Thursday April 6, 2006
Artblogging panel
The panel was fun. There was a little of an information gap, but overall, my worst fears were not realized. To wit: I wondered, since the five of us are obviously articulate in writing and perfectly fine expressing whatever we need to on the blogs, whether there would be about this forum that would add to that. The answer turned out to be “yes.” And while I’m sure there were moments that were painfully dull for the audience, there was also some good back-and-forth. The library didn’t close promptly at 8 pm as was threatened, and so the conversation was allowed to run its course very naturally. One of the questions that came up afterwards was “so what do we do for part 2”? The answer seems clear to me now: different bloggers!
One of the points I found myself making was how different blogging is from journalism (this was particularly apparent during a great chat I had with Omar Sommereyns and Tiffany Rainey of SunPost at the post-panel chowdown at Parilla): a journalist starts a story with an idea, then goes to gather the facts through phone calls and research, then fits it into the space allocated, and into a fairly well defined “story arc.” As a blogger, my approach is almost the reverse of this – I start with experiences that I’ve had, and things that I’ve done or thought because of my personal interests, then fit them into posts; in a sense, the “idea” for the post comes last. I can write as much or as little as I want, and I can do it whenever I want. So, well, it’ll be interesting to see where this stuff is 10 years from now, when blogs and newspapers have gone through whatever integrating they’ll go through, and the percentage of human beings with blogs has plateaued, and this stuff’s place in society is established and not feared.
Oh right, the panel… Well, KH and Alfredo got into a little back-and-forth with Franklin, but there was too much love for real sparks to fly. Helen Kohen was a great moderator; she approached it with the freshness of an outsider (who, as a journalist, did her research!), and was very good about passing the [proverbial] mic around.
Oh, and so Rebecca Carter liveblogged the first hour of the talk (and summarized much of the rest) at Greener Miami, and I think caught much of the more interesting content (the photo above is also hers). Nice work, Rebecca! Meanwhile, over at this Artblog thread Jack gives his assessment at comment #18 (note to Jack: at the dinner after the panel, someone suggested checking Artblog to see what you’d said about it, so we all saw your comment moments after you posted it, about an hour after the end of the panel).
Update: KH has some reflections here and here.
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circle jerk.
HEY JOHN. THIS IS THE BEST WEBSITE IN MIAMI BESIDES ART BLOG. GET A LIFE. THE PANEL WAS GREAT. Alesh, you need to write for a newspaper like Franklin. I really mean that. There’s no need for these pessimists, let’s just call them ‘pests’ and leave it at that. love the site. hugs and kissies to my blogging community in miami.
and btw, what’s wrong with a tinny circle jerk? i mean, THIS IS MIAMI and we are all artists and open.
did you go, john? I mean, is that a reaction to the premise, or the actual event?
Thanks, David. Big props to Rebecca as well.
I haven’t been called a pest before. Or a pessimist, actually.
Explain?
That was directed at comment #1, I believe.
Ah, I was confused because it followed a reference to you being a writer for the paper (which I extended to me being a writer for something). Sorry. I was up LATE last night, courtesy of that super-tasty cafecito I drank right before the panel. Mucho apologies.
It was nice to meet you Alesh. I didn’t see myself sparring with F. (perhaps KH brought forth some ideas, when we were supposed to delimit ourselves from the rest of the other bloggers and it may have given that impression. I liked it this way for a first meeting.
I’m a bit confused. If this panel was focused on “art blogging,” why was there an apparent desire by the group to include other bloggers who may not fall into that category.
I may be getting it wrong but that’s the message I’m hearing from this post and the live blogging done by Rebecca last night.
Is there something I’m missing?
Just to be clear that “John” jerk isn’t me! Seemed like a great event. Too bad I’m in NY. BTW, the page is loading funny on my laptop.
It was very clear, John. if it hadn’t been, I’d have done something about it.
Is it still loading funny? What os/browser versions are you using?
Rick-Although the panel was on art blogging, a lot of the discussion had to do with blogs and the bloggers in general. It was an interesting twist to have art bloggers, because the conversation at times would be a mix of the two. But yes, sometimes the conversation stayed more on a blogging in general direction, rather than focus on art.
Oooohh, Big A’s getting brolic! Watch out now. Said Alesh, “I knows who it is, and what time it is sucka!” ; )
Yeah, XP, explorer.
As for that “John”, don’t hurt ‘em Hamma!
Well, I could change his name to john-2 or something. Maybe the johns of the world should adopt a last initial.
explorer problem fixed; thanks for pointing it out.