Saturday, October 14, 2006:
The class assignment: blog an event. Why not blog a bloggers convention? ConvergeSouth 06, to be held at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro fit the bill. The schedule seemed on point, and Paul Jones had bragged on Converge South 05 as extremely relevant to bloggers.
You blog. Don’t you want to do much more: I wandered across advance publicity for ConvergeSouth06 when I saw it mentioned on another blog. The price was right – free admission and even a free lunch. The keynoter was to be Elizabeth Edwards.
6:30 am. Leave Raleigh. Men don’t ask for directions: Organizers posted directions to the conference, but I could swear at the time I printed them out they did NOT show which entrance to take or which lot to park in. In any case I forgot to bring the conference directions with me, just a map from the A&T website. The advance publicity had said to watch for signage, but that part of Greensboro was new to me. I decided to follow the signs that were to be posted, but apparently one got turned 90 degrees so I wound up totally lost on the wrong side of campus. I eventually found the General Classroom building.
250 Registered, about 175 attended: The ConvergeSouth06 webpage allowed (of course) online registration and dynamically allowed users to see who had registered, and a link to their blogs. (The link is now dead). About 250 persons had registered by three days before the conference, when registration was cut off, preumably for facility capacity and budget issues. About 175 actually showed up (I guess the free registration lured some folks to register who felt no stake and didn’t show.) I had a bagel and cream cheese and three cups of the dark roast coffee from the free breakfast buffet to steel myself for a long day.
8:30 am. Ed Cone opens the festivities: Opening session Saturday morning 8:30 am, titled “Greetings, Introduction to the Unconference” was opened by Ed Cone , who deadpanned ”My name is Ed, and I’m a blogger.” He told the crowd the purpose of “this free conference” is “creativity on the web for all people”, and emphasized that “This is a user conference, not a vendor conference.” That led in to Ed giving thanks to sponsors Pay Per Post and Edelman. “A lot of people hate Pay Per Post, and that’s OK.” said Ed, adding “We planned to make this a small conference, but that didn’t work.” Ed announced ConvergeSouth is being podcast on the Georgia Podcast Network. The podcasts should be up by mid-November. (There is a podcast up already of an interview that MaryAm Scoble did of Elizabeth Edwards during a break at Converge South 06)
Nothing could be finer: Ed suggested “Let’s sing-a-long” to bond the group, and led the crowd in an off-key rendition of “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the Morning”. The final instructions from Ed to the group? “No yelling, no selling.”
