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The conference has been a long time coming. And being a blogger myself I just had to attend. Because it is such an excellent niche topic “blogging” this conference will grow in popularity in the coming years. I applaud the people from New Media Lab @ Rhodes University’s School of Journalist & Media Studies who is responsible for this initiative. There is a need to take this to the masses of entrepreneurs and business people elsewhere in South Africa. And therefor I’m launching the first ever blog marketing training workshop in October.
14 September 2006: Day 1
I missed the welcome and opening by organiser Colin Daniels and Prof Guy Berger, head of Journalism @ Rhodes University. Anyway Ethan Zuckerman opened the conference with a great overview of the state of blogging with particular reference to journalists, the threats and the opportunities. The Editors Panel was slightly enlighting. Chris Roper & Bryan Porter discussed the Naspers/24.com blogging strategy. The worst presentation of the day for me has to go to Ray Hartley, Sunday Times. This guy should read Seth Godin’s Really Bad Powerpoint. The Web 2.0 panel with Mike Stopforth leading the charge went directly into all the latest technology and briefly discussed the application of it. The problem with Web 2.0 is that its a limiting buzzword that will die out in a few years time as the Internet continues to revolutionise how we do what we do, every single day. Ian Gilfillan spoke very philosophically about technology and it reminded me of the Tao of Programming after he quoted a Zen koan.
After participating in the “speed speaking” session after lunch I skipped the Civil Society panel in the afternoon because I was running out of time to prepare for my present ion the next day. The evening we had a cocktail party in Grahamstown and I was kicking myself for having to leave early and drive back to Uitenhage, where I was staying with my mom.
Download my podcast with Ian Gilfillian from Greenman blog.