um, no, I can’t transliterate these notes. but a few things stand out:
1) re: what is a weblog? I liked what Gael said, the concept of blogger as DJ. I don’t know who said it, but this line rang quite true: “that word flows around a lot of different content”.
2) strange, in a good way, to hear both panelists and audience members mention “big name” weblogs – Metafilter, Boing Boing. Gael sez: “Matt does a great job.” and (Glenn?) mentioned Scripting News as something that might account for a big bubble of traffic (right after mentioning getting slashdotted).
3) Chad’s big question: where do you see the future of blogging? (he mentioned education & politics) Glenn had really interesting things to say on this one (man, he’s a very smart and articulate guy!) – connecting the growth of blogging, potentially, to youth culture, to people who were college students at schools with wireless asking their employers, later – “why don’t you have wireless networking?” but conversely the issues of control (they’d already mentioned that guy who got fired from that newspaper in Texas) as a potential chilling effect. Glenn mentioned Cluetrain. (C muttered in my ear something about weblogs as an “agent of change”) Clark’s comment was something about a “decentralized network…obviously infinitely cool.” (that guy has a very sketchy vibe.)
4) somebody asked how success was measured in weblogs – mentioning the Nielsens, I think, in comparison. and when Glenn mentioned getting writing gigs, and Gael said she was happy if 10 people read and enjoyed her blog, the response from the questioner was “so it’s more of a hobbyist thing?” as if that were a problem, which prompted some sketchy responses all around about micropayments, paid aggregation, etc.
5) an interesting point from the moderator, who works at MSNBC, about their weblogs…essentially, he said that human voices in their site was a differentiator from the competition. hm.
6) unfortunately, the basics got glossed over at the beginning, and I think having Rebecca there would’ve really helped when a couple of very basic questions came up towards the end. I really wonder if they answered the questions to the questioner’s satisfaction.
afterwards, I got to meet Anita Rowland, whose name I have seen around for a while. (nice blog, too.) we went home pretty much right after, because it’s a hell of a drive, esp. with last night’s driving rain. but definitely worthwhile, and C enjoyed it as well, even tho blogging is more of my thing.