This past Saturday, February 12, 2005 was the first ever Triangle Bloggers Conference at UNC in Chapel Hill, NC. Over one hundred bloggers, journalist, lurkers, curious, liberal and conservative got together in one room and talked. Read what other folks who blogged it live thought. Here are some pictures of the event at a Flickr photo pool. Afterwards many of us went out for lunch to talk more. I lead ten or so people to Pepper’s Pizza on Franklin Street to talk about Podcasting. Read on to get some of my thoughts about TriBlogCon. Hopefully a podcast about it after I digest it all. Thanks again to Anton Zuker and Paul Jones.
Brian R.’s TriBlogCon 2005 Thoughts
Ok… here are my impressions of this past weekend. First, it was OVERWHELMINGLY FUN and THOUGHT PROVOKING. [Being with Ruby this whole time talking about our experiences was the best valentines present for me. 
]
The 2005 Triangle Bloggers Conference was just too short. Too much for people to say in such a short amount of time. But I understand how this could happen. Paul Jones says, “It all came off rather well despite having grown to over 5 times the size of attendance that we had originally anticipated.” More people = more time. Next time I’m sure we’ll spend more time together.
The first session was very open and allowed several people with different points of view to speak and be heard. I would have liked to continue this spirit of open discussion in small break out sessions immediately after this energy was built up. Then a long lunch break and then another formal session with a different topic with more open discussion.
Ed Cone moderated the intersession very well. He walked around the room as he said, “Phil Donahue style” getting close to people he was introducing to the crowd. Instead of hogging up all the time talking he asked others to speak. This isn’t to suggest that he didn’t have stuff to say, but he struck a balance. This a real skill Ed has.
The second session with Paul Jones and Dan Gillmor had a lot of interesting ideas too. But instead of a discussion it felt more like a lecture. Not to say that the crowd didn’t talk. But for most of it Dan Gillmor just answered questions for each audience member who spoke. His answers were fascinating, too. He came to listen and did that well.
During this final session Bob Young, a Red Hat founder who’s now running LuLu, stated, “Nothing is a coincident”. It turns out that the owners of the Greensboro newspaper the News and Record, Landmark Communications, were among the original venture capitalist in Red Hat. Now it seems they have invested in some more creative innovators (John Robinson and Lex Alexander). They are trying to save not only a business but a whole business model, the local newspaper.
After this I asked the question, “Has anyone at Landmark made a public statement about what’s going on at the News and Record?” The general response by folks was “No”. No one thinks Landmark really has an opinion on it. At least a public one. My gut says this is wrong. If Landmark doesn’t know they will VERY soon.
Everyone appears to be going on the assumption that the leash is loose and long. This seems like a smart business strategy. Let the innovators take risks if they aren’t expensive and then reap the benefit and credit when it works. If the experiments of new community journalism fail, no profit loss and lots of knowledge gained. Simple.
But what about the people?
If this experiment “works” will Greensboro bloggers and residents as a whole be real partners in this new venture? Or will they remain just as they were, consumers who give out good leads and lots of ideas so, “[Landmark] can take truck loads of cash back to Virginia.”?
There are lots of smart people blogging and working on grassroots journalism in Greensboro. They will only give so much for so long with out compensation. Whether it’s payment in cash or control. I think they should carefully negotiate some control. I’m not suggesting that non-journalist run this big newspaper. Just that the people should have a vote at the executives table when big decisions get made.
This is by no means a complete reporting of what happened at the first Triangle Bloggers Conference. To get a more rounded impression of the event try reading some other blogs.