrarians or soaking in the glow of mutual aggrandizement of grudges that emerge from the c-c-c-c-comments. That Core Values session sucked because it was poorly facilitated. No other way for me to say it.