Blogference

So here I sit blogging at a conference about blogging. Gee, I feel all Jeff Jarvis-y!

OK, Micha Sifry is speaking about the political influence of blogging, after he put a couple of marketing types in their place. The marketers were giving talks about measuring "trends" and "buzz" on blogs. Sifry basically started his speech by telling them that they were full of it and were basically doing damage control and good luck with figuring out how to manipulate bloggers into buying things. He asked anyone in the room who viewed themselves as "consumers" to raise their hand. Nobody did. Liars.

The title of his talk is "An Army of Davids: How Blogging is Changing Politics." The Instapundit should be flattered.

LATER -- Chutzpah! After he chose that title for his talk, while speaking the only examples of influential political blogs he gives -- were....Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and Talking Points Memo....Hello! How about a little respect for the guy who coined the phrase Army of Davids? Sheesh. Must a talk on politics neccessarily be so partisan!?

STILL LATER -- I shmoozed with Sifry, pointed out his faux pas and he looked appropriately ashamed of himself. I forgive him.

EVEN LATER -- Garrett Graff is speaking now. He's so YOUNG. Did he start blogging in the womb? I feel really old. He could be up there giving his Bar Mitzvah speech.

Oh, please! Graff just expressed concern over the fact that blogs mean people are only reading news they agree with. That's all well and good, but to prove his point, he just declared that 'readers of the Daily Kos "don't think that President Bush ever did a good thing in his life" and that readers of Instapundit and LGF "never think President Bush ever did anything wrong." '

I think he just proved his own point. He's obviously not actually reading Instapundit and LGF or he'd know his statement is ridiculous. He's just reading blogs that concur with his assumption that Glenn and Charles never disagree with the president.

Oh, well. At least he wrote nice things about Tel Aviv in his blog.

MUCH, MUCH, MUCH LATER: Some of these speakers are quite boring. I confess, I don't read the Hebrew blogosphere very often, so I can't judge the importance of Israeli journalist/blogger named Dvorit Shargal. But BOY, is she taking herself incredibly incredibly seriously. And if there's anything worse than a journalist taking themselves too seriously, it's bloggers taking themselves too seriously.

I love it when people are enthusiastic about changing the world through blogging, but not when they talk about it like it's a solemn mission.

It's WRITING, people - not piloting combat planes, not brain surgery, not police work, not even auto mechanics. WRITING. Get over yourselves.

(Liveblogged, then edited)