This would be it, my last intentional post on the BlogHer experience. I was a 10 percenter. Wherever I went at Blogher, I could look around and count 90% women, 10% men… except my hotel room. There it was 50/50. In the Geeks ‘r Us session, one of the discussion leaders looked around and said, there are a lot of men in the room. Eye of the beholder stuff… I did the count… five out of fifty. As the room filled further it went up to seven out of seventy plus. At the closing keynote there was a slightly higher percentage of men, but I think it was a husband effect.

I wish I had more time to spend with the people at BlogHer. There were hundreds of interesting folks there and I probably got to say hello to less than 10 percent of them. I’ve already listed and linked to women I met, and tried to communicate the warmth I felt for most of them. This is the guy post.

I met Bill Humphries, a former Madisonian who knows Dorothea. I think Bill would be fun to sit around and laugh with, but we met between sessions and I was on a mission and my usual INTJ thing cloaked my presence better than the Harry Potter invisibility thing. I have a hard time meeting new people but I push myself through it because who knows, maybe in eight or ten years they won’t be new people anymore and we can sit down and have a few laughs. Take George Kelly… same awkward arc. George and Bill were both personable and pleasant. I was wooden. Oh well.

I met Robert Scoble for the first time and was impressed by his warmth, something that I don’t always get from his blogging. I also shared a few funny moments with Dave Winer. Dave’s observation about what men and women have in common had me confused about whether it was politically correct to laugh! Dave and I have Berkeley and Madison in common and after about three years of meeting each other from time to time at events like this, we’ve developed a positive feeling for each other, call it friendship. Dave introduced me to J. Craig Williams and Chris Carfi, who I believe has commented here before.

I shared a table for a while with J.D. Lassica, and I recognized Stowe Boyd and Mark Canter among the folks circulating here and there. I SAW Guy Kawasaki, but lacking a business plan with a reasonable burn rate I didn’t introduce myself.

I can turn now to Holly’s photo set to refresh my memory… and oh yeah, duhh… Phil Wolff and Steve Garfield were there and I chatted with them and got a picture of Steve and his mom.

Short term memory hasn’t been a strong point for me since early 1967, so if I’ve left anybody off, please don’t be offended.

For a while, a year and more ago I thought I’d make my fortune with the Blog World Expo (yes, there’s a wiki somewhere too). The moment passed, but I still feel the need for a blogging confab — a web communications summit — that combines the best of everything. I caught glimpses of what I’m after at BlogHer: a gathering of the tribes, a marketplace, an academy, a rich community of spirit.

I had lunch with Nicole Simon. We spoke of many things, but not about blogging… we talked politics, culture, global conditions and the pathos of the decline of the American empire… heck, we weren’t even drinking. I met Maria Benet in person, and while I wondered silently how Tom Shugart is doing these days and I thought she might know, Maria and I were just connecting face-to-face for the first time and not diving too deep into that rich history we’ve begun to develop auf blog. Rather I was fascinated by her tale of a family blog and the bear stories she used as a touchstone for her son his first year away at school.

(I’ve just popped a note off to Tom… sort of a six month check-in).

Grace Davis… holy smokes. I love her. Of course I also love Jory. And I love Mary Hodder. And Danah Boyd. And Melanie Swan. And Liz Ditz. I’m ashamed to say it but I think I might be a little easy. Melinda Casino, Aesa, Candace Gardener… no doubt in my mind, I’m a slut of Jimmy Carter dimensions. Liza (overheard muttering “I’ll never fly Northwest again”), Elisa, Silona, Adina, Glennia, Aura, Nina, Rebecca… all among the people I remember fondly. And of course there’s the Boston Babes: Betsy and Lisa and Halley. I said hello to Ponzi and asked her to remember me to Chris… she’s so good, she never batted an eye, just said certainly she would, and while I knew she was a public person with a zillion Gnomies cavorting around her public life and she didn’t really know me from Adam, well… I had to respect how she didn’t betray that. And at the same table at the same moment, I was able to stumble over my tongue and confuse Choconancy (Nancy White, who was sitting there) with HorsePigCow (Tara Hunt, who wasn’t)… all these famous writers and their famous blogs, even Homer nods.

Thinking about Grace I’m reminded of nakedjen… I met Jen at the first BloggerCon, but she had her clothes on. Jen’s a Santa Cruz bloggeuse too, but she couldn’t make it to BlogHer due to prior naked commitments. But let’s back away from the body-conscious purity of a Badger or a Nakedjen taking her clothes off because we should, and get back to the slut-motif…

Thin ice here, Buddy. Watch your step. Building a business is a lot like peddling your ass. But it doesn’t have to be, and the graceful way Mary Hodder makes her way through the minefield of obnoxious self promotion to emerge unscathed and still on message is something we can emulate. Her younger colleague, Mena Trott, hasn’t yet developed that gracefulness. Arianna of course has nothing to be graceful about. How many of us can say we stiffed Nancy Getty on the cost of our wedding? And Halley, my god… Halley… well, there was more flogging going on at this gathering than you’d expect at Miss Behavior’s B&D Salon. Some of it was graceful. Some of it was not graceful. The least graceful is the personal sell, the one that sells the CEO and leaves the product behind on the t-shirt table and the logo saturated lanyards. All of it of course flies in the face of the behavioral norms of the Winer style unconference, and to his credit I haven’t heard Dave ragging on about it much (although he does seem to agree with me that there was confusion about when and how to make a pitch). I think the first rule of the unconference was pretty well modeled… don’t be boring. Allow participation from everyone. The second rule, NO PITCHES, wasn’t acknowledged.

There has to be a middle ground, a place where the Noogles, and Ploogles, and Fuggles, and Muggles, can share information about their products’ capabilities in a technical context without pimping them. That was one of the thoughts behind Blog World Expo. There’s nothing wrong with putting the Microsoft Fembots in front of a blue screen and letting them perform, but consider the three ring circus. There your attention can drift to something more edifying like the elephant act.

[p.s. this just slammed me like the heel of my hand right in the forehead… not the “I coulda had a V8″ thing, but rather just as Rome took longer than a day or two to construct, so also does a world class event. Two days isn’t enough to do it justice, to do it right.]

Thanks to our friend Leslie in San Francisco for sending this reportage on BlogHer.

At the convention, brand-name companies lined up to greet their potential
business partners. The lunch break was sponsored by Weight Watchers.
Funding for the keynote seminar was provided by Johnson & Johnson, which
also used the event to launch momver sations.com, an upcoming “virtual
park bench” for motherly blogs. And the sex talk forum was sponsored by
Elexa, Trojan’s line of “sexual well-being products created from a woman’s
perspective.”
In the past, companies that dared place their brand on a writer’s site
typically picked an A-list blogger such as Daily Kos, and risked the
wisecracks in return for the high volume of page views.
But now, through niche ad networks like BlogHer, a company can purchase a
“parenting bundle” and get placement on three dozen blogs written by
mothers.
Dmitriy Kruglyak, a 28-year-old “health care blogger” and entrepreneur,
visited the convention to learn how to duplicate the model of bridging
advertising to blogging.
“If their niche is women bloggers, then mine is health care bloggers,”
Kruglyak said. “What they’re building for women, and selling to
advertisers, is what I want to build for doctors and nurses, and so on,
who blog.”

Here’s a cool niche, daddy coyote blogging!

I turned in the POS General Motors rental at 5:30 this morning, a 2024 Pontiac GT with about 25,000 miles, a few more miles on it than my Toyota Matrix, and though a little beefier in the acceleration department, a rattletrap vehicle nonetheless. We put 1115 miles on it since last Sunday. I drove 1093, Beth drove 22. Beth’s share was a stretch between Eugene and Grants Pass that is pretty much the most difficult section of Interstate Highway 5, so it’s more equal than it sounds at first blush. What I liked worst about the General Motors “Pontoon crap turismo:” the fact that I had to beat on the dashboard to get it to stop vibrating. What I liked second worst: the way it drank gasoline like Bukowski on a bender. What I liked best. Nothing really… the trunk light is a joke, you can’t see the interior of the trunk but you can see the lid. How stupid is that? The automatic door locking mechanism was iffy. It didn’t always work. The car has a big plastic beak sticking out in front that gets abraded by the curb whenever you park, and scuffed by every driveway you enter. The power seat adjustment was okay, and the dashboard instrumentation appeals to the inner geek. Did I mention that I used about one gallon to the mile with this pig? My experience: Pontiac GT = sux. Toyota Matrix = okay. Pontiac makes a car called the Vibe. It’s essentially a Matrix. Based on my experience in that pig GT, I’d expect the Vibe to have special Detroit rattletrap reverse engineering built-in as part of an evil GM feature set.

The women of BlogHer were treated to some GM sponsored sporty car demos at the Hyatt San Jose Mediterranean Center this weekend, while my rental was wheezing and gasping in the parking lot behind the hotel. At the height of the crisis of Peak Oil, General Motors was selling the women of BlogHer on the Escalade, a 13 mpg porker that even the plutocrats in the Bush family can’t afford to drive anymore unless they can dominate Iraqi and Persian oil production.

I hope that the revenue from the GM BlogHer platinum sponsorship was used to get a lot of women to the gathering who otherwise couldn’t have afforded to come, was used to offset expenses so the event was affordable for most of us. I hate the idea that the sponsorship may have been used to offset honoraria and expenses to stars like Arianna Huffington, much as I appreciated her appearance with Grace Davis, Mena Trott, and Caroline Little on the day two keynote panel that Chris Nolan moderated. I hate the idea that all the “community, sharing, mutualness and interdependence” that Liz Henry talks about requires a big corporate financial subsidy.

We’ve had quite a conversation here tonight in room 5226. I’d like Beth to write a few hundred words about Blogher. She steadfastly maintains that she is the non-blogger in this relationship. I counter with allusions to Will and Ariel. Finally though, she will not be swayed, even by the promise of a collaborative future together as literary giants in our declining years.

Does it make sense for me to write posts from BlogHer? I mean, it ain’t “BlogHim,” is it?

Michelle’s memorial - just Beth, Lisa, Melinda, and me locally with Jeneane online. But I read from the outpouring of posts and thoughts that surrounded Meg’s passing last month and I think it was good to carry this forward, to carry the grief so many of us felt through a closure that bespeaks acceptance of her choices and allowed many of us to share again the sadness of that moment of learning of our common loss.

Thanks to everyone who sent notes, words to share, kind thoughts and shared sorrow. Michelle Goodrich is gone and we remember her with love.

Mandarin Meg memorial gathering — non-denominational, non-sectarian, simply human gathering of people who wish to acknowledge and remember the passing of Michelle Goodrich at 3:45 today, Pacific time in Suite 8111 Hyatt San Jose at 1740 North First Street, San Jose California.

People with thoughts and memories to share are welcome to speak them, to read them, to type them in real-time via IRC chat client to a chat room named #MandarinMeg on Freenode which will be available starting about ten minutes before the memorial begins.

This gathering will be loosely modeled on Quaker practice: coming together in silence, followed by some brief comments by me regarding our purpose there, then continuing quiet while people speak when they feel moved to share. We will ask that each person speak only once until all present have had a chance to share. After an hour of silence broken by our thoughts and memories, I will break the silence by standing and thanking those in attendance.

If you can not be there but have something you would like read aloud for those who are there, simply email me at fpaynter@gmail.com

Elisa has posted a notice about room 8111, a quiet space for breast feeding moms, and then - Friday afternoon - a quiet space to gather and remember meg. Earlier today I was wondering how, why, I took on this assignment. I had just gotten out of a two hour meeting where I’d taken responsibility for a web site, reported on my connection with Marshall Massey, put off discussing this year’s draft counseling and counter-recruitment efforts and basically exhausted myself on the first day of vacation.

This morning we took sweet Molly Bloom and Veneta the cat to the kennel where Molly will get special treatment for a week’s convalescence. It pained me to leave the dog. It was just a month ago that I got a call in San Francisco that she’d been hit by an ambulance. She’s healing, but her right rear leg is still pretty painful and useless. Will it heal? We hope so. It;’s getting better.

That same weekend the world lost meg. Will we heal? I’m sure we will, but I’ve been having a pretty rocky ride for the last several weeks. Snappish. Inappropriate. Grieving within.

I talked to a few people then and Jeneane was right there supporting the idea of a face to face memorial at BlogHer, and I thought I could help make that happen with Jeneane, the original Blog Sister, there at BlogHer backing it. Now we don’t know if Jeneane will be well enough to come. And how can I support her in her pain when all I can offer even my puppy is some medication?

Well, Beth’s doing the laundry and I have to do the dishes if we’re going to be able to get out of here and get on the road. Portland tomorrow. The ranch by Wednesday. San Jose Thursday night. meg’s memorial Friday. Meeting with old friends and new acquaintances Friday and Saturday, and back to the grindstone by next Sunday.

We had planned our travel to include lunch in West Sacramento on Thursday. Now I think we’ll skip the five, drive out to the sea, and come down one-oh-one.

The memorial will be simple, some people sitting together quietly and speaking of meg and our remembrance. I’m sure love will fill the silences between memories, and in the end we will go back out into the daylight and resume our daily lives. I hope some of meg’s friends are at BlogHer and can join us.

This shit breaks my heart…

Ironic, isn’t it. The event I want so badly to go to, a part of the country I’ve never been to, an opportunity to meet so many women and men I’ve never met, and its my womanhood that’s putting me on shaky ground.

From 3:45 to 4:45 Pacific Time (GMT -8 hours), people will gather at BlogHer to honor the life of Michelle Goodrich, our friend Mandarin Meg. The memorial will be in room 8111 at the San Jose Hyatt Hotel.

Hyatt San Jose
1740 North First Street,
San Jose, California, USA 95112

An IRC chat room named #mandarinmeg will be open on Freenode and friends around the world are invited to join us as they can and share their memories online. We’re sorry that the timing can’t be convenient for everyone everywhere. Late afternoon at BlogHer seemed like a good time for North America, and not impossible for Europe (11:45 pm London, 12:45am Berlin, and morning in much of east Asia and Australia).

If you are not all that famuiliar with Internet Relay Chat, here is an easy way to join up. Download the Mozilla 1.7.13 browser for your operating system from http://www.mozilla.org/download.html.

Install the browser, but don’t select it to be your default.

Open the browser after it has been installed and click on the Window button in the menu bar at the top. The pull down menu that opens has an item near the bottom called IRCChat. Click that and in the text are on the bottom of the page enter:
/attach freenode

after you are attached to freenode you will be asked to idfentify yourself with a nickname. Just pick a one word name you want to be known by and hit enter.

type /join #mandarinmeg

you will be connected to the mandarinmeg room

if you want to give it a try this week and you have problems, just email me and I’ll try to walk you through it.

I’ll look forward to sitting with you next Friday and remembering meg.