Damn, this liveblogging is difficult. It’s more work than taking notes in a presentation even. Maybe good practice for taking notes at conferences though?

Eric Muller, IsThatLegal?. Two blogs that are on opposite sides of the political spectrum both linked to him on one day, thus bringing 2 very divergent communities together in a friendly way.

Dave Winer: The obsession with links & traffic is like the dot-com boom, only spread out over the long tail. Why do you care how big your audience is? Why do you try to attract people? Winer is being deliberately provocative, but I think I agree with him. I’m pleasantly surprised by how large my readership has gotten to be (comparatively), but I’m not trying to grow it.

Cone: “I’m not writing what people want to hear, I’m writing what I want to say & trying to find an audience for that.”

Someone: “If you’re writing a political blog, damn right you want eyeballs.”

Someone asks MacNeill how he collects all that data about Trixie. He built a web app for data collection: when she wakes up from a nap he clicks “woke up.” How do you decide what data to post? Privacy & ethical concerns. Someone else: “She’ll be embarrassed some day.” MacNeill: A lot of the information is very clinical. I don’t consider it very personal.

Someone: “In some cases the initial post isn’t as important as the subsequent conversation.” Define important?

Zuiker: “Is there anyone who leaves more comments on other blogs than you post on your own?” Maybe 5 hands go up. Paul: Do you disallow comments and why? A few hands. Someone: comments allows a community to build but if you get very big you have to start policing. Zuiker: When we first started planning the BloggerCon we thought it would be 20 people around a seminar table & it could be unmoderated. Now it’s ~100 people & he became the moderator by default. Sinreich: “Many of you have come up to me today & told me that you read the site & none of you post comments.” Guilty as charged: I’m one of those lurkers.

Winer’s definition of troll: someone who just wants to create emotional angst as widely as possible.

Someone: All of the long tail is divided into 3 parts. Paul labels them Spam, Community, Loneliness.

Will R. behind me: only comments, doesn’t have a blog of his own. So there’s no opportunity for him to have a conversation since no one can leave him comments. Someone: “You’re not a full-featured human being without a blog.”

Someone behind me: Can you use a blog to create a “radically local” community? Someone else: OrangePolitics models that. Sinreich: She tries to even keep Raleigh issues out of it. Isn’t this event exactly that, radically local? A local blog-based community coming together in person. I think this is the point Winer is making now: this community is large enough to support this sort of social interaction.