Sunday, November 07, 2004

We recorded a Trade Secrets in Adam's room at Rickey's Hyatt. Midway through the recording Steve Gillmor showed up and joined in.  

An open thread on the BloggerCon site for people to post action items, ideas, things they liked, and didn't, whether you were physically present or on the webcast.  

Dowbrigade on the upcoming assault on Fallujah. The questions he asked were on my mind too. 

Good morning everybody! 

My voice is raspy this morning, I did so much talking yesterday, had an incredibly good time. I've had quite a few thank you messages this morning, but let's all thank each other and keep going from here. As Adam says, developers and users partying together. It's been a long time since we've had a user's conference in Silicon Valley. No surprise there were some rough spots, ask the DL's, I prepped them for it, esp Scoble and Curry. We've had verbal scuffles with vendors at both previous Cons. It comes with the territory. No hard feelings. Eventually most of the vendors will profit from listening to users, speaking their language, not over their heads; put them first, and we can return to something that works. This is my hope for Bloggerdom.

One of my personal peptalks is: I make things work. I first heard this talking with John Palfrey during the buildup to the first BloggerCon, when I had some doubts whether I could pull it off. He told me it was his impression of me that I didn't fail. At first I wanted to brush what appeared to be a compliment aside, but then I thought about it, and it made me relax. All my life, when I really wanted something to work, I could make it work. I think this comes from a stubborn streak, I can visualize failure, all too well, and can't tolerate it. In the end, BC had to work because I willed it to work.

Everyone has a chance to speak, even if I don't agree with what they're saying, esp when I don't agree with what they're saying. Every dissenter is validation that it's an open conference, this is the reassurance we need to believe in the sincerity of every speaker. And yesterday, we all willed it to work, even the people who appeared to be dissenting. They bought into the model. They stayed seated, they spoke with respect, and there was a lot of listening going on. This is what success looks like. Now let's see if we can build something on it.