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I attended portions of the ConvergeSouth 2005 blogging convention this weekend. The event was held on the campus of NC A&T University in Greensboro, NC.

Running late, walking in the rain is not much fun. It reminds me that SWSRN picked up a refrigerator magnet that she thought. I would find funny and strangely true in my own life, “A truly happy person can enjoy the scenery on a detour”. I’m getting wet, but it’s a great day and I’m whistling.

I caught the last few minutes of the faith blogging session. A very quiet and reserved crowd, but I was only there for 15 minutes or so before the session was over. This was being led by Mickey McLean. I would run into Mickey and his brother Don again at lunch. Yes, I caught that name as well, “Don McLean”, but I didn’t mention it. It is no fun having to share your own precious name with a celebrity, no matter if it is a musician or a chipmunk.

While navigating my way to the next session, i began to notice that while this conference was larger than the one in Chapel Hill back in February, they were unable to provide net access to all of us bandwidth-starved bloggers. It was a bit disconcerting to have my wireless card without signal. I must admit though, that the facilities at NC A&T are wonderful (at least the small part I have seen so far).

I managed to find the next event I wanted to see, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame. While I was waiting patiently,Dave Winer sat near me. I congratulated him on the sale of weblogs.com this week. He beamed and told me how he was so happy that he had not heard a single negative comment about the sale. We talked to for a couple of minutes about the past reliability of the site, and he repeated what I had read previously, that he was excited to get the service into the hands of someone that could manage its resource needs effectively.

Back to Jimmy Wales… Jimmy gave a good talk about the interests and community of the wikipedia and its wikimedia foundation. I was a little diappointed though, as I had thought this was going to be a discussion about building online collaberation, not a review of the work (however great) of the community of wikipedia.

Jimmy did bring out one idea that seems to be unifying thread among bloggers, the goal of “building a community of thoughtful users”.

My new friend “WillR”—less well known as Will Raymond asked about using the wikipedia model to develop an institutional memory of a community (in his case, Chapel Hill, NC). I first met WillR at the Triangle Bloggers Conference at UNC in February. I had a chance to speak with him later in the day and found that he is running for town council in Chapel Hill. We talked for a few minutes about the fun of canvassing door-to-door. I shared our good conservative tip of going as a group, and communicating by two-way radio or cell phone. If someone is interested in meeting the candidate, HE WILL come right over in a few minutes and talk with you.

It’s time for lunch, so I grabbed a a bag lunch and found an empty seat with Mickey and his brother from the faith blogging session. I also ran in to Kevin Howarth that I met in Chapel Hill in Februrary. I’ve seen a lot of people I met at that conference including Anton Zuicker (Mister Sugar).

I managed to find the next auditorium early so I thought I would clean up my notes a bit. I did take time out to call SWSRN to see how she was feeling today. She took a bit of a spill at work yesterday on a rain-slicked ramp. I’m lucky to have such a great wife—I love you babe!

In the auditorium, I looked down from my seat to see Amanda Congdon from Rocketboom. I missed her session today because I wanted to hear Jimmy Wales. I did want to say a quick hello to Amanda, but she seemed to be occupied by a pestering group discussing military technology and I swear that I heard the word, “assimilation”. So Amanda, if you’re reading this, I hope you had a good day despite the loony throngs that web celebrity have brought to you. (I did get a chance to speak with Amanda a bit later).

The next session I went to was on blogging tools with Dave Winer. Dave says that when he leads discussions, they can be a little ruckus. That’s ok, as long as it stays in the room and doesn’t degrade into personal attacks. He didn’t come with anything prepared, slides, demos or anything. He didn’t even necessarily come without any answers. It’s an accident that we’re in the room and he’s in the front.

There was a discussion on the different needs of bloggers on all levels, and Dave seemed to be guiding everyone into getting into the spirit of helping each other, as by doing this we help build our community.

Someone mentioned podcastercon—I’m there.

I can’t say too much about the next session on podcasting with Herb Everett—I walked out way early. This discussion had a real problem. Herb didn’t know if he was giving a presentation or leading and unconference. I’ll check out his podcast later, but I seriously had to leave.

Posted by Alvin P. Phillips |