Random Thoughts on Blogger Conferences

OK. So I attended my first Blogger Conference yesterday. By all measures, it was a wonderful event. I very much enjoyed putting names and faces to blogs. I'm sure others did, too. That's part of the attraction of this kind of event, I suppose.

And yet I had (have) mixed feelings about it. Don't get me wrong: (1) I love reading the NOLA blogs and I am not only much better informed about many things both local and national because of them, but I have been inspired by them to become much more actively engaged in civic work. So I owe a great debt of gratitude to NOLA bloggers for that. (2) I love the conference format for exchanging ideas, for networking, and for professional development. In fact, such kinds of meetings are a big part of my regular job as an academic.

But one of the things I have come to especially like about blogging (and perhaps the most important thing that I like about blogging) is its raw, hard-hitting, and unapologetic commentary and reporting. Blogging provides a sharp edge to opinion-making, critical thinking, and intellectual debate. And I think this edge, which is exciting and challenging, requires to some extent the absence of personalized human contact. When you share a beer with someone, get to know that person better socially, talk about the mundane things of life like jobs and families, etc., it becomes infinitely harder to maintain that sharp and critical edge in a blogosphere debate that pits two bloggers who are passionately committed to opposite sides of an issue. Let me give a couple of examples just from my own experience: (1) Oyster of Your Right Hand Thief and I have very different reactions to and postions on reforming the Assessors offices. Over the past few years, this issue has flared up as a hot item in the blogosphere. It even spawned a movement (the "IQ" movement) that I viscerally opposed. Oyster passionately supported the cause; I passionately opposed it. I don't think we disagreed on the need for reform; but we definitely and strongly disagreed on the "IQ" movement as a tactic and means to carry out such reform. So we aired our thoughts on our blogs and we pushed, challenged, and criticized each other in the comments sections. Not to say that we weren't civil and nice to each other. We were. But the lack of any kind of substantive personal contact between us made it possible for us to be stronger advocates of our positions and more forceful critics of each other. Now that I've had the chance to meet Oyster personally a couple of times, I think it will be much harder for me to be as forceful a critic of Oyster when we might disagree. That's not to say that I won't hold back in my criticisms, but I know myself and I know that I will be much more gracious in my criticisms. My comments will undoubtedly be tempered as a consequence of having gotten to know Oyster as a person, even if only a little bit more than before. (2) This is perhaps more poignantly so in the case of Jeffrey of the Library Chronicles. Before I ever met Jeffrey, I found his cynical style of blogging to be really rather annoying. And I often let him know this in pretty snarky ways, usually in comments to his blog postings. And then I met Jeffrey, first at Ashley's funeral, and then with my kids at the Library where he works. And my kids actually know Jeffrey from their frequent visits to the Public Library (and, get this, they actually like him! They think he's helpful, nice, AND funny!) And finally I got to see and hear Jeffrey perform as moderator at Rising Tide III. He was great and funny and thoughtful and good-humored. Absent was the acerbic cynic and critic of the Library Chronicles. And though I still think Jeffrey, the "cynic" blogger, is annoying, I've come not to think of him really as a cynic; thus I'm much more likely to be able to swallow his cynical blogging much better for having gotten to see him in person and to know him a bit better as a person. As much as I might want to try to maintain my critical posture towards Jeffrey's style, I know that there's no way I'll be able to do it in the same way.

And these are just two examples from folks with whom I basically share an ideological affinity. But I have to say that, given the fact that I'm a frequenter of a number of conservative blogs, the same would apply to ideological rivals that I have come to know from the blogosphere.

The fact is that the degree to which the shroud of anonymity disappears, and the degree to which bloggers become personalized and humanized to each other, the more likely it will be for the sharper critical edge of blogging and commentary to become tempered. And I do lament the loss of that to some extent.

HOWEVER ... And this is a BIG however ...

I am also increasingly becoming more and more convinced that Bloggers need to find more plentiful and more frequent opportunities to socialize and come together in environments that facilitate human contact and human exchange. And I think this is an imperative for two main reasons:

(1) There is a kind of narcissism among bloggers that is troubling to me. [And I am not immune to this tendency myself.] Jeffrey's comment at the conference yesterday about "Vanity blogging" really resonated in this regard. And it should resonate. Blogging, and the isolation that surrounds it (after all, most of us bloggers are usually just sitting in front of our computer screens with high speed internet connections when we put on the blogger hat and tap away our ruminations on the keyboards), tends to naturally lead to what I see as a kind of self-congratulatory smugness. We secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) pat ourselves on the back for unearthing some obscure nugget of information. And we are proud of ourselves, sometimes with good reason, when we can convert that nugget of information into a story that generates a buzz beyond our little blogging community. But without putting our blogging into a more personalized social and professional context, we can walk around during the day and do our routines with work and family without ever having that blogger's pride or accomplishment subject to the molding and shaping of our real world. Our blogging is insulated from the impacts of our real and human lives. Think of it this way: if we went around and talked to our friends, family, and colleagues like we talk on our blogs and to one another in comment threads, we'd be very lonely (and maybe even despised) people. And so getting bloggers as bloggers out into the world of other people who are also bloggers humanizes us as bloggers. So, events like Rising Tide III, and other blogger conferences are essential to pushing us bloggers as bloggers out of the insular and narcissistic world of our own (and others') blogs.

(2) The second reason why I think blogger conferences like that of Rising Tide III are imperative has to do with ideas of civic engagement that I've been mulling over for the past 8-9 months or so. As I said earlier in this posting, I love the NOLA blogosphere because it has informed me about my community and has cultivated an activist consciousness in me that was not as present in my life previously. The fact is that I am much more civically engaged now than I ever was before; and the NOLA blogosphere (along with my involvement in the Service Learning initiative at Tulane) has played a major and significant part in this evolution of my life. Now, I've always been concerned about such things notionally and as subjects of personal interest and even professional study; but I have not always been drawn to put this into some kind of civic action. And though I have the NOLA blogosphere to thank, in part, for creating in me a civic consciousness and thus pushing me to become more active, the fact that Tulane's Public Service initiative also gave me a very concrete push helped to make civic engagement a more fundamental aspect of my life. The problem with the blogosphere in general, though, is that even though it might cultivate a civic consciousness in bloggers and blog readers, there is nothing inherent to the blogosphere that translates this consciousness into civic action. Someone can be a great blogger, but an absent participant in what Harry C. Boyte calls "everyday politics." Conferences like Rising Tide III can be a means to address this real weakness in the blogosphere. In fact, with proper planning, Blogger Conferences can purposefully address this weakness. And though I couldn't participate in the Community Service project scheduled for today as part of the Rising Tide III Conference, I am glad that it was part of the program. But I do think that half-day service projects are not enough. We bloggers need to find more ways to convert blogging into sustained civic action and active participation in the project of everyday politics with real people in face-to-face contexts.

So, I remain with mixed feelings and will continue to sort through them. As an academic, one of the ways I am trained to do this is through pondering, studying, researching, and writing. And I have bubbling in the back of my mind a book project that will treat this subject more completely and thoroughly. So, if any bloggers out there might want to participate in this project, and perhaps contribute an essay to such a book project on the subject of blogging and civic engagement, drop me a line.

In the meantime, keep blogging! Oh, and if any of you have posted anything along similar lines, or if any of you have read blog postings that treat this subject, please let me know that, too.