Online Journalism Review's Mark Glaser writes on the Blog Nashville conference. I also include a link to a Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds column and some other stuff.

(Note: Here's my previous post)

Some excerpts from the OJR piece:

5. BlogNashville site aggregates blog posts and photos from conference. OK, it's the ultimate self-referential move, but that doesn't mean it's not helpful. The conference's Web site includes a page called "Discussion," that's not really a discussion but actually an aggregation of all the BlogNashville blog posts via Technorati, photos via Flickr and Web links via del.icio.us. Not only is it a great running tally of the post-convention commentary, but you can also subscribe to RSS feeds to get the latest in your newsreader. This is the type of page that should be a requirement for all conventions in the future.

6. Glenn Reynolds gives a videoblogging demo. Ever wish that some of blogging's biggest proponents actually rolled up their sleeves and got dirty with the technology? That's what InstaPundit blogger and University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds did at the conference. Reynolds basically interviewed a bunch of attendees using his pocket digital camera's movie feature, and showed how easy it was to create a video report from the event with passable sound and image quality.

7. Blogging classes coming to Poynter's NewsU. Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, announced that he was working with the Poynter Institute to offer up online classes for journalists and bloggers explaining blogging basics. The classes would be included in Poynter's NewsU, and might help journalists learn how to set up blogs, or could help bloggers get basic legal tips to protect themselves. During one session, Cox mentioned that his impetus for starting the MBA was when he was legally threatened by The New York Times for doing a satire of its corrections page.

Pet Peeve

1. Put down the blog. There were times at the conference where it seemed like everyone in the room was on a laptop blogging, or taking pictures or video of each other. That's understandable, as this was a conference for bloggers. But c'mon. Here you are in a room with people and you have a chance to engage and listen and talk -- to actually participate interactively face to face in real time. So why not put down the laptop, turn off the cell phone, put away the digital camera for some time and really be there? Maybe there's a way to set some ground rules: Turn off the portable electronic devices for the first 55 minutes, then blog and photograph for 5 minutes. Sure, you want to do other work, IM with friends, etc. But why travel so far to a conference just to stick your head in a laptop for most of the time you're there?

From the Reynolds column at Tech Central Station:

... Two recurring themes of this latest conference were making money, and video.

Making money is now not impossible.  Some bloggers are doing fairly well; many others are at least making enough to turn blogging from a time-sink into a lucrative hobby.  Much of that is thanks to Henry Copeland's BlogAds, which has brought paying advertisers like Audi and Levi's to the blogosphere, though donations (a major source of income for bloggers like Andrew Sullivan and Josh Marshall) and referral fees from online merchants like Amazon have also played a part.  And there are other ventures in the works that may increase both the amount of money, and the amount of attention, available to the blogosphere.  ...

The other new emphasis was video.  There are a lot of videobloggers now, and this conference featured a lot more video being shown, and taken.  There was a crew of documentary filmmakers making a movie on blogging, but they were outnumbered several-to-one by amateurs capturing video for live streams or for posting.  Many, many bloggers are incorporating video interviews and reporting into their work, and I think that within a year or so we'll see videobloggers beginning to compete with television news operations -- especially local television news operations -- in quite a few places.

I've pointed that out before, but we definitely seem to be at a tipping point.  To illustrate how close we are, I did some interviews of my own, using the video function of my Sony digital still camera.

(640x480, 30 fps).  It's not television-news quality, but it was done on the fly with a camera that cost $300 and fits easily in a pocket.

Tools like this are the future.  If I ran a newspaper, I'd give one to each of my reporters, and encourage them -- in the most meaningful way possible, with bonuses -- to conduct video interviews and reports that could run on the paper's website, the better to fend off the kind of challengers I link above.

For more blogging on the conference, here's the results of a Technorati search on 'BlogNashville'.