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Title:

Why Keep Blogging? Real Answers for Smart Tweeple

Your vote:
Yes No
Organizer:
Emily Gordon, Founder, Emdashes.com; Editor-in-Chief, Print magazine
Description:
Now that we think in 140-character strings and live through Facebook, it's tempting to throw out the blog baby with the bathwater. These seasoned bloggers explain the vitality of this still-revolutionary medium—the resources, community, continuity, and space for real ideas that only blogs can provide—and its infinite future potential.
Questions
Answered:
  1. Why blog when there are newer, shorter, quicker mediums to express myself in?
  2. If there's no barrier to blogging, what makes any blog special?
  3. Which blogs are going to be worth reading in 2, 5, 10, and 50 years?
  4. What can blogging do for my life--creatively, socially, professionally, and intellectually?
  5. What techniques do the bloggers with the most staying power use to keep their readers--and themselves--informed and inspired?
  6. Why blogging during a recession is the smartest thing you can be doing with your time
  7. What works as a blog post and what works better as a tweet or status update, and why?
  8. How do veteran bloggers avoid the 10 blog traps that rookies always fall into?
  9. Why is it so important to keep commenters happy and engaged--and how do I do it?
  10. Is it worth it to revive a dead blog--and should I kill the one I don't love anymore?
Level:
Intermediate
Category:
Blogging, Career / Work Concerns, Community / Online Community, Content, Online Relationships
Type:
Panel
Event:
Interactive 2010
Aaron Hoffman
on 17/8/09
A creative and timely topic for a panel. -ABH
Jill Murray
on 18/8/09
I was just thinking about this the other day!
Daniel Schutzsmith
on 18/8/09
This is something I've been debating about with colleagues. Really good topic and I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say.
Emily Gordon
on 18/8/09
Update! Scott Rosenberg, who just published "Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters" (Crown), is interested in participating. Here's the excerpt Gawker ran:

http://gawker.com/5318785/was-blogging-just-a-fad
Emily Gordon
on 27/8/09
Thanks for the votes, everyone! Here's my current list of the panelists I'm asking:

• Daniel Radosh, blogger, www.radosh.net; contributing editor, The Week; author, "Rapture Ready! Adventures In The Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture"

• Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan; bloggers, Go Fug Yourself: www.gofugyourself.com; authors, "Go Fug Yourself: The Fug Awards"

• Scott Rosenberg, author, "Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters"; blogger, www.wordyard.com

• Ron Hogan, blogger, Beatrice: www.beatrice.com; book critic; author, "The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane! American Films of the 1970s"

• Paddy Johnson, blogger, Art Fag City: www.artfagcity.com

• Josh Fruhlinger, blogger, The Comics Curmudgeon: http://joshreads.com
Patrick King
on 30/8/09
This sounds like a great panel Emily. And a timely topic. My blogs are in the closet in a box with my 8 track player, but simply reading about this panel to be has me dusting them off.
Emily Gordon
on 30/8/09
Just added to the list of panelists: book-writer and blog-writer Lizzie Skurnick, who writes the blockbuster Fine Lines column at Jezebel, findable at http://jezebel.com/tag/fine-lines, which turned into her new book, Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading; her book blog, The Old Hag, at http://www.theoldhag.com; and, of course, www.lizzieskurnick.com.
Robert Gordon
on 1/9/09
Sounds like an excellent panel. These are the important questions about blogging, the questions that everyone has who is a blogger or a reader of blogs or someone wanting to be a blogger.
katha Pollitt
on 1/9/09
This sounds great! As someone who always feels she should blog all the time but actually doesn't want to, I'd definitely be interested in this!
G S
on 2/9/09
Will blogging keep our attention spans elastic and labile? Will tweeting media will march our ability to concentrate right over a cliff? What's next, a 10 character tweet?
Emily Gordon
on 3/9/09
Michael Dunlop compiled a list of "20 People Who Started As Bloggers, Who Are Now So Much More! 20 Entrepreneurs Who Started With Blogging":

http://om.ly/IqMG

I'm sure you all can think of more. But clearly blogs are still launching careers and new careers, books, TV and radio gigs, and relationships of all kinds.

Reading some of the other SXSW proposals makes me want to give mine a supervitamin injection, expect more from the ones I read, and perhaps start a new one altogether. Why waste words in this logorrheic blabosphere? As every rueful blocked writer will tell you, writers write. Can we hold our heads high as bloggers and then take our blogs to a higher place? Hell yeah.
quin browne
on 4/9/09
blogging gave me the incentive to be bold and brave and write. it's allowed me to make new friends (and i consider these people to be friends.. they are in my life, even if they are sometimes thousands of miles away) and to find my voice. it led to my being asked to cover events (thanks, always, em!) and finally, to do creative writing.

yes, we all may be the gasping little voices one writer dubbed us, however, we are heard by someone, somewhere.. and that makes all the difference.
Games Online
on 3/11/09
Another hilarious panel name...
iphone ringtone maker
on 13/11/09
I'd be super into learning from Kris. Dig it!
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