Tech Review

I'm here at Blogworld for the second year in a row. Briefly, my reasons for attending:

1. It's in Las Vegas which isn't too far from my house in Los Angeles.

2. I have an excuse to spend some time with my papi. The best father-son moments center on a practical activity like building a shelf or fishing rather than explicit bonding moments like birthdays. Since new media-ers don't normally advertise on America's Funniest Home Videos or Sabado Gigante, my father doesn't know too much about blogging- he probably couldn't tell Twitter from Tweedy, but he can still drive (slowly), and that useful skill alone justifies his participation.

Sabado Gigante, in one of its more cultural moments.

America's Funniest Home Videos Volume 1

3. The food at the blogging party was pretty good last year. Amongst event food, I'd give it a solid nine. The sushi was great and the buffet table had a tasty variety of meats and cheeses.

4. I don't know anybody else who blogs so it's nice to talk to some other bloggers.

5. Free T-shirts!

Notice that I didn't say that the conference would help my blogging, necessarily. Many of the companies sell some kind of social networking-poll-whatever widget or do-dad and, frankly, I'm moving towards less of that stuff on my blog. At this point, the only thing I want to do is write.

Last year, Hugh Hewitt's political blogger round table with some lefty bloggers was interesting. However, I usually hate being in classes of any kind and didn't sign up for any this year. As I don't like speeches either, I skipped the keynote.

Observations:

1. The Blackberry-iPhone ratio was 1:1, as was the one for PC to Mac. I only saw a couple of oddballs with non-smart phones (dumb phones?).

2. The death of blogging and new media is greatly exaggerated. At the last Blog World, some were hinting that blogging had peaked, but Blog World was well-attended this year and its participants enthusiastic if less giddy.

3. That's not to say that some blogging ideas aren't up or down. I didn't notice too much activity around the Mil-blogging booth, reflecting peoples' level of interest in the war.

4. My conclusion is that blogging has lost its Barack Obama-Sarah Palin effect, but will be around for a while and even keep growing. In my own browsing, I'm visiting blogs more than ever for my current interests.

5. The opening night party wasn't in as fancy a location as last year (Hilton ballroom versus Hard Rock Cafe), but the drinks were free and the company pleasant.

6. I liked the Pajamas Media people- Aaron, Ed, Sybilla, and Rick were here. I met two very nice people in Tom Vail of Cart-Away concrete mixing (We have completely different backgrounds, but we agreed on almost all of the issues we discussed. His son's apparently a pretty smart guy who blogs here.) and Anita Cohen-Williams of MySearchGuru, a nice lady who does "organic SEO," a concept I'm unclear on, but I think I'd prefer her service over SEO with pesticides and hormones.

7. Oh! and I got to meet the super-amicable Francois Planque who created the blogging software, B2evolution, that Asymmetric uses. He's French, but I didn't hold that against him. We had a wide-ranging conversation that covered important topics such as politics, the relative merits of the distaff populations of France and the United States, and, of course, blogging.

8. I won a Wii version of Major League Baseball 2K8 from YBN for my son.

Major League Baseball 2K8

9. I also won some cash is this bill-blowing contraption put on by Bluecube.

9. T-shirts were mostly poly-cotton blends. The best one was, and I'm not just saying this, from Pajamas Media. Cotton with that rubbery-type logo application.

10. I didn't miss the comedian PM hired last year, but no booth babes walking around the PM area this year was a tragedy.

11. There were some interesting exhibitors. I'll cover them in another post.

Tags: blog world commentary, blogworld