Business and Blogging

Bloggers at WordCamp 2007

by Des Walsh on July 21st, 2007

For anyone who wants an up-to-the-minute briefing on blogging as seen in a WordPress world, the WordCamp 2007 event in San Francisco is being live-blogged by several bloggers.

Among others, there are posts by Tris Hussey on the BlogWorld & New Media Expo blog and his own A View From the Isle site.

Stephanie Booth has extensive posts from the event on her Climb to the Stairs site.

In reading Tris’ posts and Stephanie’s I was torn between being excited by all the insights and tips they were sharing and wondering when I was going to find time to implement all the good ideas!

Lots of gems, such as this from Tris’ post on the discussion between Om Malik and John C. Dvorak:

OM: It’s the comments that make the difference. The reader engagement, being able to connect and interactive. JCD: The comments sometimes make the blogs. Sometimes the comments are more interesting and insightful than the article.

An interesting comment on the international scene:

International blogging … not catching on in Australia…OM: Very big in Europe…Australians good in cricket, maybe not blogging ;)…[Om was trying to be cheeky].

And Tris reports approvingly a great observation about comments, from Lorelle VanFossen:

Comments are content so say something intelligent/interesting because people will follow your link to your blog. I do this all the time. You leave a comment, I’ll go read you. Link to me, I’ll go read you. Chances are, I’ll even subscribe to you.

I found Stephanie Booth’s report of the presentation by Matt Cutts on whitehat SEO tips for bloggers stimulating and challenging. Challenging for example in saying it is better to have a URL with the /blog extension rather than the root URL. Having just rationalized that in the obverse, on my Thinking Home Business blog, I had a minor heart sink at that point but found some consolation in a couple of sentences further on in the post:

But wait! If everything is already in place, don’t completely mess up your urls to change. Leave the old stuff as it is, and make the new stuff better.

Where Tris and Stephanie have given discursive reports on the Matt Cutts presentation, Gregg Lowrimore has provided a succinct fifteen point summary. Charles at Blogging Pro also has the fifteen points list and a thumbs-up for the Matt Cutts session:

A good indication of how good Cutts’ presentation was that nearly 100% of those attending preferred to remain in the hall asking questions well after the hour was over rather than break for dinner.

And a practical tip from Tris for anyone planning to live blog an event: be the first to the power outlet:

Power plugs are always a premium commodity at a conference. I stake them out early when I sit down for a talk. Pays to get here early. I sat right by the plug. Now, I also have a surge suppressor (travel sized) for my laptop and my conference friend maker…a three-plug power strip I got from Ikea. I think I’m now the keeper of the plug (plugging it back in when someone kicks it watching for smoke…no I’m not kidding…lot’s of folks plugged into this wee little outlet).

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