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Archive for February, 2006

Liveblogging the Green bloggers

I’m sitting here at “Green Bloggers” at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Did Eric Corey Freed just bang the gavel? He is introducing the Green Bloggers here at the commonwealth club. Nick Aster is a namedropper, according to ECF. (joking) And that’s how this panel idea started.

Gil Friend’s been blogging for three years, so he’s an old pro, and his URL shows it. radio.weblogs.com/0109… something. here it is: http://radio.weblogs.com/0109157/
but look for blog.natlogic.com soon!

In attendance:

Disclaimer: I was really spending most of the time listening to the talk but here are my notes for those that weren’t there. I also heard that the audio was being recorded, you can probably ask Gil, ECF, or the Commonwealth Club about that. And I’m pretty sure I got at least two people’s names spelled wrong, notify me in the comments and I’ll correct.

Gil: Why did you choose blogging as your form of expression?
Nick - ease of entry, moveable type,
Cayenne- easy to create content that your audience appreciates
Jamais - expounded on the “origin myth” of worldchanging. An ideal forum for the kind of rapid-fire, broadly conceived idea generation that blogs enable. Eats frosty mini-wheats.
Siel - “Food does not come from blogging. I’m trying to get a bike from running ads on my blog but that hasn’t happened” I support by blogging by going to grad school and teaching undergrads

Cayenne - Treehugger aims to achieve high ranking on Google. And is ad-supported
Nick -
Jamais - “a manifestation of my intellectual identify” similar to music

Gil: What sort of results have you seen? how do you judge the effectiveness or satisfaction?

Siel - “sometimes you feel like you’re way out there, in terms of connections It’s heartwarming. ”
Jamais - “influencing the public discourse”

Audience question: “How did you promote beyond your community?”
Jamais - help from influential people like Cory Doctrow and Bruce Sterling
Nick - it’s all about earning the respect of somebody else
Jamais - It’s important to find people that are writing about similar issues and get them to link to you.
Seil - even if you’re not so strategic, is concerned about creating a community around an issue

Gil: What kinds of topics are you finding that are getting the most response from readers?
Jamais - peak oil
Nick - it’s random, GE ecomagination, vaguely politically controversial posts
Cayenne - technology and oil - there are sites like Gizmodo that are huge that link to us. Mainstreaming of things, like organic standards. Phasing out of print film vs. digital film by Nikon.
Seil - it’s personal
Jamais - a post on diesel hybrid-electric car

What’s in the future?

Nick - blogging, collaboration, sites like del.icio.us
Cayenne - Wists.com
Jamais - RSS - a mechanism for being able to check multiple site updates.

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