Boston Bloggercon

Breakfast this AM at the EXCELLENT Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown. Diners in the south just don’t hop like they do up here.

I’m in Boston at the Adrenzone behind the Harvard Coop. ($5/hour.) I did a terrible job booking the flight for this trip, and so don’t fly home until 10PM tonight. So I’m wandering around Harvard square, which has a uniquely ramshackle vibrance.

Yesterday’s Bloggercon was great. The opening Take me out to the Ballgame and National Anthem, accompanied by accordian, touched me.

Jay Rosen’s session “what is journalism?” chiseled away much of the artificial distinctions between journalism and blogging. Although Jay can be verbose in pixels, he’s an excellent Socrates in person. (Here’s me at Jay’s session.) The thick with nuggets of insight. Dave Winer reminded us that the Internet unbundles lots of industries. Matt Stoller said editors, at least in their roll of choosing and prioritizing stories, are most at risk of being made redundant by the blogosphere. I’d add to that the Talkingpointsmemo, Instapundit, DailyKos et al are, de facto, the new editors for many readers.

I missed chances to talk with Brian Reich and Zephyr Teachout — carpe diem. And I missed John Perry Barlow’s session on “what blogging means to me” but told him afterwards that I hope his blogging will encourage one of my college roommates (a Deadhead) to get on the blog bus. “Tell your friend hello, and to keep on truckin, regardless,” Barlow said.

Before dinner, I rapped with Hylton Joliffe for twenty minutes on a street corner with Cambridge swirling around us. Overheads, phones, sponsors, disintermediation. Hylton has been trying to wring money from blogging as long as me — … I love talking to someone smart who lives in the same weird dimension as Blogads.

BTW, the bottom right photo by Dan Bricklin onthis page offers a great synedoche of the state of the session title — “making money from blogging” — lots of latecomers in the doorway and standing room only.

Dinner last night at the Bombay Club. Rebecca MacKinnon gave our table a stark overview of the unhappy outcomes in North Korea. The entrepreneur to my left explained the RSS reader. Paul Frankenstein, who is moving to Hong Kong Friday, noted that unemployment insurance in NY pays $405 a week, versus $490 in NJ. I quoted Clayton Christensen at every opportunity.

I was lucky to stay with Lisa and Evan Williams in Watertown. Lisa, a former Yankee group manager, had some good advice on software pricing strategies and I enjoyed swapping entrepreneurial war stories with Evan. Thank you Lisa and Evan!