Hi. The first thing to say is how wonderful I think Steve Garfield and his commitment to community is. He is such an asset to anyone who knows him and any community that he is a part of. I don't know him too well, but he is clearly one of the most valuable connectors around, and is a model for anyone interested in creating community on the web.
Funny this should all come up...we've just finalized this year's Vlog Europe being in Paris and Clermont-Ferrand, France this year yesterday. We'll have dates and other things later, and you'll find more communications coming from Raymond and Loiez than me, as I'm stepping back a bit and letting the Europeans run their own European event now that I'm in San Francisco. With Vlog Europe, we have/had the added benefit of very easy accessibility to different cultures and different cities every year. And we've also been SUPER lucky to have faithful sponsors that get that we're not trying to be a major for-profit event like Le Web, New Media Expo or Jeff Pulver's events. In the end, though, I think the event has survived because there's a core committed group that really wants this to happen every year and this really frames the event and that the event has never completely lost momentum. Vlog Europe (and in my opinion, Vloggercon too) has avoided the temptations of being part of the larger tech conference/event circuit and being a for-profit conference. Once someone starts making money out of the deal, everything changes and, rightly or wrongly, there's some discomfort with that and things tend to fall apart. While the ethos of that era is highly influential to me and to many of you, I think any attempt to force the same outcomes we had back then would result in disappointment and possibly disaster. We've all narrowed our foci and changed, and I think this comes out of a realization that we are just one community in a larger, non-linear web video community that has developed. Because of this, people who would have organized Vloggercon years ago are knee-deep in other projects, and organizing a conference of the size and scope that Vloggercon covered would be a massive project. Presented with the choice of Vloggercon or teaching people to videoblog, starting advocacy projects like the Open Video Alliance and the artist/documentarian org I am working to create and others, many of us are choosing the latter. In short, I think many in the community that made up the two Vloggercons are more interested in using their influence and tenure in this community to drive change instead of organizing a conference with more of a general purpose than a conference with a specific purpose. To be perfectly honest, I personally have discomfort with any for-profit entity taking over the Vloggercon name and what those two events represent. This is not up to me. But knowing the people that organized Vloggercon, I am willing to bet the farm that they agree and that it is unlikely that those who own the rights to the name will allow anyone to take it over. The videoblogging culture that existed 2004-2006 has evolved and subgroups and completely disassociated communites of vloggers have formed, and there's no going back. The idea of bringing back how things felt back then is tantalizing, but I am afraid that that's impossible at this point. I used to feel like many of you disappointed that Vloggercon hasn't happened again. But seeing how things developed, I consider the Vloggercon experience to be whole, complete and appropriate for its time. That's not to say that another larger videoblogging event shouldn't happen and that I wouldn't attend, as there's so many people who weren't around when Vloggercon was happening and there's many perfectly great folks with commercial interests that could benefit from having facetime with other vloggers. I personally just don't think that event should be called Vloggercon. Just my two cents. Jeffrey 2009/5/14 Rupert <[email protected]> > > > I'm not sure it's a question of nobody wanting to run it. I think > it's more a question of people not wanting to travel halfway across > the country/world to attend a vlogging event. > > You know that I love this community, and so I'm not being negative > about it. Just being realistic about what I see as people's > priorities and interests. > > Bill Streeter tried valiantly to organise Vloggercamp last year, and > there was a lot of interest from people signing up on the wiki - but > in the end people just weren't motivated enough to pay the > registration fee, let alone buy plane tickets. > > Pixelodeon got quite a few people attending because it was all about > screening lots of videos in a posh venue. But even then most of the > people who attended were from the West, I think. And that was two > years ago, and things have changed in the vlogosphere and in the > economy. > > The original Vloggercons and Vloggies worked because of the excitement > of vlogging being so new. I wish I'd been able to attend. > > There's a small number of people here who do attend podcamps, new > media expo, etc. The people who make their living from social media > that you see on Twitter constantly tweeting about the latest social > media trends and business opportunities, and telling you how to blog > and make money from blogging. But this doesn't include the majority > of vloggers, I don't think. > > And I'm not sure that most of the vloggers I know would be that into > attending a big corporate Las Vegas expo as opposed to something much > more intimate. > > What does anybody else think? Maybe Jeffrey could pipe in with his > experience of organising VlogEurope? > > Rupert > http://twittervlog.tv > > > On 14-May-09, at 5:47 AM, Steve Garfield wrote: > > > > > > > Hi, > > > > When I was in NYC this weekend we were talking about the history of > > vloggercon and if there was going to be another one. > > > > People want to have another one, but no one wants to run it. > > > > I was talking to hte folks at Blog World Expo and they are > > interested in adding in Vloggercon to their October event. They > > would handle all the registration. > > > > Blog World Expo also now combines New Media Expo. > > > > Are people interested in this? > > > > Oct 15-17 Las Vegas. > > > > http://www.blogworldexpo.com/ > > > > Air and hotels are cheap. > > > > Let's talk here about it here and if there's interest I can talk to > > them about getting a room or two for a vloggercon conference track > > within thier conference. > > > > Thanks, > > --Steve > > > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > -- Jeffrey Taylor 912 Cole St, #349 San Francisco, CA 94117 USA Mobile: +14157281264 Fax: +33177722734 http://twitter.com/jeffreytaylor http://organicconversations.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! 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