I’m here in Vegas for BlogWorld New Media Expo 2009. BlogWorld has quickly become one of my favorite events to attend. The even is run by a great guy, Rick Calvert and it’s not just focused on “make money bloggers”. Instead the event covers a wide variety of blogs, focusing on milblogging, social networking / twitter, make money blogging and sports blogging. Here’s how the first day went down.
Since the conference covers so many different topics, there are usually four or more different sessions going on at the same time, so there is a lot to choose from. Instead of hearing the same things over and over again about twitter and how important social media is, I actually went over to a few milblogging (military blogging) sessions, and they were quite interesting. It’s a whole new word in the milblogging area, and not much talk of monetization or methods to make money. Milblogging is more personal and about keeping in contact with others in the same situations. The first milblogging session was with three army wives who blog while their husbands ore on duty. While us internet marketers struggle with issues like the FTC cracking down on full disclosure, milblogging has to deal with issues of what they say, how much information can be released and what information is actually correct. Remember, these are real people blogging about their families battling around the world. This is a whole new world of blogging I never really looked at, but the sessions were well worth attending.
Members of the Milblogging Session, talking about expanding blog reach and sharing information.
Another session I attended was a keynote with Ted Murphy and a few others on a “Sponsored Conversations” panel. The whole keynote was focused on the new FTC act to require bloggers to disclose any posts related to being compensated or paid for their writings. There are so many questions about this topic, it was pretty much a Q&A the whole session. While many questions were answered, we are still at the mercy of whatever the FTC decides to go forward with on December 1st, 2009 when the act goes into effect. No matter what the ruling, Ted Murphy stressed that all bloggers should have a disclaimer on their web site.
CEOs, Lawyers, Marketers and the audience, all talking about “Sponsored Conversations”.
If you weren’t able to make the event this year, it’s always a good reason to visit Vegas. I’ll follow up tomorrow with day 2.
