Though Shaw's no longer blogsquatting, the comments live on! Leave some love, won't you?
| Most shocking line on above lists: "# Chat participants also physically in the room: 2"
Yoinks! |
| I won coolest blogtitle! Neat-o.
I'm glad we crossed paths, however briefly. Also, apropos of nothing, that photo of you with the small owl is really cool. email | website |
| Thanks for noting that the Religion session ended early and that you found nothing worth writing down. Perhaps if you had contributed -- even if to express your dissatisfaction -- the conversation would have been more to your liking. As it was, I think the discussion simply took place in the wrong milieu. As much as I appreciated all that I learned at Bloggercon, it was hardly representative of blogosphere vis-a-vis religion. We had, to my knowledge, a very few religion bloggers in the room; the rest were mostly folks who were curious as to what it was. Since this was a space for a discussion, not a lecture, and the majority of folks in the room simply weren't prepared to comment too much something they had little experience with, we got what we got.
That said, I heard some great comments -- Ryan Overbey's description of religion blog "sluttiness," Jay Rosen's suggestion that "conviction blogs" be noted as a subset of religion blogs, Library Girl's description of the ways in which blogging has expanded paganism, Jay McCarthy's idea that the most clearly delineated religion blogs are atheist blogs, the Velveteen Rabbi's discussion of secret Hasidic blogs -- but I'll stop since all this evidently bored you the first time.I'm sorry you found nothing worth your time. Wish I knew, though, just what pushed you over the edge from boredom to snarkiness. |
| For those who skimmed the entry itself, the phrase under dispute here is:
Time I stopped writing this stuff down: 3:04 I should be clear: I was neither bored nor driven to snarkiness. At no point did I say that I found nothing WORTH writing down. Nor did I suggest that the content of the discussion didn't seem relevant, interesting, and worth the time spent. I merely suggested that I stopped making lists of stuff; I think I was just all list-ed out. Any snarkiness you read into the phrase "I stopped writing this stuff down" is yours. I should note that the things I blogged for other sessions were not about the content, either. So to find no content-related notation here is no isolated interest; I chose NOT to blog about the content. But not saying ANYTHING about the content is in no way a dismissal of that content. Since my take on the content HAS come up, here it is: I think your points are good ones, Jeff. I appreciated the session, and your leadership of it; though it was a new subject to me, I found the spectrum of ideas and possibilities interesting, and found much here which could be either bellwether or prototype of a fairly broad spectrum of blogging types and issues beyond religion itself. And I contributed once, though you may not have realized it. Long reddish-brown hair? Second row? I also missed the last few minutes of the session because, after desperately stalking outside for a quick cigarette, I bumped into the Velveteen Rabbi and struck up a follow-up conversation (something I daresay doesn't occur when one didn't care for the session in which I had first encountered her voice). My comment about ending early is partially noted because, as Con Metatcontent (on a par with how many EFF hats there were), I find it interesting that, for me, the session had no closure -- I left for five minutes and then when I returned people were packing up. That stands out in the memory, I think. So it's here. |
| Oy, oy, oy. My very real apologies, Joshua. Not only do I recall your comments, but I thought they were great. And you're right -- the snarkiness is mine, and I repent.
For what it's worth, I'm probably feeling defensive about the panel because I felt that I wasn't able to moderate us as far as I wanted to. Whether that's a failing on my part or a reflection of the fact that this subject needs more discussion, I'm not sure. Well, actually I am sure that it needs more discussion. And now I know a little more about the terms with which to do that. Jay Rosen (disclosure: The Revealer's publisher) was dead on when he proposed a sub category of "conviction" blogs. In conversations afterward, he, Library Girl, and Alicia of Fructus Veritas and I discussed a possible taxonomy -- conviction blogs (those maintained by people whose beliefs are already in place ); seeker blogs (those interested in exploring the spiritual options); observer blogs (such as The Revealer or Jay McCarthy's Makeout City, which occasionally examines religious contexts, or Ryan Overbey's Ryan's Lair, which reflects his scholarly interest in Buddhism). Given those categories, we might benefit from discussions WITHIN each group, and across the spectrum to see what common interests they share. Such a conversation might take up the allotted time. Again, apologies Joshua -- I jumped the gun because of what I perceive as a kind of indifference to the role of religion in the blogosphere. My reaction was even more ignorant. Btw, I also appreciated your comments in Jay's session. If I can do it, I'm going to write something about bloggercon (most of The Revealer's readers don't know about it), and want to dig into education and blogging more based on what you and Henry Utter said. |