One of my bigger take-aways from BlogHer is a reminder that women can be saucy, funny, and proactive. Yes, I already knew that, but it was good to be among several hundred women who were in that mode in unison for one long entire sustained note of a day.

Genny, if you’re camping out at BarCamp, brava, and happy coding!

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As far as scholars go, I may have been a bit lame. I’m sorry I couldn’t make the networking dinners. Truth told, though I am almost never ill, I got sick after a fancy dinner earlier that week and was still off my feed and a little shaky at that point; I was basically in read-only mode that weekend, and it was all I could do to take notes (and, eight days later, produce my very first vblog entry). But I am pleased and grateful to have been one of the BlogHer Scholar ladies… and only wish I had met the others.

Those top ten take-aways, I promise, they’ll happen, Real Soon Now…

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Lisa Williams, podcastress extraordinaire, walked us through basic terms, hardware, software, copyright and music tips, and her predictions for the future, including a prediction about all-in-one podcasting suites. And she did it in less than half an hour. Also, she showed us a Berringer Eurorack ($60-$80). I don’t quite get what it does, but it has knobs and inputs and outputs and gleaming metal housing, and even if I don’t need one, or I will never figure it out, I still want one.

Lisa says that in six months podcasting will be less RubeGoldbergesque; she predicts full-fledged all-in-one suites that will offer editing and publishing (think TypePad for podcasting). Meanwhile, she walked us through the slightly kludgy podcast forest, and got a good laugh with her slide showing no less than seven devices she ties together to podcast over a headset to her iPod while she’s in the car.

Ryanne Hodson, queen bee vlogger, was equally informative and reassuring. She pointed out that many digital cameras and PDAs have built-in video cameras capable of making perfectly reasonable entry-level vlogs, but most people have never used them. That would include me!

While displaying her website and her tutorial site (good tips for both Macs and Windows), Ryanne offered a great marketing idea: make a screenshot of each video blog to attract readers.

She also offered practical advice about bandwidth issues, cautioning against hosting videos on your own site: a popular file, even if it’s small, can overwhelm an account. ourmedia.org offers free hosting for videos, and enclosures in your own feed can point to URLs from other sites. (Slapping forehead–of course!)

Ryanne also walked us through FireANT, a vlog aggregator, and both Ryanne and Lisa talked about how to get an RSS feed that supports vblogging and podcasting.

Watch for the first FRL videoblog–starring no other than Danah Boyd!

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“We’re identity bloggers,” said a blonde in a black t-shirt that in bright letters said “DESTROY.”

“An important genre,” I said approvingly.

They wrinkled their foreheads. I had the itchy sense that in their eyes I had now donned a hoop skirt and a snood.

Then I thought of an analogy I had used in my talk Stanford two days ago that had hit a chord. If I could win over Stanford, surely I could win over LA.

“Samuel Johnson was an identity blogger,” I continued.

Four pairs of eyebrows went up. I had them hooked!

“He wrote the Rambler and the Idler right up to press time. He wrote about people and events of the day, and was free with his opinions. He wrote so up to the wire that he usually went to press unedited,” I concluded, proud that I had found a way to connect with the youth of the blogosphere.

The four ladies looked at one another, and the brunette asked, “Who’s Samuel Johnson?”

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People get rewarded for participating in the “parrotsphere”

Look at your goals: why are you doing this? To make money? Share an opinion? Participate in the conversation?

Blogs can personalize the blogosphere and make politics more accessible

From the audience, Chaira Fox, library student, raised good issues about credibility and authority

Question of expertise; one woman says expertise will come about in a two-way discussion with the audience… I could see from Chaira’s face that she was having some buy-in issues

Connecting the face with the writing

Changing reader’s expectations

Issue of people reading within silos of information

reference to red and blue echo chambers

Reasonably good debate about how to reach people

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But on the other… sigh, on the other. I was sitting at a table with 8 women and 2 men. The conversation began quite well, with ecumenical contributions from all (except for me, because there’s really no way to say to this crowd “I like to watch”). But by the last third of the discussion, it was dominated by the two men, even though the women at the table were luminaries from places such as the LA Times, Poynter, or the Knight Foundation.

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I want to listen and absorb so I will gather thoughts later (or link to good writeups)… but here are some early BlogHer impressions:

A presenter said, with no trace of irony, that the attendees were primarily women, about 20% men, and that journalists were also in attendance.

Fun to be in a room that’s 80% female… almost like a library conference.

One panelist to another, and everyone immediately got it: “Would you mind Tina Turnering the mike a little bit?”

Much concern and discussion about the “A List.” Here are several characteristics of the top Technorati blogs are:

1. Heavily political in nature
2. Consortium blogs, such as Daily Kos
3. Run by men

Should you blog for eyeballs? Disagreement here. Some say yes–if you become popular, you will be influential, get attention, get invited to conferences, etc. Some say no: write for your communities, write your interests.

I am inclined to believe in the power of the Long Tail. Free Range Librarian may not be Jeff Jarvis’s first read of the day, but to the extent I have reading communities, and I continue to write things you want to read, I will have eyeballs.

A woman just tackled the “women need to network” truism by stating that there were plenty of people she didn’t want to network with. Point taken.

Mena Trott (pictured above) turned out to be sitting right behind me and made wonderful impassioned statements about how many women work for MT. She said all tech support at MT are female and the LiveJournal sysadmin is female, too, and she summed up essentially that women too often just don’t get no respect, but were still doing great things. I hope the audioblogging is chunked enough so you can hone in on what she said.

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