'Hello, I represent the slackergerati and I just know you'll fail miserably because that's what will make me happy' 

Check out the first comment on the interim Rocketboom host's blog:

anonymous says:

hello joanne c. im sure your wonderful at what you do but just so you know you'll never be as good or as popular as amanda. first off because most people only watch for her shes the original and the face of RB not you and secondly your british ya know with amanda she is american so she can say what she wants but your a foreigner so your comments will just come off as elitist critisism that you have no place saying. oh and one last thing i hope you know that you may call yourself the hostess of RB but i think most everyone on the internet will agree with me that that title shall forever be amanda congdon's.

Speaking of comments 

I've been slowly making my way through the BloggerCon mp3s, and listened to Mike Arrington's Core Values session yesterday.

The question of deleting unfavorable comments was raised. How can it be right to selectively remove comments? The message board and mailing list world figured that one out a while ago. You get away with it in a fair way by posting a set of discussion rules, and include a rule about not getting personal. That gives you the grounds for nuking the nasty "you suck" type of comment.

And speaking of BloggerCon after the fact 

I still think it's a shame there's no good place for the discussion of the Bloggercon sessions to continue, both for onsite participants who had more to say, and for remote after-the-facters.

If you think about it, it's ironic that a conference characterized by audience participation is so one-way in the aftermath. Sure, comments are enabled on the bloggercon.com site, but clearly there's no expectation of discussion there. The comments to the mp3 links entry looks like a guestbook.

Does this sound critical? It's meant to be constructive. There was so much good stuff there, I hate to see it fade. I'd be willing to help put together some afterglow community tools for a future event, and think about how to organize it within a social constructivist/social constructionist framework.

It could be done for BloggerCon IV, using an LMS-like base built around the audio and docnography files. Photos and videos could be collected there, tag feeds output, all kinds of stuff. But some of the initial passion about the discussion topics probably has started to dissipate already and it might be hard to regather a head of steam. I think for this to work best it needs to be planned along with all the other elements prior to the conference.

Great Flickr set 

When I was writing the afterCon post I started to feel my Gracie mode kicking in and went looking for a picture. I didn't find just the right strident wailing and selling-the-song shot but you gotta see this Flickr set of 60s rock and roll greats. Flickr should provide code to embed a slide show in web page. I tried for a little while to coax it out, but there were too many required javascript files, some of which have relative URLs and it's too much trouble. I've never looked at the API. Someday.

There's strident, and then there are (or were) wild animal women 

There's a nice shot in the set of Slick and Janis. I'm happy to report that my urges to be strident never get so potent as Janis's plaintive cries.

A picture I wish I could find: Mama Cass staring at Janis Joplin at the Monterey Pop Festival, clearly thinking, OMG this is something beyond our fun flowers and rainbows things. Everything changed in 1967. I always wish I'd been born just a few years earlier. At 13 I could feel the effects and be shaped by the times, but I couldn't join in until the era was on the downward slope.

Connections 

You've been here: you are in the blogging zone, on a virtual tear, and one thing makes you think of something else you want to say, and the something else makes you think of something else. It reminds me of Connections, that crazy show about the history of science hosted by James Burke.

I didn't realize he's extended the idea of the TV programs to the web with k-web.org. Includes VR using Looking Glass. Wow! That's the kind of second life I could get lost in and feel OK about it.

Howard Rheingold and Doug Engelbart are involved. Why didn't I know about this project -- it's been going on for three or four years. Maybe it's in trouble or lacks funding. I love this idea.