Blogging While Brown Conference And ATL, Part 2

Posted on August 5, 2008

Click here if you missed Part 1.

After getting only four hours of sleep, I headed out to the Blogging While Brown Conference which was held in the Georgia World Congress Center. It was around 8:45 am Saturday morning and registration closed at 9:30. That should be enough time, I told myself. That, I realize now, was small town thinking. First problem, I started driving down the wrong highway for ten miles before realizing that the exit I was looking for didn’t match up with the upcoming exits on the sign. Turned around and drove ten miles back and then an additional ten to actually get to the place. And who would have thought that there would be traffic on a Saturday morning? Eventually I got there, parked and walked 5 miles to get to the conference rooms (seriously felt like that with my heavy @$$ laptop weighing me down). Got registered and in there. Blam. Wonderful.

Our first session was from Jordan Berg of FreePress who showed us a video about how broadcast/cable companies are working to become gatekeepers of the internet and tried to convince us to take all the material he’d brought.

Next up was “The Ultimate Blog Experience” by Angela Conyers-Benton and Markus Robinson from Black Web 2.0. Very informative presentation. Here’s what I took away from them: 1) Ways to build traffic and SEO tips to get your blog to come up higher in Google (search engine) searches, 2) make sure you are in control of your own content (looking at you blogspot folks), 3) Blogging frequency and how to manage your content (I had no idea you could schedule posts in Wordpress, guess what’s gonna be my new best friend?) Their presentation had blogger folks scrambling to get their own domains because of Blogger’s questionable content ownership policies. Go here if you want to get more on their presentation.

Up next was a Town Hall Session with Jason Pye of the Libertarian party and Michael McKay Murphy of the Republican party who spoke with us about their backgrounds and explained to us how they (and their party) related to us (Black bloggers). Members of the Democratic and Green Party were invited but were not able to make it (in the Green Party’s case, I think that they didn’t make it onto the Georgia ballot).

We took a break for lunch (yummy sandwiches and such) and I got the chance to talk with Villager (Wayne Hicks) of Electronic Village, Theo Johnson of Theo Talks, Laquita Jones of Terrell Tax and Planning and Ananda Leeke.

Then there was the post lunch session called “Bridges: Build, Cross or Burn? Can New Media Work With the Old Guard and Old Media?” All I can say is that I’m glad that we had lunch before this session. The panel consisted of Tamara Reynolds (Glam Media), Clarissa Goodlife (Color of Change) and Necole Bitchie (NecoleBitchie.com) and was moderated by Kevin Ross (3BandaS).

The discussion ended up being about the balance between monetizing your blog and selling out. It got so heated that Gina McCauley (What About Our Daughters?) jumped in to add in her two cents. The biggest issue was about the difference between how entertainment-type blogs and activist-type blogs use monetization (that is, entertainment blogs are more likely to do so). Also a topic of contention was the use of ad networks, ad exchanges and affiliate programs. For the full discussion, visit the recorded archive provided by TheoTalks.net at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/586451. Interesting discussion, but waaaay longer than we were all ready for.

Freddy O (photographer, painter, all around artiste) took the group picture and here it is (after 30 some odd clicks):



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

(Click the pic for a larger view. The red star is me!)
 

Next up were the breakout sessions:

I checked out the Podcasting 101 and Umoja sessions.

Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow headed up the podcasting session. They’re so cute together and have such chemistry. It was fun learning from them. They got me inspired to try out podcasting. One day, I hope I’ll be able to have my own online radio show or something like that (and fulfill my dreams of a broadcast journalism career).

The last session of the day (that I attended) was Umoja from Wayne Hicks of Electronic Village. I think attending this session was the last kick in the butt for me. What I mainly took from the session was to have a goal for my blog and to remain committed. He also listed out some of the reasons (Black) blogs fail including boring topics or boring writing, lack of motivation, personal issues and poor blog design. Also he outlined the difference between the afrosphere (community of Black bloggers) and the AfroSpear (big “A” – community of progressive Black bloggers who focus on making positive changes in the African Diaspora)

This session was the last remaining boost I needed. In the last four months or so, I’d been sporadic in my posting and was on the verge of ignoring AllTayo.com.

Coming to this conference refueled me with motivation and gave me new ideas and inspiration for what to do with my blog. Keep watching…

All in all, great conference and I look forward to the next one ( I feel like I’ve said that before, but it bears repeating).

Shout-out time! You can check out a more complete listing of the conference attendees at http://bloggingwhilebrown.blogspot.com.

My own private shout-outs (folks I spoke with directly and/or got B-cards from, sorry if I left someone out!):

Sincere,
Villager,
ATLien (Straight From the A),
Ananda Leeke,
LoveBabz,
Terrell Tax and Planning (Laquitta Jones),
Wayne Dixon,
Bruce Dixon (uh, no relation, I think?) and
Tiffany Duhart of Nokturnal Escape Entertainment (from J-Ville, sorry, I never got your business website!)

Phew! That was so long! Hope you’ll join me for part 3 of my trip (and no, I won’t keep you hanging like I did with the gallbladder story ;))

Comments

4 Responses to “Blogging While Brown Conference And ATL, Part 2”

  1. Sincere on August 5th, 2008 8:33 pm

    Hey Cuz!! lol I love the new layout!! I’m gonna link to this for my recap because it is very similar to what you have so instead of rewriting it I’ll just show a lil link love.

    Peace

  2. Tayo on August 5th, 2008 9:23 pm

    No problem, thanks a bunch!

  3. Theo J. on August 6th, 2008 10:55 pm

    Tayo, it was nice meeting you. I had a really good time also and can’t wait til next year.

  4. invisiblewoman on August 12th, 2008 8:44 pm

    Thanks for that update…love it :-)

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