Blogging on blogging conference
Today’s blogging conference in Brisbane was an interesting experience. It was hosted by QUT, and it was good to see some genuine interest from within the law and creative industries sections of the University. As well as supporting and participating in the conference, they are also a partner in the Youdecide2007 site, which is seeking to engage ‘citizen journalists’ in reporting on and engaging with the federal election.
I participated in an initial panel along with long standing economic/political Brisbane based blogger, Prof John Quiggin, and “blogging evangelist” and founder of the Blog Herald, Duncan Riley all giving our impressions of where blogs are at, where they’re going and the potentials and pitfalls. The more I think of it, the more I think the political benefit of blogs and related web-based activities like Facebook which help spread information and opinions is not so much for politicians, governments or those who already dominate information dissemination, it is for the activists, academics, experts and people with passions who want to engage more effectively with issues of interest to them and to inform or persuade others. That includes those who comment and spread links, as well as those who blog. Indeed managing the comment environment so it is a hospitable place which encourages civil discourse rather than venom fests or sterile cheer-squadding is one of the major challenges of a blog. Fortunately, there is now a solid number of quality Australian political blog sites with varied perspectives and styles which I think have more or less achieved this – (see the blogroll on this site for examples).
Politics is about a lot more than political parties and pundits, and blogs are about a lot more than politics – there are plenty of shortcomings. Like anything involving people, but it has the benefit of being more direct, unfiltered and authentic – warts and all, and there can be plenty of warts. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the latter part of the day, as I had to head to Sydney for a different event.
As befits a blogging conference, a number of people present blogged about it – here are some examples from Virtually a Librarian, Joanne Jacobs, Woolly Days, Thinking Home Business, Peta Hopkins at Innovate and even through Twitter (I’ve never even remotely got into Twitter I must say, but obviously plenty of people do). Over at Larvatus Prodeo, Mark Bahnisch details the main points he made in introducing the ‘politics of blogging’ session at the conference.
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