Sunday, February 25, 2007

Another blogswarm on diversity

I'm actually supposed to be posting about marketing and blogging and social media here. So, when the latest blogswarm about diversity at conferences started this week, I sighed and wondered whether, given my general lack of regular posting here, my readers would really appreciate it if the only time i did post was about this topic...yet again.

Yes, even I can get tired of the topic.

So, I decided to blog about it at length on my personal blog and just provide links here.

If, in fact, you like tor ead about the topic, and it's even one of the reasons you come here, then click on over.

If you wish I would get back to talking about what's happening outh there with blogs and marketing and customer outreach, then don't.

If I'm smart and track my referrers well, I should learn something about my Worker Bees readers :)

Link #1: I am loathing some people today, a rant about those people who are so threatened by the thought of change to the status quo that they'll say just about anything to justify it.

Link #2: I canno resist, wherein I point readers to more posts from the conference diversity blogswarm, and close by citing 3 real-life examples from conferences I attended in 2006...and how they were markedly NOT friendly to women.

Let the clicks (or non-clicks) begin!

Monday, February 19, 2007

BlogHer Business Discount and BlogHer '07 Call for Ideas

Two pieces of BlogHer news worth sharing:

1. Get $100 off the BlogHer Business full two-day conference registration price (i.e. $599) by using this code: BHBAC-DSC

As a reminder as to why you should be attending BlogHer Business this March 22/23 in New York, check out the two-day schedule:

Day One, including case studies with the Washington Post, Wells Fargo and more, plus a free-form Ask the Experts micro-consulting segment.

Day Two, featuring speakers such as Google's Marissa Mayer, Redbook editor-in-chief Stacy Morrison, iVillage President Debi Fine, and the women who manage the blog efforts for Cisco, Yahoo!, Fast Company Magazine, Weblogs Inc and Google, among many others.

Register here.

More info about the venue and planned activities can be found here.

2. Today we announced the theme, programming tracks and open call for ideas for BlogHer '07, taking place this July in Chicago. I'm just going to tease you here, because I devoted a lot of time to crafting the announcement post, so i want you all to read it! I do want to call out, though, that the Call for Ideas is open until March 16th, so please submit your ideas per the instructions in this post.

Back to our regular programming...

Broadband Penetratoin continue to rise

Yes, it's been a while since I blogged (I blame illness and BlogHer Business planning.)

So, I'm starting back slowly...by posting some market stats that I want to remember. Yes, it's blog as personal archive time.

For those who think that blogging may have peaked, I think there's reason to believe that's not quite the case yet.

Why? Because broadband penetration continues to grow, and having broadband makes someone much more likely to do more than simple Internet activities, like email and a little shopping.

At the end of 2006 the broadband penetration in the U.S. had increased 20% to 50 million households. And the project that it will increase another 20% to 60 million households by the end of 2007...that's about a 55% penetration rate.

Some other stats that might help you extrapolate some interesting bloggy goodness:
-the current penetration of blog readers to U.S. online user is 39%
-the current penetration rate of bloggers to U.S. online users is 8%

Both of those figures have increased rapidly over the last 5 years (Source: Pew)

And bloggers tend to have broadband.

No, this is not the same as saying "those with broadband will tend to blog". While having broadband may be correlated to blogging, I doubt anyone has shown it to be causative. Still, I don't think it' making a huge leap to say that the continuing penetration of broadband (here and abroad) should, at the very least, be conducive to blogging.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

This month's Silicon Veggie

It's not much on the creative writing side, but it is a compendium of my favorite online resources for vegetarians and vegans. If you've been considering going veg, even for one day a week, then these sites will definitely help!

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Thursday, February 01, 2007

The In-box experience

So, yes, the Microsoft/Edelman Vista laptop has landed.

Trouble is I've been sick as a dog since the weekend, so there it sits, forlorn and unopened, on my living room floor. I can tell you that thus far the In-box experience has been uneventful.

It hasn't crashed, nor has it picked up any viruses. So you know, so far, so good.

I wax verbose about BlogHer

In December Toby Bloomberg and I had breakfast together in D.C., and we chatted a long time about BlogHer, and about our two conferences this year.

Later Toby said "Hey, I bet a lot of other people don't know the answers to the questions I was peppering you with at breakfast either. how would you feel about recreating that conversation in a blog interview?"

I'm sure you realize that one of the beauties of blogging, and the written word in general, is that you get to go back and fine tune what you said. No "If only I said xx" or "if I could go back, I'd phrase it this way." So, no way was I going to give up the chance to go back and fine tune our breakfast conversation :)

The results are out, and yes, I'm a verbose woman. But hey, she asked!

And I answered.

Here's Part 1: The back-Story of BlogHer and why we're doing a Business Conference.

Here's Part 2: The Vision and Future Direction

Bonus: an excerpt was also posted on Marketing Profs

Thanks Toby!

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