Our proposal for a Business Case Studies Room of Your Own at BlogHer 06 made the cut. Toby Bloomberg, Yvonne DiVita and I will be leading a "rap session" about business blogging on Saturday July 29 from 1:30-3:00pm.
As I’ve written here before, this is an "unpanel" (borrowing the un-nomenclature from Dave Winer’s unconference).
We’ll kick off the conversation, but the underlying concept is that everyone in the room is the panel. Our goal is both to learn from each other in the room and produce a business blogging tips set so that others can benefit from our collective wisdom (and mistakes!)
I’m really looking forward to the session. I already know that two of my favorite marketing bloggers will be in the room with me. There’s no artificial dividing line between the panel and the audience — no somebodies here, we’re all nobodies, and everybody has an equal voice. And we have the goal of a specific work product from the session, the tips. We won’t just be talking to hear our own voices, we’ll be focused, working toward delivering something of value.
On the subject of conferences, and the oft-heard complaint that it’s always the same speakers saying the same things, you won’t find that at BlogHer. BlogHer deliberately seeks out new voices. The sessions will definitely not be the same old same old.
And, oh yeah, you will find a higher percentage of women speakers than you’ve probably experienced since Girl Scouts 🙂
Hope to see you there.
Tags: blogher, blogher06, blogging, marketing, business blogging, nobodies, nobody
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Susan – what fun it will be to share the “unpanel” with 2 of the smartest & nicest women bloggers in the biz…thank you for the invite!
On a side note – I realize that “nobodies” is a satire..but so often women struggle with self-esteem and being able to own their successes; perhaps we can create a new term?
Toby – really glad you can do it.
On ‘nobodies,’ I think that train has left the station.
It all stems from a columnist who referred to a PR blogger as a ‘nobody.’ Ie why should I listen to you on the topic, which happened to be social media. The undertone being that the columnist was a Somebody. The whole nobody thing spread from there, jointly fueled at the start by a man and a woman PR blogger. It’s not relevant to the nobody meme, but the original PR blogger was a man.
Of course, what we are really saying is that everybody is a nobody, nobody is a somebody, anybody can have an opinion and an equal chance to have their voice heard.
That sounds like a really great idea for a conference. I went to a newspaper advertising conference in March and I have to say, it was kind of bland. I got a lot from the seminars and was intrigued when I met the speakers, but the speakers in the large group meetings were kind of slow and monotonous. Of course that may have been because it was 8 a.m. and they had just served bacon and eggs for breakfast!
Having a conference were everyone has input and it is valued is a great thing. People will leave feeling needed and you will have your list of tips for bloggers. Maybe everyone decision should have an “unpanel” like this one.