LaurieWrites

Tuesday night at home.

My roommate: Have you seen this?

Me: What is it?

MR: Stupid.

Pause.

MR: It’s just two dudes tearing things apart with their hands. If anything, it's just two dudes I don’t want to be at any bar I’m at. 

Links eight days out

Things are getting freakier every day in this wacked out United States t-minus one week to election day. Mother of pearl, may it be over soon and may it be a result that will not have me knee-deep in the leftover Halloween candy along with my wine. Mother does need her medicine increasingly much these crazy, hazy days. So. Here are a few things.

Michelle Obama wrote on BlogHer again. Rock on Michelle. I like you.

I like these people in Indiana, as well. Even when times AREN'T hard, it's tough to give up money. To do it for principles? Well, that's sort of unheard of lately, isn't it?

The world did not need a Sarah Palin Cabbage Patch doll. Or a Joe Biden version. Or any other, for that matter.

Break for public service announcement: kids need cameras!!!!! A dollar will do.

Megyn Kelly from Fox News loses her mind. She is terrible, and putting her on as a "commentator" is a joke. (Please note I linked to that site although I find the comments about her being "cute but crazy" aggravating. It's too bad that men - no matter what they themselves look like, which makes it more entertaining - always need to inject appearance into a discussion of any sort involving women, but that just seems to be how the wiring works. Ugly is as ugly does, and she doesn't get qualified in this case.)

What you must do and when you must do it and also awry best laid plans

This week has been a huge MESS so tonight I went to a comedy show. It wasn't at all what I'd planned to do. At various times this week when I was not immersed in maverick behaviors or droppin' my g's or gettin' my updo refreshed, I was hell-bent on a. being all crazy b. crying and c. obsessing over whether it was the right idea to go to New York or to use my forgotten ticket to the Black Crowes tonight.

New York became a financial impossibility two days ago so in the midst of some of the crying yesterday I called that trip off. I wanted to see the Black Crowes pretty badly but during my day at work I decided that I just didn't think I could swing it. I couldn't deal with traveling out to my house to pick the ticket up (long dumb story) and then driving back into DC for the show and parking and being stomped on by some person who wandered into the club on a detour from the 1997 Horde Tour. So instead I went to see Lewis Black and a couple of other guys do comedy on my campus.

Good move. Turns out I'd missed laughing, especially of the more energetic kind. I felt it move through me and get into some of my more angry and unhappy spaces and by the time the show was over my mood had improved so much from even two hours before.

On the way home it seemed possible to have some fun - to have any at all, in fact, because lately fun hasn't been the word, mostly ever. I need it. I can't stand it anymore. I can't stand drama and upset. I just want to enjoy these proceedings for a change.

The day after the day that sucked.

I'm good, friends. My friends. My friends of which none of whom are plumbers or hockey players or even hockey moms, although I can assure you that if I had a friend who was a hockey mom she'd be the most bad-ass hockey mom in all the land, with the orange slices and the juice boxes and a mean slapshot.

Those are the only kind of hockey mom friends I need. And I really can't wait for November 4, to put all of this ridiculosity to rest. CNN played a montage of the amount of times both of the candidates said "Joe the plumber" or some variation thereof today, several times over, and it occurred to me then as it's occurred to me often lately that we are a nation on the verge. Or maybe a nation that's there, just there, repeatin' the hockey and the plumber and the change and the alarming Three Stooges' "heh?" tic that McCain has over and over until we're all just going to one day explode in a huge global warming hug from God.

I hope it's a good hair day. I'd like to go out on one of those - just not today, which is one, so thanks.

Yesterday was a bad day, a bad hair day and a post-BlogHer, post-trip post-mortem of a day. And I have to say that writing through it is one of those things that I use this space for, or at least I did before and I'm trying to again, regardless of how I think it may bum some people out or make them think I'm crazy. I honestly don't really care at this point. I'm interested in feeling better and part of that is writing it down. When I don't I'm worse and when I do I'm better. It's an elemental part of me being better than I get when I'm down in the hole.

It's also really aggravating me that I can't write about the routine of my days right now, because I sat on a panel on Monday and told a room full of people that it is one of those things that I consider unbloggable. But I'll tell you one thing - when you're finally-once-and-for-all grieving an old loss that's been a long and hard time going, and you're in a weird transitional time, and you're freaking out about your weight (for reasons of health and comfort as well as the desire to fit into any sort of clothing) AND photos of you from high school (AWKWARD, and not the kind where Jennifer Garner goes "Oh, I was TOTALLY the ugly duckling in my high school," which always makes me want to punch a wall) are popping up on Facebook, you need a better environment than the one you are currently in, when you is me.

Just sayin'. Because that is all I can say. I really wish I could say more. I really, really, really wish I could say more.

But I can't. Because I have to pee and I have to catch a shuttle bus to my car. That is what I need to do. And that involves putting one foot in front of the other, which is actually working out today.

And everything around me stays the same.

There's a lot to say about the weekend, the trip from Maryland to Boston to Maryland and back home to my bed again, and I know I can't really adequately explain it all. I'm really tired. My mind and heart and body are tired. There were things I needed to experience in Massachusetts, things I'd sort of expected but not really, plus three days of intense driving across strange highways and connection with people who in many cases I knew but had never met before.

Massachusetts broke my heart a long time ago, not on purpose, just as a player in a drama it knew nothing of. And this weekend in addition to going there to see amazing women whose writing inspires me, and who work on special projects with me, I ended up meeting up with someone who lives there who has meant a lot to me for a long time because apparently we had a few final loose ends to tie up or cut.

It was fine. It was low-key. I ran my mouth as I am prone to doing. I tried to make it all make sense for everyone, because that's also what I do. I felt someone's pain whose pain I am able to feel like few others, I tried to give solutions and really felt like what I was thinking was right. It actually felt strangely easy at the time.

Then I got into a cab at the end of the night and laid my head against the glass and vaulted immediately into another episode of helping a frustratingly clueless and unmotivated cab driver find his way in a city in which I do not live in which ostensibly he does, when I really just wanted to be and let someone else who could PLEASE know what they're doing for once take the wheel. (Could one cab driver have a GPS system, in his brain or on his dashboard, please?) And in the spaces in between that aggravation I felt a certain feeling of not feeling which I was relieved to think would hold. I did - as I always try to do - what I thought was the right thing.

The next day I drove, hopelessly lost, out of Boston and finally onto the gorgeous roads of central Massachusetts south through Connecticut and New York, finally into Pennsylvania and onto home. I felt peaceful, and relieved.

Then, today was a mess. I've been crying all day, off and on. I had another big event yesterday with some of the the same people from the weekend and hundreds more, which was great and exhausting at the same time. I think it was too much stimulation. Even though it was good to see everyone, it was too much to deal with my unsettled heart on top of it all.

Barenaked Ladies has a lyric in what is probably my favorite song of theirs, "I wake up scared/I wake up strange/I wake up wondering if anything in my life is ever gonna change" and that's how I woke up today. I shrunk into myself, into a withering feeling of loneliness, of finally having let something huge go for who knows why.

There's no reason for my heart to be unsettled, except for every reason that anyone's ever is. I went for - and got - that aggravating "c" word, closure, on this trip. I was told by smart and caring people that that was what I needed, for real. I knew deep down that it was what I was doing this for, that it would come about if I approached it in the right way. I needed to be an adult. I needed to let go. I needed to accept that there were things I had done and said that weren't helpful, and that in order to move on, to have any shot at a better emotional life, that this was what I needed to do.

I know this is true. I am well aware of my delusions and blind spots, of how I clung to the wrong thing for so many years, looked after the closed door when supposedly God was opening a window as it's often suggested. But the thing is, really, that when I'm completely honest and unfiltered, I'm tired of closure. I'm tired of trying to resolve things and make them right. I'm tired of trying to be happy on my own, of accepting that every road that has led me back to a room by myself with a pile of resolutions is the right one.There are days when, even though the basic premise of Buddhism is that everything must be let go and released because that's just the way it is, I cannot let go of one more thing.

This sounds like whining and maybe it is. Maybe at my core I am angst-ridden and needy and ridiculous. But I don't want to let things go so much as I want to grab onto them with both hands at this point, of love and joy and connection. There is so much lack in the world, uncertainty and fear and garbage of the highest order that I want something beautiful. At the very least I want to stop having to give stuff back, and maybe I am specifically daring to tal about love here.

And what is beautiful - the most beautiful - thing about healing this relationship that I dealt with in Boston is that it was angry and acrimonious and it isn't anymore. It was really easy to work that part out. We were able to communicate with each other and put some things right that hadn't been for awhile, and again, some of them my fault to a degree. I think that was good. I can't say it was joyful, on any level, but at least it was better than the alternative.

So the crying today, I don't know. The serious tears that came out of nowhere maybe meant that something was excising itself for a final time, or at least I hope so - that the last vestiges of hope for an old feeling that had planted a perennial garden of sorts in my mind and heart were leaving me in salt water as they've done so many times before but never for good.

I still hate it, I can't lie. I can't say I understand it really, that it isn't one of the great and terrible mysteries of my life. And I wish that I could be more gracious about everything on so many levels. Someday I will be, I'm sure, but maybe not when I'm this deep in the end of it, when I'm not working so hard to be better off than I still am.

Luckily, this is burned into my brain. Maybe there's some kind of hope.

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." Rainer Maria Rilke

BlogHer DC - Closing Keynote Liveblog

Lisa Stone moderates closing discussion with Carol Jenkins of the Women's Media Center, Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes and WowOWow.com, Liz Mair of the RNC, and Mary Ann Akers of the Washington Post.

Women who blog have moved well beyond the political echo chamber of 2004.

Blogging has changed the political process.

On Blogher, more than 2000 blogs are listed in politics, last year it was 379.

7 of 10 biggest posts for the year are about politics or the economy.

Only posts that get more hits than Michelle Obama when she writes on BlogHer are posts about Sarah Palin.

Lesley Stahl of 60 minutes Started Wow Oh Wow Media  TV was the center of her candidates' day. She was the center of her candidates' universe. Now it's blogging. It has hurt tv. They are no tthe center of the universe anymore bloggers are.

Liz Mair - RNC's online communications director. She's in this role, she has an online comm manager who assists her.

There's constant outreach, communicating with bloggers of all stripes. People ahve it in their heads that being republicans they focus on the conservative blogosphere. That's not necessarily true. They communicated with progressives as well. John McCain does like communicating with bloggers, even in the beginning of the campaigning.

The ability of bloggers to drive stories forward that start small and wouldn't attract attention of main stream journalists. She's confident sh won 't get much sleep next 22 days.

Lisa introduces Carol Jenkins, Founding president of Women's Media Center - in the past has referred to women as invisible majority. Asks her,  do we hurt ourselves as woman and bloggers in some of these conversations?

What this year has shown us is how unaccustomed we are to looking at women and people of color. Nation run by white men. Woman and man of color running for president, first time as a nation we've had to pay attention to either. Lack of experience in that: what resulted was embarrassing behavior. What they said was "Americans are a generation of teenaged boys." First saw this when Katie Couric became an anchor of network news show. Got call from woman reporter. She says, "Carol what did you think about the legs?"

Carol: It''s a lack of knowledge and information. Never before have Americans had to pay attention to a woman or person of color so it's learning everything.

What we're learning in age of personal is political, you cannot distance yourself from goings-on of this election cycle. They have analyzed a lot of the coverage.

Sarah Palin entering race has changed things again. Photo of Sarah Palin with boy loooking up the back of her skirt. Inappropriate behavior. When will it stop?

Lisa: Are bloggers part of the problem or can we be the solution ? Are we being spun?

Mary Ann Akers: There are some bloggers who can be part of the problem. Some can be very much part of the solution. She believes it's better to have more information than less. She likes that there are all of these voices - on "The Google," as President Bush calls it - it's a great thing. The blogs that have erroneous information, that don't have well-reported or reported at all information will fall by the wayside.

The good outweighs the bad. In terms of spinning - most interesting was the day Sarah Palin was chosen by John McCain, DailyKos ran "Sarah is not Baby Trig's mother." It looked like a very thoroughly researched piece on Kos, showing Bristol look like she was president at about the time Palin would have given birth. There qwas no evidence in the end at all to suggest it was true. We still actually have to do reporting. Even though blog is pejorative term with old guard in journalism, it's just a platform. We're still reporting. We can have more fun, voice, style but still it's reporting. That example comes to mind when I think of some of the spinning that's out there. Some of the wild stuff on the blogs that can seep into mainstream political coverage had huge impact.

Lisa wants Lesley and Carol to coment on whether bloggers are part of the problem or solution.

Lesley: this is a baby industry and it's having growing pains. Maybe we'll always have wild rumors. Is it ever going to be policed? There will be a sorting out eventually but it's kind of thrilling that this sorting out will take place in a natural way. Hopefully there won't be a policeman, maybe there will be a directory, Good Housekeeping seal of approval, but it's the good, the bad and ugly.

One of the things that has bothered me for years now is we're all the salad bowl together and we're all mixed up. What the hell is the MSM anyway? You can go on a cable news show and find people who've worked on the campaigns. Karl Rove. Pat Buchanan. People who worked in Clinton White HOuse. Theyu're MSM, what the public thinks of it. She's sure that those of us who are responsible bloggers get annoyed when you see someone spreading ugly rumors because you get tarred with that brush as well. It cold take two more election cycles, maybe. Maybe we'll become more discerning media.

Carol: They call it embedded punditry. We cannot tell anymore what's news and what's opinion. This blurring that happens everywhere in the blogosphere: reporters are expected to give their opinion. They used to try to be objective. Now the facts have a spin. When people are complaining about MSM she htinks they're complaining about pundits. Fact-checking: so much is available now. You have information at your fingertips now that you used to have to wait hours for. Dinner with Norma Quarles, was on presidential debate panel with Ferraro. She got the call the day before that she was going to be on the next day. Then she had to call up NBC and ask a researcher there to go through system and find what she needed for the debate. Don't have to do that now. When you write, use those facts that are available to you. A rumor you start in good faith can have tragic results.

Lisa Stone: Blogging is like the printing press. Printing went from the Gutenberg Bible straight into pornography. What does a complete false rumor take to blow up into news? Let's pretend it's 4 years now, we have learned, Erin Kotecki-Vest talked about this. Blogher is nonpartisan even though bloggers are not. They have found that both campaigns are incredibly responsive. She thinks they've seen OBama campaign using Twitter and e-mail in ways they wouldn't have predicted. In an Obama presidency, is a candidate who uses Twitter and e-mail for direct outreach going to be able to spin his policy and agenda? What responsibility do we have as bloggers to debunk that sort of thing?

Maryane: Great for engaging young voters, 1000s in a serious way that they weren't able to in last election. Campaign officials tweeting during debate. Posting things on FB, using all tools available to them to reach as many people as they possibly can. IT's an amazing thing they have and a good thing.

Lesley" Pres have been manipulating us since the bg of time. Whoever is preisent will keep up w/ the latest mani tool Whoever gets to the WH from now on is going to try to stay on top of technology and wehre it goes. On eof the resasn she wante to be connected with WowOHWow, this is the future and be preapared for them to try to play with your minds because that'sz what they do.

MA: It's all propaganda, right Liz? 

Liz: I'm a total propagandist. Both candidates are trying to communicate with people through social media. She pushes to get female surrogates and supporters of John McCain to go on BlogHer and guest post. Either way people are very engaged in it, certainly something Republican party if committed to.

Lisa: Fascinating to see campaign going directly to consumers. Incredible response. Her moment of "holy cow" was when Carly Fiorina said in response to a question from a user about how Clinton was treated, Fiorina said that how Clinton was treated was awful.

Audience:

Innovation Diva: The future, different voices in the campaign. The blogosphere has enabled us to bring out different voices and facts again. These voices are not always able to break thorugh all the buzz. How do you find good information versus what is not true?

Carol: Use to be you'd go to my site and my site alone. Now everyone is connected. You just need to go to sites you respect and see what they're linking to. She's friends on Facebook to talk to her friends' grandchildren.

Kate   You talk about how campaigns are twittering, blogging, Facebooking. Where does that end? In four years, will we have president tweeting "Up late last night, working on foreign policy?" Just because we're talking doesn't mean we're really communicating.

Lisa: When does information become non-information.

Lesley: You just have to watch television, sorry. (laughter.)

Mary Ann: Great question. Reporters were told to tweet, use Facebook. She felt like a moron going halfway through, tweeting, "can you believe he just said 'my friends' again?" How many times can I say that? I was thinking, is this a fad? How much longer do we have to do this Twitter thing? It's interesting. I like the concept. In four years will it be as big of a deal. Four years from now we're not going to have evolved into short, tweeting little people. We're still gonna want to read interesting things that are reported thoroughly. Want to know what is on the blogs is good solid information.

Lesley: Distressing because truth is it takes a lot of money to have the kind of depth in a news organization to do enterprise pieces, kind of background that produces a deeply information piece that a democracy needs to give its citizens to make smart decisions.

How much information, particularly in political campaigns, is imparted?

Lisa: I was a FOIA print reporter. Left and came online. When she was at CNN could never pull down attention that major political blogs have. Amazed at engagement on political blogs.

What can be done to make bloggers move past "red white and blue bikini" problem?

Liz: have some sense of ethics, not necessarily in way journalists, would, but check your facts. Easy to send "oh so and so voted this way on a bill," could easily go off and write 600 words on how horrible that is. Bloggers want to be treated seriously and credibly have a responsibility to do that. Bigger bloggers well read, writing very good posts, providing good content, that's what they're doing. It's not a cut, copy and paste job. A LOT OF reporters using blogging with reporting. If you're the gossip among your friends, your friends may have a giggle about it but they're not going to treat you as the most serious person in the room.

Carol: Feeling you have to be first, to be there as part of the story, she understands that feelings. If you weren't first you were in big trouble. With Palin nomination, Women's Media Center not just flooded with pictures of her in bikinis but worst stuff. We have to institute a rule: Stop. Do not read or consume anything until you can fact check it, nothing goes on your website or in blogs. In the blogosphere you're not held accountable. but if it was going to be on our blog it had to be sourced. 99.9 percent of stuff we got was false. If we'd have perpetuated rumors we'd have been held responsible for itl As organization never want to be that far out on limb or irresponsibility.

Tonya: Nerdette, NotMyGal: Third-wave feminist, doesn't like women who present themselves as feminist but who are not pro-woman. Sarah Palin is not her gal. If there's something you've seen in this election cycle that gives you hope about women being on a major ticket? Are we going to have another woman running for president? Would love to know if you feel the same way that having all these women enagaging women online will help women get elected?

Carol: She's part of the solution because she's writing about it. Women were not in the higher media ranks. Annenberg: Women hold only 3 percent of the clout in media 97 percent of what you know about yourselv and our clout in the world comes from male perspective. Bring it more in balance.

To understand importance of stories that you tell and who tells them. We have a campaign that said did anyone notice there are no moderators in final debates? What is that about in 2008. Sexism and misogyny in primary was incredible but no one believed them til they strung it together and showed networks what their pundits had done. She thinks that who tells the story - if you're looking for Hillary effect, apparently there are fewer women than more saying they want to run for office. A lot of it has to do with the treatment she got in the media Next four years ultimate shift that people who want to tell stories are women.

Mary Ann: When weill we have a woman running for president again if polls are really wrong and McCain wins presidency. Can guarantee Clinton will run again in 2012 if Obama doesn't win presidency.

Liz: Doesn't want to say that bloggers drafted Palin? A lot of excitement in blogosphere around Palin since she won governor in 2006. She thinks blogosphere is generally part of the solution. Bloggers much more without any disrespect to MSM, better at voicing concerns, talking about things, set of issues they care about very deeply, may be health care, taxes, foreign policy. If you're a blogger you're probably focused on a couple of different things, political blogger probably focused on a couple of issues. Blogosphere will continue to propel women forward. Female elected officials with focus on agenda and issues will be noticed by blogosphere.

Lisa: Fascinated by WowOhWow.

Lesley: Five founders and 11 contributors are brand names. They saw something happening and didn't want to be left behind. She wanted to be an entrepreneur. She'd never been left behind. They do virtually any subject that's of interest to women which is any subject.

Heather Chapman, the Mother Tongue. There are no female moderators in any of the debates. The economy has tanked but considering women are the majority of undecided voters why aren't candidates more focused on what is of concern to women. Why was Moms Rising denied delivery of letter to Palin's office?

Carol: Started campaign, "Show us the women." They sent questions in from women. They want to know wehre sensibility is to understand that more than half the population is women. Bailout, poverty, all of these issues affect us more than men. Why are they left out? Media. 

Lesley: When she opens her eyes where she works there are a lot of women.

Carol: Are they the bosses?

Lesley: No. But she thinks journalism has been friendly to women. She thinks they are more influential than Carol gives credit for.

Carol: Yes. But we have been in a ten-year stall for women.

JJ: Former television reporter. Rode Silicon Valley wave, became a mother, didn't go back into journalism. What about the career opportunities that blogging has given women?

Lisa: It does bring a great opportunity for other generations. Don't have to be 28 years old and camera-friendly to work on blogs.

Lesley: Loves fact that women can start careers, keep working with one child, when second child comes they feel they must be home, this gives them an opportunity not to give up career.

Carol: Numbers we watch, want to make sure you ultimately get paid for it. World has worked that women do all great work and don't get paid for it. All of you have been writing all of these fabulous blogs, number of women syndiaated columnists have in fact decreased. Paper like Post or Times can have 1 or 2 women and 14 men. Make sure numbers change and you get compensated.

Lesley: this is an opportunity to keep your skills honed and come at it.

Liz: She sees blogging as something that's very useful in terms of transitioning between different roles. RNC had no interest in hiring someone to do online communications who didn't have online experience. She wouldn't have her job if she wasn't a blogger. People looking for workers who have done something in hands-on manner (ie social media) who better to hire?

Jocelyn: Identity politics in election cycle. Distressing to her how difficult it is for us to think more braodly than gender and race. How could she make a choice between these key parts of her identity. When we talk about women we're talking about white women. When we talk about race we talk about black men. Wants to see talk of intersections: rich, black female. etc.

Mary Ann: Look at how often we all refer to Barack Obama as a black man. He's never referred to as interracial. It's become simple to pigeonhole.

Carol: We will get better at this. We're brand new. We've lived in such a segregated society. Workplace is where we all come together, schools, neighborhoods, churches. We work together and go home to our separate. Challenge at WMC is "are you defined by race or gender if you're a black woman?" That's not a blanket statement. Each individual has to decide for herself. It's an inclusive thing. Ther are those of us who would say I've been discrimniated against more for being a woman than a black person. That's her experience.

Joanne Bamberger: We've had this whole discussion today, so what do we do? How do we get our voices out there more? We're all in the blogosphere, for better or worse.

Mary Ann: Buddy up with some people in MSM who are attached to credible, big news organizations such as the Post, Times, WSJ, CBSNews, ABCNews, CNN. They all have blogs. They'd lofve to link to your stuff if you have good stuff. Dn't hesitate to reach out to these people. Great way to reach out.

Lesley: Doesn't want to have this end on a downer, but: When she was hired it was 1972. A lot of women had ocme into workforce. If you'd told me then we wouldn't have woman president by 2008, still talking about glass ceiling,she'd have told you you were crazy. Baffled why women fall behind, two steps forward, three back, other countries women are prime ministers. No simple answer. We just keep plugging because what else can we do but it raewlly is an astonishment.

Liz: Practical advice, she was a blogger first. She found by doing the buddying up thing that not only were people paying attention to what she was blogging but they were asking if she wanted to write an op-ed or column. Understands people don;t want to abandon the blogosphere but she doens't think it hurts to reach out and get things run every once in awhile. A lot of people who were signed up for email alerts on her own Web site, I think that's how they found me.

Lisa: We can end on a positive note. Each one of these women have founded a site or an initiative in the blogosphere. That's the accomplishment.

Standing ovation.

BlogHer DC - Closing Keynote Liveblog

Women Wom n who blog have moved well beyond the political echo chamber of 2004.

Blogging has changed the political process.

on Blogher, more than 2000 blogs listed in politics, last year ist was 379.

7 of 10 biggest posts for the year are about politics or the economy.

Only posts that get more hits than Michelle Obama are posts about Sarah Palin.

Lesley Stahl - Started Wow Oh Wow Media  TV was the center of her candidates' day. She was the center of her candidates' universe. Now it's blogging. It has hurt tv. They are no tthe center of the universe anymore bloggers are.

Liz Mair - RNC's online communications director. She's in this role, she has an online comm manager who assists her.

There's constant outreach, communicating with bloggers of all stripes. People ahve it in their heads that being republicans they focus on the conservative b logosphere. That's not necessarily true. They communicated with progressives as well. John McCain does like communicating with bloggers, even in the beginning of the campaing.

The ability of bloggers to drive stories forward that start small and wouldn't attract attention of main stream journalists. She's confident sh won 't get much sleep next 22 days.

Lisa introduces Carol, Founding president of Women's Media Center - in the past has referred to women as invisible majority. Asks her,  do we hurt ourselves as woman and bloggers in some of these conversations?

What this year has shown us is how unaccustomed we are to looking at women and people of color. Nation run by white men. Woman and man of color running for president, first time as a nation we've had to pay attention to either. Lack of experience in that: what resulted was embarrassing behavior. What they said was "Americans are a generation of teenaged boys." First saw this when Katie Couric becamse an anchor of network news show. Got call from woman reporter. She says, "Carol what did you think about the legs?"

Carol: These were again
IT's a lack of knowledge and information. Never before have Americans had to pay attention to a woman or person of color so it's learning everything.

What we're learning in age of personal is political, you cannot distance yourself from goings on of this election cycle. They have analyzed a lot of the coverage.

Managing Information Overload: BlogHerBoston Liveblog

Managing Information Overload: How to find your blogging community

Presenter: Beth Kanter

Having participants fill out a short quiz: "How information overloaded are you?"

She is doing this as a full-room discussion.

She is looking at skills first - how to find your blogging community, and information-coping skills. Coping sounds cool, confident so you can do it.

She's been with the BlogHer community since it started. She's a contributing editor for social media/nonprofits.

Take Aways:
Why the blog community is important
seven steps to find your blog community
information coping skills.

She has created a wiki with copies of her slides.

Two-minute poll: who blogs? How many blogs do you read? Do you comment? Want more comments on your own blog? Are you using an RSS reader?

Why build a blog community?

Audience:

• You have interests and others share them.
• When I first started reading I realized I wasn't alone as a new mom staying at home.
• I like to learn about ideas and people and what people are doing and thinking. I don't want to find people who just share my interests, I want to learn about other interests.
• Collaborative brain, getting feedback about ideas I have.
• Educator: Personal Learning Network

1. Find your niche.
2. Find the bridge bloggers. Read their blogs. Do the keyword search feeds. Comment. have a sysstem to track it. Interact with readers.
If you do these seven things, you can build a fantastic community.

How many people when you blog define what you write about?
I would start to find my niche by brainstorming three ideas I want to write about. Do three more keywords related to those topics. The reason: when you start to go out and find bloggers it can be really open-ended, overwhelming. If you don't think offline, your head will spin and you'll get overwhelmed.

Audience: My blog is more a diary. I'm not a cook I'm not a mom, hey this is what happened today. How does a blog like mine find a niche and a community when I'm all over the place?

Beth: That's kind of how I started. What I did was follow my interests. I disciplined myself: this is the week that I'm really going to think about blogging (or other topic) and specifically bloggers in Africa. Then I would find other bloggers around that. Helped me build such a large community because I am sometimes all over the map.

When you go out to find other bloggers you want to have some kind of structure to keep you from just being in front of the monitor for hours and hours.

2. Find the bridge bloggers: Somebody in a particular space - food, social change - they're a community person, the mayor of the village. People link to them, blogroll witha  lot of links, lots of comments. Queen of the space. Someone who is the subject matter expert blogger and community expert in that space. YOu want to find out who those people are.

Go to an aggregator site like AllTop.

Go to BlogHer directory.

3. Read blogs in RSS reader. Gives me the ability to read a lot of blogs really quickly.

Several people like GoogleReader - they like the integration with gchat for logging in and sharing with friends. Widget is useful. Visually easy to follow. Recommends other blogs.

Read commenters on blogs you're reading, add them to your reader.

Audience: Drawback for readers is you have to click through if you want to really be part of a community.

REsponse: Being part of a community takes time. Sometimes I'm late for work.

Kanter: Took kids' timeout monitor and give self 20 minutes to do that and then I'm done.

Browse and scan til you find a bridge blogger.

4. Use blog search engines. When you use Technorati, try different spellings of your name because people often spell them wrong. Monitors ego feed like crazy, a good way to build community. You can find out if people are talking to you or linking to you in the blogosphere. Look for keywords to have a radar in your space.

If other people are talking about you on twitter but not using @ tag, you won't know. Uses that for building community.

THink: SIMPLICITY, TIME BOXING, BEING THOUGHTFUL.

5. Become the queen of commenting.

Megan Smith: Three comments a day on different blogs every day.

Kanter: Thoughtful comments, not just "hey that's cool."Not a quantity of comments, it's how thoughtful they are.

Co-comment allows you to keep

Backtype

She wrote a post on the art of good commenting and how different comment tracking tools compare.

7. write posts that encourage readers to comment.

After you ask people to comment write follow-up post on what you wanted people to comment on.

Invite comments.

Audience: woman uses post called "Comment love", highlighting people who comment on her site.

Don't forget to link out to other bloggers on your posts.

INFORMATION OVERLOAD:

Score: 0-5: GREAT INFORMATION COPING SKILLS

Audience: Juggling life responsibilities, kids, parents, priorities.

Audience: Business partner and she established "quiet hours", don't answer e-mail, phone, just work. They get more things done and are more relaxed.

Audience: I rotate the blogs I read. Frequent commenters and close friends are priorities. Don't feel guilty I'm oinly going to read xy&z today because I know I'll read others tomorrow.

Kanter: Information overload is a lot about message we're giving ourselves.

6-10 score: YOU HAVE SOME GOOD SKILLS AND A FEW BAD HABITS

Audience: Look at my life and what is important to me to feel whole. Walking, writing,

She has to be a role model for kids. Hard to tell kids to get offline when mom's sitting in front of the computer nonstop.

Score 11-15 YOU NEED HELP

Method for managing e-mail: Inbox Zero - discipline of going through email inbox once a day and clearing everything out down to zero.

Twittering on the toilet - being online too much.

Audience: worst thing I got this year - my iphone. I can blog on my iphone, Twitter etc.

Audience: iphone frees me up - I can approve comments, used to bother me that I had to wait.

Audience: Not good to be immersed in media when home with family, eating dinner, etc. Have to decide your values, decide what the etiquette is in your life and with whom - let it get out of control...people are not going to die if their comment is not approved ten minutes after they write it. It's about controlling me.

Score 16-20 IT MAY BE TOO LATE

Audience: Helps to have a plan for the day, not just being buffeted by variety of social networking/media projects.

it's okay if you're not ever completely caught up.

It's okay not to read every word. On the Internet you're looking at patterns.

Don't live at the post office. SO much faster at processing e-mail if I'm not in it all day.

Know when to turn the damn computer off and take a walk. Kanter: I can tell now what the physical symptoms are that I've been at the computer too long.

Social Media Can Save Your Business Liveblog

I'm live blogging the "Social Media Can Save Your Business" session at BlogHer Boston.

Moderator:

Susan Getgood of GetGood Marketing

Panelists:

Laura Fitton, widely known as @Pistachio on Twitter, where she has 6,880 followers.

Laura Tomasetti of 360 Public Relations

Goal is to give you a picture of ways you can engage in social media. You don't have to have a blog, don't have to be on Twitter just because you think everyone's on Twitter. You need to make social media choices that fit your values.

Susan polled audience - sees an edge towards smaller business and consultants in the room.

Laura Fitton says Pistachio has been her business name for 12 years. Pistachio was the color of her first home office. She has been a communications consultant her whole career. Her focus was helping people be more effective when they prevent and speak: "helping PowerPoint suck less."

In course of coming back from double maternity, I needed to get roots in Boston. She started blogging to get her ideas out and indexed. Since I started to read blogs, I heard about this thing called Twitter. She thought it was really dumb. She wrote the blog post about it, "Smart people are using Twitter?"

Saw guy she really respected tweeting business meetings - 19 year old in Silicon Valley. She started following him. Found other smart interesting people. YOu get a really good sense of who they are. First news case was doing that for me. She's a bit of an edge case on Twitter became guiding force for her ability to personally network, every job opportunity she's had since May 2007 has come from Twitter. She says they're amazingly good.

What could other people do? External, marketing, or internal.

Feels like we're in the late 80s/early 90s where no one's heard of e-mail. She calls Twitter microsharing. A lot of people don't liek that either - we have IM, we have e-mail, but I think as far as interoffice and personal communications, a lot of that gets mashed into Twitter. It's short bursts of text. Nothing could be dumber. It really is bad.

Robinson Crusoe, if you search for them on Twitter, they're trying to promote the show, no links, not allowed to follow anyone, prescribed tweets. Tweeting in a vacuum is horrible. using it for marketing/engagment is good.

External: Dell, JetBlue, ComcastCares as case studies. Each is engaging their audience in a certain way.

They have many twitter accounts, one is just direct sales.

If you're giving something genuinely useful. She has combo of intellectual and total screwup losing her wallet all the time and that's just how she is. The key is to make it unselfish and useful. That's what Dell did really effective - small business brand. JetBlue - conversational and attuned to listening.

She got to airport in San Francisco, five hour delay, JetBlue had warned her of delay earlier in the day and she missed it.

ComcastCares doing interesting customer service. People think they're doing it because Michael Arrington complained about Comcast one day. They were listening for two full months for sounds of people talking about Comcast. They said we have to start reacting to our customers on Twitter.

Anything in social media, start with "what do we listen to?"

Oracle has developed internal Twitter. They already have 1500 beta users in just a couple months. 140 active groups.They're integrating it with existing collaboration software and IMs.

It's the dumbest little thing ever and yet I've been gradually realizing since things started happening to her that this is something really substantial. Her bias tells her, she's really transparent, there's something big going on and she's curous to see what it is. A new way for ideas to move quickly.

Susan Getgood: It's all about a conversation and there are all different kinds. What kinds of cultures does it fit in and where does it now?

Laura Tomasetti: Her company launched and has been working with blogs since 2001. She's seen very big companies embrace blogs, others run. There is a skittishness about blogs because it is so immediate and you can't control it. The posts and the comment stream.

There are a number of opportunities for brands to work with bloggers and vice versa. Opportunity is for brands to work with bloggers.

1. Frequency - Most traditional journalists they work with get byline once per month or week. Blogging is every day. Creates a lot of work. How can you creat

Shouldn't send blogger a pitch if you haven't read their blog - sooner than two months ago.

You must be targeted - mommybloggers shouldn't receive pitches for baby stuff if they have older kids.

2. Volume

3. Quality. Focus on quality of the content. Tomasetti has tremendous respect for what bloggers are doing. Quality of content bloggers are bringing back is interesting as book and magazine markets shrink. Bloggers are bringing quality back.

How to be successful working with bloggers:

1. Match content to blogs appropriately.

2. Getting to know bloggers - bloggers should put city and state on business cards.

3. Talk to bloggers offline.

Bloggers are excited to see each other. They're on Twitter, on e-mail. Local grocery chain brought together discussion group of bloggers. You don't have to be just a tech brand, you don't have to have everything right. You have to be prepared to be honest, take tough stories and deal with it. Getting brand to continue to engage, if there are comments, questions and complaints it's important to participate in that conversation.

Possible for every brand to participate in the blogosphere. Working with StonyfieldFarm client, also has own bloggers. SF not doing blogger communication, just doing what they normally do, it just happens to be with bloggers.

Think about:" what do you want to say as a company and how do you distribute that message?

Stonyfield collecting recipes from visitors. YOu can submit a recipe, be featured there as a blogger.

How can bloggers work with brands?

Advertising and sponsorship. It's an education game to explain to a client or a brand, blog that has 2000 uvm, what does that mean.

How often is a blogger posting? What kind of comments are they getting? There are advocates on sides of the fence.

A way to monetize is to think off of your site a little bit and think about how to talk to groups like 360PR. She also thinks bloggers can be valuable counselors to brands.

They do a lot of things like giveaways for readers.

She thinks you should be paid if you're contributing an article, getting paid to review products is walking a line, calls brand and blogger into question.

Susan: Keyword is relevant. If we're relevant you have friends on Twitter/in the blogosphere.
Engaging in social media could be participating on Flickr. As individual or group, we need to decide what's relevant.

1. Last year Hewlett Packard had photo books and a series of interviews about photography. It was a way of naturally engaging with the community. When you're thinking about how to reach out as an organization, think about how to make your products work for them. Beyond just blogs and traditional socil media, urge you not to leave out old stuff. E-mail is a good sway to connect. Forums. It doesn't matter what they like, but if they're gathere together their voices are relevant.

When you think about how you engage in soial media, it's about the community and the social, people first. Think about what fits the people - your audience and what makes sense.

Laura Make Twitter not about your company, but about your readers/clients. SO by making it about whatever topic is the important thing.

Question: New blogger, runs her own company. She's feeling overwhelmed. How do you do it all?

Getgood: You don't do it all. You do what works for you.

Fitton: She could liegitimately spend whole day on Twtitter building relationships on Twitter.

She doesn't do Facebook, she didn't blog very much.

Laura T: I'm a Twitter person, for the speed. Some brands use it really well. WIth blogs, personal blog is not a professional blog. Liz Gumbinner in New York is Cool Mom Picks, MOM101, she keeps them separate.

QUESTION: If you're a business and you don't have enough time, be involved enough to say thank you.

Getgood: In fact the most important thing companies can do is listen to what people are saying, pay attention and respond.

Biggest thing you can do is to say "thank you" when someone says something.You must respond to positives and negatives.

Laura Fitton: She got her brain out there, people could she how she solved problems, what articles she linked to - tells a lot about where you are professionally. After about six months on Twitter she had no work coming in that hadn't come in on Twitter.

You can get incredibly fertile data. Earthquake on Twitter. Tweets peak at two minutes - 11 minutes later news is on AP Wire. It happens so quickly and picks up. Speed, magnitude and candor/authenticity.

With Twitter you're just throwing out there "I just wanna watch this movie." 
Three million may not be a big audience but it's a hella big focus groupl. Data coming out of it is so much more natural. If you really want to know what people think about your company, your brand it's there.

Getgood: If you represent your company and you start engaging on any of these tools you have to have upperlevel commitment because what  you do has to be actionable. Sympathy only goes so far. Poeople want to see action happen.

If we're not careful microbloggers can seem like walking tragedy of the commons. She gets like ten DM pitches a day. She doens't have time to go to ten sites a day in addition to her work. So make them tell you the value. Make it really clear. When someone tells her they want her to do a free webinar, she wants to know what the mutual value is. Asked to speak for free and pay to fly there, if they're making money on the fact that she puts in hours

QUESTION: Talkiong about brands connecting with bloggers. If bloggers want to , how do they get offers? Is it random?

Tomasello: Disneyfamily.comIdentifying bloggers Disney should consider for an advisory board. Bloggers don't rneed reach: some had small blgos but wrote for local papers. Had to be a good fit for the brand.

Write about the brand. Contact pr companies and brands directly.

Getgood: Write about stuff that you might want to connect about with pr partners. If you want food connections, write recipes.

Have a distinct voice. Don't write like everyone else. Add some value. How she chose people for Photographic Memories for HP went from pros to people who didn't think their photos were good. She wanted everyone so people reading stories had something to identify with.

Laura Tomasetti: A lot of times brands want to do grassroots campaigns, very expensive. Even the big brands can't afford to go door to door anymore.

Know your brand. Christine Koh has BostonMamas.com, she can tell brands what she can do in this market. One of the best things she can do is offer to someone who wants to come into this market. She owns it.

Jory des Jardins: Must find bloggers for review programs. Can know a good blogger but may not be a good blogger for a brand. Who is really active in comments? Story contests - who's active - this is who we'll contact. Engagement with brand and thoughtfulness matter. We don't want "yes women".

Marketer in audience: What is it and why should I care? Turnkey solution. Be really upfront about value and costs so I can see how this relates to my budget, know we're in the right order of magnitude.

PR person in audience: Likes to go to about page and see, "PR people, don't pitch me," or "if you're going to, this is how."

Laura Fitton: Four biggest off-platform benefits of Twitter:

1. SEO - naming Twitter account, think of keywords you'd want to spend all your beer money on and use them. There are thousands of companies selling pistachios and she's the number three.

2. Market research

3. COntent generation. You can twitter and you don't need your readers to come to twitter to see it. Make a widget that has your twitter updates.

4. Passability A neat combo of word of mouth and possibility. People have culture of retweeting and passing things along, tell other people what people are saying on Twitter.

Who cares who's on Twitter, you can still learn a lot from it.

5. A lot of pretty major web properties realizing what reach/traffic generation twitter has.

She has a "gift as a twhisperer." She called Guy Kawasaki out for dissing Twitter, they're friends now.

Even if you're not twittering your readers are probably twittering it.

For your blogger site name, there's seo value. Don't name site combo of initials, have value if you're a food site and you have the word food in it, tire dealer it helps to have "tire" in the site. Make sure domain name has some relevance to what you do becaue it'll help you in the long run.

I own pistachio but so what, it helps people find her again but it's not like she's selling nuts.

Shannon McKarney: Try to find products that are being promoted, a book being released, she writes about environmentaly friendly stuff.

Laura Fitton: Twitter page links to a special blog page. She wants people to feel more community and see how other people answer questions. Using a landing page, using your background. You can actually sell your Twitter background now which I think is a little weird. Her Twitter background is worth $200 a month with 7,000 readers.

Karen aka Sassymonkey: Blog about a prize you win. Won passes to a fiction event in Toronto, blogged about it, their next newsletter they linked to her blog.

Getgood:Not in Twitter all the time, was scanning it one day, found negative comment about a friend's company. Got in touch with her and was able to stop a negative event from happening. YOu can kill a blog storm from the get-go by checking this out. Shouldnt be in Twitter all the time, if it's not your thing find someone else in your community who likes to write in 140 characters.

Jory: For someone who's trying to get a Twitter mojo, @elisac was liveblogging a conference recently, was quoting an anti-feminist. Someone read her feed, thought she made comment. How do you stop this when you only have limited access to people.

Laura Tomasetti: Everything's permanent up there. Once it's out there, first posted to twitter six months ago, can't erase it.

Jory: Read thread, you can see her saying, "I'm quoting this person."

Fitton: People don't read threads. I get taken out of context all the time. Starting to reply to dumb questions with link to google result for it. Don't think deleting fixes it. If there's repercussions you can search and see who else is tweeting it. Put up tweets as soon as possible clarifying it. Her number one rule for dealing with anything remotely trolly - a little more than a year ago the state seized my kids, had to come to understand I just have to live so no one believes my critics. The doctor doesn't know i didn't break her arm. Right now I have to sit here and take this and people will know over itme who I am, so they won't believe my critics.

Tomasetti: Loves Twitter for many reasons, mainly for networking and for staying plugged into her interests. Wouldn't think about Twitter in a vacuum, think of what you can use it for. You're in person at a conference, what's your elevator speech. I would try to integrate when I can.

Getgood: Consider the source. Trolls are easily identifiable. Live under bridges, not very attractive.

Tomasetti: A lot of creepy people on Twitter. Think about what you want to use it for, don't think the goal should be to get as many followers

Fitton: Give me the right five followers and I'll cahnge the world, It's not about quantity. YOu don't need a lot of followers, frankly that can be a pain. If you're twittering the whole world can see your twitter page. ROT: I;m just going to assume that stalkers are seeing this. I don't use my kids' first name, because that combined with my last name will come up in Google. My boundaries are pretty wide open but I do still have them.

Audience: Being responsive is clearly important. When can you sleep?

Fitton: If it's really important you've never lost the opportunity. You can always go back. She doesn't respond to all DMs at this point. Because tweets are anchored in time with their own unique URLS, it's not just you saying what the story is, it's all very documentable. There are ways when a DM comes in, I file it.

Getgood: The key is to have whatever contract you have with your readers, be it on a blog or on Twitter, maintain it. Say you'll respond to comments within 48 hours, respond within 48 hours. There'll be something else. We don't know what it is but it will be.

Audience: If you're tweeting for clients, how do you avoid being schizophrenic? 

Fitton: ALmost wouldn't Twitter for a client. No, we are here to teach, give you ideas, you need to do it. You will mistweet at some point. Try to avoid. Budget time, value and energy. Write things in advance. Takes away from naturalness but there are things that allow you to be responsive in the moment.

Fitton: What are you doing is not the question of Twitter. What you see on mine is a result of what's happened to her for 36 years. It's asking us "What do we have in common?" Someone tweets about a ham sandwich at a deli in NYC and someone else says, "Oh my God they have the best ham."  That's her favorite idea of Twitter right now, because that's where she sees the long-term strength.

Tomasetti: Take a step back and see what you can get out of it. Do what works for you.

Getgood: Have a business strategy. If there's one thing you heard about today that you're not already doing. Never been to community site for a product, been on Flickr, twittering but not on Facebook. Start on community site like BlogHer. Experiednce with other things to broaden horizons of what social media means. IF we narrow that we'll be closing our minds to opportunities when we have to realize what all the opportunities are.

BlogHer Boston - getting here and kicking it off.

I made it to Boston. It was a long trip. I drove. This is a long story that I'd prefer to forget at the moment..

I spent an hour when I got here last night on the phone with a guy in Atlanta who failed to help me get online. I hung up on him the fifth time he said, "Go into Network Utilities, click TCP/IP" blahblahblah until I found myself crying from exhaustion and frustration. I called back ten minutes later, got a woman named Randi who had me online in three minutes. I actually said "Girl power, Randi." She is a rock star because she's competent and made things painless for me. That is my bar more and more.

I'm in the first session now, about "figuring out your blogging mojo", the session I'm presenting in DC on Monday. This is good. I'm glad I came. Elisa's words this morning were a good kickoff:

Blogging gives you:

• power to be heard
• power to create your own playing field - a personal platform for your work and expertise
• power to participate
• power to change the world.
• the evolution of a community.

True for me, for the most part. I'd love to change the world and maybe...someday.