November 03, 2005

It WAS quite interesting!

First of all, a big thank you to the Internet Professionals Society of Alabama for inviting me to participate today, and for feeding me lunch. Big turkey sandwich, with CHEESE and a cookie and fruit salad and a wilted dill pickle spear. (The wilted pickle spear is not a shot at them--just a statement of fact.)

Thankfully for me, there was only ONE person there who could blow my cover--the wife of one of my coworkers. I can't tell you exactly who she's married to, otherwise when she comes to visit (as she promised she would--Hi Lisa!) she might take offense at my characterizations of him as someone less than comfortable with computers. I swore her to secrecy to not tell her husband, either, because then--as we said to each other simultaneously--"He would tell EVERYbody."

I was also gratified to meet frequent commentor Stan the Gummint Man, who came out to hear what there was to hear. Stan looks nothing like I pictured. I sorta had him pegged in the Jim Smith/Nate McCord mold, but he looks much more like automotive writer and raconteur David E. Davis, Jr.

AS FOR THE PANEL ITSELF, it was also good to meet Matt, who looks much younger than I thought, and Dimitri, whom I've never read before and who has an odd accent.

I don't think he's from around here. Maybe from Montgomery or Slapout or someplace.

And then there was Miss Ashley, who is a lawyer and mother of three in real life, and highly distracting in a female sort of way. Although I confess I am being much too familiar, in that we've only just been formally introduced, but I simply must say, "Rrrowll."

Finally, our genial host, Jeremy, who kept things moving right along, and I hope he realized my gruff manner while he was trying to scroll up and down through Possumblog was merely a ruse and a put-on. You did a fine job, and again, many thanks for having me on your panel.

The questions opened up with a quick intro of everyone as we told the stories of our births. I was third in line--

"Okay, time for my Admiral Stockdale moment--'Who am I!? What am I doing here!?'"

::crickets chirping::

Dang--tough crowd.

I went on and on and on and on and on about stupid crap, related my preblog existence, my early Blogspot days, the birth of the Axis of Weevil, my middle Blogspot days, the spin-off of THE PROBOSCIS, the later Munu days, the spin-off of REVOLVOBLOG, and the occasional ghost writing assistance I offer to Luther at the spin-off Cletus' Car Corner, and the fact that I am an idiot.

Everyone seemed to agree wholeheartedly.

The rest of the questions were pretty much as I detailed below, and I have to say I thought the panelists did a pretty fair job of explaining their ideas. Dimitri made what I thought was a good analogy of the current blogworld landscape, noting that it wasn't just a monochrome, level plain of prairie grass, but more like clouds in the sky, with various blog communities sorta clustered around each other based upon interests and likes. I like that image.

About fourty-five minutes into it, Jeremy asked for questions from the audience, and we got a couple, but I had one I wanted to ask--

"How many of you folks have a blog of your own?"

I counted 16 people in the audience--about half raised their hands.

"DERN IT ALL, THEN, WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE UP HERE!?" Really. I mean, my insight is no deeper or better than anyone else's--I say next time, let's just have a round-table with the audience.

Only difficulty of the afternoon was the fact that none of us had a laptop with which we could liveblog ourselves. Jeremy had everyone's sites called up on an overhead and would switch back and forth betwixt us all, but it was a bit hard to be able to explain it all when it's behind your back like that.

Overall, though, it was fun for me, and it's all about me. I even won a door prize! $50 gift certificate, but I felt terrible about winning it when it should have gone to the folks in the audience, so I told them to let the next person have it. Yes, I'm all noble like that.

Anyway, I just hope if you were there, it was helpful to you, and I invite you all to leave a comment or two below about your thoughts, as well as ask you to bookmark Possumblog for a return visit in the future.

Hmm? No, I never get around to making a point about anything.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at November 3, 2005 02:23 PM
Comments

You'll be outted within the week.

Posted by: daveH at November 3, 2005 02:53 PM

Maybe THEN we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House! Obviously it all goes back to him, trying to discredit me!

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at November 3, 2005 03:02 PM

I'm home now--just took the rest of the day off. I just wanted to say it was indeed a privilege to meet you after these several years on Possumblog, and you (and the rest of the panel as well) gave a really good panel discussion. That was one sharp panel, and you held your own with them quite well.

My thanks to the IPSA for putting on this presentation--I was most impressed with them.

Posted by: Stan at November 3, 2005 03:09 PM

Thanks, Stan--as I told Stan while I was there, I consider the fact that I didn't kill or even badly injure myself by falling off the stage should be considered a great success. OH, and by the way, Stan won a door prize! Some kinda book of some sort. It had words and stuff so I had no interest in it.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at November 3, 2005 03:14 PM

It was fun to get together like that. We need to consider doing blogger dinners or something.

Posted by: Dimitri Glazkov at November 3, 2005 03:52 PM

Several folks in town already get together for such things, but they're usually at night, and I'm always constrained by really only having time for lunchtime get-togethers, like the one today. Next time Sugarmama and Skillzy and I go have lunch, we'll send you a note and see if you can come, too.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at November 3, 2005 04:00 PM

Hey-- Thanks for the purr! I wore that outfit especially to make some friends, so that all of you who understood what the hell Dimitri was talking about (operating systems?? Hosts??) can help me figure out simple stuff like how to make a paragraph in HTML. Or use Flickr.

I was most impressed with all of your techy expertise. Good to put faces with names, as well.

A

Posted by: Anne Glamore at November 3, 2005 04:31 PM

Ma'am, I would say you succeeded beyond all reasonable measure.

AS FOR TECHNICAL EXPERTISE--obviously you're talking about everyone else in the room. My abilities pretty much end at finding the on-off switch.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at November 3, 2005 04:44 PM

And plugging in computer speakers.

Posted by: skinnydan at November 4, 2005 08:20 AM

Smartypants.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at November 4, 2005 08:23 AM