What a fantastic week in Vegas last week. People have asked me what my feelings were on it and I keep summing things up in one way: It was the only single time when all of the blogoshpere came together at one time, in one place and enjoyed it.
There are well over 2000 photos on Flickr right now tagged blogworld or blogworldexpo. Most of them display geeks ability to party and of course, it was Vegas – partying was expected.
But more so were the people I met. When I first started in blogging, the Instapundit Glenn Reynolds was sort of my idol. Not so much these days as I avoid politics like the plague, but it was awesome to meet him and share a brief few minutes talking about blogging.
Also very cool was the chance to connect with Wendy Piersall. I am apparently now her BFF. :-)
A drunken evening was spent at the bar with Marshall Kirkpatrick – what a guy! And I can’t forget about old friends Jim Turner and Tris Hussey and new friends Jeremy Pepper, Brian Solis and MyBlogLog‘s Robyn Tippins – love that girl!
Of course, there’s hundreds of people I could list… like Rick Klau who I’ve finally had the pleasure of meeting… but this entry would be too long.
Again, the value of this, like many conferences, was in the hallways. Better conversations. More productivity. B2B opportunities. It was also really productive to have the political bloggers in the same room with tech and business bloggers in the same room with social media networks in the same room as military bloggers, advertisers, service providers, etc. It’s hard to get everyone in the same room, but it happened in Vegas.