BlogHer Conference 2010 Highlights and Blogger Empowerment

The 6th Annual BlogHer Conference was held at The Hilton New York on Friday and Saturday, August 6th and 7th, 2010. Considered another success with a sold out attendance of 2400 women bloggers. Actually there was a 10-15 % estimated attendance of men also. I decided to write this article only after finding out about there being males there since I am one myself. Please ladies be easy on me knowing that after reading blog after blog written by the attendees I could find no blogs or opinions written by the men that were there. This article contains some BlogHer conference highlights and what a lot of the attendees thought of the conference.

The conference had many interesting speakers and workshops. There were several topics that were very interesting and left me wishing the information was documented for all of us to read and learn from. The lucky ones that attended were treated to the many facets of the blogging world and life. Some of the blogs about the conference led me to believe that a lot of the women got more out of their after hours discussions than from the conference itself. The conference centered much, but not all, on social media.

The blogs I read suggested a lot of the women were discussing their empowerment from blogging. How much their blogs affected influence, suggestions, and education to it's readers. Many didn't realize they had this power and went away with greater knowledge of that power and a different attitude about blogging than they came there with. Many commented that they disliked the corporate sponsored atmosphere. This was probably because many of the bloggers are more individualistic and don't work at a company job. The day before the conference there was the 4th annual BlogHer Business Conference. The business conference fitted the corporate bloggers better and didn't get as much publicity or commentary.

The speakers at the conference covered a lot of topics and thought provoking subjects. One speaker talked about intellectual property law and the line you should draw when telling a good story or just telling a lie. What do you owe your audience you are writing for? Another speaker suggested ideas on making your pictures better and specifically what to do to edit them using the various tools in your picture editing software. Yet another covered what they called mindful monetization. Should you take advantage of opportunities that make you money or let them keep the money while you write about what you think you should. I can relate, having gone through a discussion in my own mind about writing this article. I look at it as an exercise to go out on a limb, a different paradigm if you will.

Many of the topics concerned social media. These interesting discussions looked at some areas of social media I never thought about. Like the discussion about your on-line legacy. What do you want others to see if you are no longer around or do you want others to see anything? Who will carry out those wishes and should some of it be deleted or added to? One topic that seemed particularly interesting is the one talking about transferring your on-line presence in to art spaces, be it myspace, facebook, or your blog. More for the artist or musician the attendees learned how to secure gigs, sell things, and build audiences using social media enhanced into an art form.

A very interesting speech covered the fact that size doesn't matter. They are talking about the size of your blog and how you should have more acceptance, understanding and love your blog. That the size is less important than knowing what you care about and what you want your blog to do for you and how to grow it. I'm not making this up and it does make sense. Researching this year's BlogHer conference highlights has proven to be a real challenge for me as a male writer, it leaves me wondering; why not a BlogHim or better yet a BlogPerson blog and conference?

"BlogHer Conference Agenda." BlogHer.com