The annual Blogher conference happened over the weekend and I never attend it but I do lurk a bit in the realm of the “mommy-bloggers” and there is always a lot of controversy about this conference. And quite a bit of squee too. I don’t quite get either the controversy or the squee. This year, there are other little tempests about to complement Blogher. The Marquis has written a very good post about this over at RegenAxe. About the only thing I could possibly take issue with is that, OF COURSE there are subliminal Plum Market ads on my blahg!!! Not sure if that Plum Market link’ll work. asp.net gone crazy?

I will never put ads on my blahg. I won’t write reviews either. Er, not unless the kitchen fairy sends me a whole new kitchen to replace The Ugliest Kitchen On Earth. But that’ll never happen and the older I get, the more anti-materialistic I am. I have enough cosmic debris. I’m trying to get rid of it. Please don’t send me any more. Swag? I still haven’t emptied the bag o’ swag I got from the wonderful little web usability conference I went to at our own WCC in APRIL!

To me, getting a financial return from blahging is not what it’s all about. But I can understand where other folks are coming from. I know how hard it is to raise children without two decent, stable incomes. Many folks have unstable jobs and really good day-care where you can leave your kid without worrying about them all day can be prohibitively expensive. I do not blame moms (or dads for that matter) for trying to turn their blog into an income. I had the best of all worlds when my kids were little. I had an intense part-time job with a relatively flexible schedule and (yes!) a *very* supportive husband with a promising career. I still dreamed about being able to work from home in my pajamas. That said, when I am drifting around on the Internet these days, one of the things that makes me decide to *not* follow a blogger, even when they don’t always seem to be shilling/reviewing products, is when there are so many ads that the page takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to load. Three seconds, folks. If it takes more than three seconds, people will not wait. That is Web Usability 101. Blogher ads are among the worst offenders.

And then there’s the squee. What squee? The squee of “omg-i-luv-ur-blog-i’m-so-glad-2-meet-u”. Bad, bad, Kayak Woman. I know it’s not like that. I know there are wonderful panel discussions and people learn all kinds of stuff and make connections and many of these women are wonderful writers and almost nobody uses text-message abbreviations. I think some these people probably make important connections. But I don’t squee. I think I have squeed about twice in the last 10 years and that was when I met up with Sam the Archaeologist and Uber Kayak Woman (no blahg, sorry folks) after not seeing them for nine years or whatever. (This was on separate occasions and they do not know each other. At least I don’t think they do. Sam is an honorary family member but I’m not sure off-hand which of my cuzzints she’s met.) I am certainly far from being one of the A-list female life blahggers so squeeing (or not) would probably not be an issue. But still. I am a much shyer person in real life and *certainly* in social situations than my blahg might indicate. I don’t squee frequently and, since I am quite sure that I am not widely read by the Blogher audience, I doubt if anyone would squee to see me either. So there’s that whole awkward party thing that people keep saying isn’t going on but they still talk about invitation-only parties, etc. And I’d probably just go to sleep at one of those but, if you have been to one, why brag about it afterwards if this is supposed to be such an inclusive, welcoming event? Junior high anyone? Sigh.

And so. Yes, I blather about my life on the Internet. Every day. For six years. It is *my* blahg and I’ll blahg what I want to. I started small but that’s a story for another day. What the heck, it is *still* small! The GG’s head has probably already clonked down onto his keyboard trying to read this. I have some loosely defined rules. Basically it’s a litmus test kind of thing. “Will it hurt someone’s feelings?” Not bloggable. “Is it bragging?” Not bloggable. “Does it get into family business?” Not bloggable unless it is just superficial stuff. Have I ever broken any of these rules? Yes. Unfortunately. I try to slog on and do better…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.