Reflections on BlogWorld Expo (I Didn’t Go)

I’m big on the value of face to face contacts, but after you go to a certain number of conferences, they get old (or at least they do for me). And I  never get asked to be on panels, so I always have to pay.  This, too, gets old, especially since I’ve been blogging since 1999. So this year, I passed on BlogWorld Expo. After ten years of blogging, I find that the best way I can serve my readers, who are not geeks, is to read what the geek blogger are talking about, try the products myself, and recommend the good ones to my audience.

I am the real world’s delegate to TechCrunch, Scobleizer, RWW, Mashable, The Gillmor Gang, TWIT, and so forth. My readers wouldn’t know these people in crowd, nor do they worship them the way I (sort of) do for their incredible tenacity and devotion.

But these bloggers need my readers if new products are ever to cross the chasm from early adopters to mainstream. Not everybody is willing to prostitute themselves to get invitations to beta tests (first 200 readers will get invited to the beta). I say prostitute themselves because 1) most of these beta tests couldn’t happen without the fake scarcity of invitations created by the geek bloggers, and 2) to become a beta tester you trade your identity for the orgasmic experience of using a product that doesn’t work very well, isn’t finished, and may very well simply mimic the qualities of another products we already know. Or perhaps be a product we don’t even want.

I’m willing to do this because I have an enduring intellectual curiosity about the “new,” no matter what it is. (See these pictures of the solar geodesic dome home I build with my husband in 1972) and also because I have a burning desire to spread the gospel of the new to others. This means I gravitate toward what is new, and not what has become familiar.

You see, I believe in progress — which I suppose makes me a “Progressive.” I am also an optimist. And I think that no matter how pervasive the internets, someone has to curate, suggest, and recommend. You might say the real time stream needs its own kind of librarians to find the good parts for the part of the world that is otherwise employed.

Yes, I will still attend a certain number of conferences, and bring the Chris Brogans, the Tara Hunts, and the Merlin Manns to Phoenix so people outside the echo chamber can meet the opinion leaders. But by reading the tweets of the people who spent the weekend in Vegas, (and there were previous few blog posts compared to the number of tweets), I can tell that I may have missed a few handshakes, wine glasses, and waves, but not much else.

I love the real time stream, but only when it brings new information–or, as the old cliche says “news you can use.” And that goes for the real life stream as well.

Let me know if I am wrong and I really missed something:-)

Tagged as: Blog World Expo, Chris Brogan, Gillmor Gang, Louis Gray, mashable, Merlin Mann, readwriteweb, Scobleizer, tara hunt, TechCrunch, Weblogs