BlogWorld Los Angeles 2011: A Report and Analysis Day 1

           The BlogWorld Expo and New Media Conference 2011 at the Los Angeles Convention Center is now a pleasant memory for those who attended this great event.   Talk about information overload.  My brain will be sorting out information gathered from exhibitors for the next several days.  I had some excellent tips given to me by other bloggers as well.

            Taking the Metro train was the ideal way to go.  My schedule went according to plan.  The ride was pleasant and I was at the Convention center at about 7:30 Friday morning just as I had hoped.  There's a Metro Rail station just a block away from the Convention Center so it's an easy walk once you're off the train.

          Registration was efficiently handled by a group of friendly folks hired for the event.  Some of those with whom I spoke were also bloggers and authors.   One of them was Adrienne Van Houten who has a blog called Adrienne's House.  Once I got my I.D. badge and my information package I was ready to go.

          The BlogWorld staff started the day off with an excellent networking breakfast that was free to attendees.  Here I met Jeffrey Powers of geekazine.com.   He was assisting in the booth for a podcast company called Stitcher where every time I passed their booth Jeff was interviewing one person or another.  He gave me some great tips during our conversation.

            The Expo doors opened at 10 AM and except for a brief lunch break, I was visiting booths and talking to people non-stop throughout the day.   There were nearly 100 booths to visit and I made it to almost half of them the first day.

  

         My first stop was the Blogger booth where I was assisted by a fine fellow whose name I unfortunately do not find in my notes at present.  He was of great help to me in answering some questions I had and showing me how to fix some problems with my blogs.  The entire Blogger staff was an energetic bunch and they seemed to be quite busy throughout the day.

          There are too many highlights to mention in this post without making it go on too long, but there are a few that absolutely stand out.   One is Zemanta--a content suggestion engine which offers links, tags, photos, and other helpful things that can be easily added to posts without having to do the research yourself.  This is my first post to use Zemanta and I can see I will have to get used to it, but after I do I think it will be a tremendous time saver.  

          Another cool thing was all of the swag I brought home with me.  There were all kinds of t-shirts, tote bags, pens, mousepads, and other useful items.  I also got free signed copies of hardback books:  The Hidden Power of Your Customers by Becky Carroll and No Bullshit Social Media by Jason Falls and Erik Deckers.   Looks like I'm going to have some more books to review in the future.  Add to that Chris Camillo's Laughing at Wall Street which the folks at his booth said they'd be sending me to review.

         At the end of the day I recalled someone in a booth inviting me to a product demonstration at 4:00 in room 404.  I remembered this as I was wearily trudging out of the hall to head home, but I couldn't remember what it was.  So I decided to check it out.  Pagelines, a drag and drop themes plug in for WordPress blogs, was demonstrating their product.  What a spread they had there!  They offered an excellent buffet and an open bar for the few who managed to make it.  Founder and product developer Andrew Powers and his associates were congenial hosts and they explained the product which I can't use on my Blogger blog, but I enjoyed my self anyway.

          At this demonstration I met a very nice fellow who is practically one of my neighbors.  Gregory McDonald is a video producer and president of Latter Rain Entertainment.  We had an excellent discussion and will be hopefully meeting in the near future to discuss some potential collaborations.

          After the Pagelines demonstration I was ready to call it a day at about 5:30.  It had been a long day with a lot of time on my feet and I was tired.  A bit achy but quite happy I returned home and shared my day with my wife as we sifted through my bag of goodies that I'd gotten at BlogWorld.    I only spent a few minutes on the computer before I turned in for a much needed night's sleep.   I still had another day at BlogWorld which I'll continue on Wednesday.

         Do any of you use Zemanta?   If so, what has been your experience with it?

         Tomorrow on Blogging from A to Z April Challenge Blog I will also be talking about some other aspects of my BlogWorld experience.

          On Thursday Yvonne Lewis from Welcome to My World of Poetry will be offering a special treat on my dream blog A Faraway View.

          Ann Carbine Best will be my guest on Wrote By Rote this coming Saturday.

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BLOGWORLD TODAY!!!!!

 

      If all goes as planned I am at BlogWorld today.   I've got my day mapped out and I'm ready to go. My plan is to take the train to the Los Angeles Convention Center in order to save the $12 parking fee and the twenty or so dollars it would cost to drive.  If the train works well I'll probably do the same on Saturday.

         According to my present schedule I'll try to take the 6:50 AM train to get me to the venue by 7:30 which is when the registration desk opens.  That should give me some time to join in the 8 AM networking breakfast and scout the facility before the doors to the exhibit hall open at 10:00.

         What do I expect to find there?  The Expo is essentially a trade show where there will be about 100 booths representing many companies and organizations related to blogging, social media, and other things.  Add to that a throng of bloggers and social media enthusiasts exploring what the expo has to offer.  For me that spells education and enlightenment.

         I'll let you know on Monday how it all went.

          Will any of you be there this weekend?


           
By the way, you don't have to go to BlogWorld in person to take advantage of the wealth of knowledge that the seminars will offer.  All speaker sessions will be available online for you to enjoy at your leisure.  For more information follow the link below:

Order by 11/5 and save $150 on your Blog World Virtual Ticket! Price goes up to $497 on 11/6!



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Book Review Trio:

          Today's post touches upon the subject of insecurity since today's post is my contribution to Alex J. Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group.  All of us have our moments of insecurity because life itself is never totally predictable and none of us knows what the future holds for us.  We have good reasons to be insecure every once in a while at least.

          With that thought in mind, it makes sense that fictional characters often struggle with self-doubt and some level of apprehension about the world around them and the future they face.  Conflict often is related to feelings of insecurity.  An insecure character can be interesting to follow as we watch them deal with life's turmoil and hopefully experience growth as a result of coming through that turmoil.   My three most recent reads provide good examples of insecure main characters.

         J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye had been hiding amongst my books for quite some time before I finally found it.  This highly lauded book had been on my list of must reads for the past forty-some years.  When my lost paperback copy reappeared I decided that I must read it before it disappeared again.

          The story's main character Holden Caulfield seems about as insecure as one can get.  He's an adolescent dealing with the same struggles that boys his age have probably always dealt with and in that respect this book retains its relevance.  The novel follows Holden's wayward adventures over a week-end after he has been kicked out of school.

          My opinion is that this book is highly over-rated.  Perhaps it was a bit radical for its time and came to portend some of the changes that occurred in the three decades following its release, but now the book seems rather quaint, almost like a black and white film from the fifties.  Holden Caulfield may represent a certain element of dissatisfied, aimless over-privileged youth who might be interesting to look at but not to emulate.  This guy is no hero and not particularly admirable.  Sure, we see glimpses of goodness, but he's got a bad attitude for the most part.  This may be a result of his upbringing and the surroundings in which he lives, but still I found it difficult to root for this guy.

         The book is a decent read and thankfully short.  I can see why controversy has been generated by Catcher, but by today's standards of what young people are exposed to in modern entertainments this book is pretty mild stuff.  As a study in the insecurity of adolescence and the transition into young adulthood, Salinger has done a pretty good job.  I tend to think that this was the author's intent.  However, many readers have apparently likened Caulfield to their own lives and have sadly set him up as a sort of role model.

           The insecurity brought on by an oppressive society and an uncertain future is the theme of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel A Handmaid's Tale.  The main character of Atwood's cautionary tale lives in a world where trust in others and confidence in any hope for the future is a thing of the past.  What we learn about the young woman who is the focus of the story suggests that she was probably dealing with insecurity throughout her life which perhaps makes it easier for her to accept the gloomy circumstance in which she finds herself when we meet her.  There is very little in her life to offer a promise of hope or happiness.  Her daily existence is a rote pattern of mere survival.

          Atwood effectively creates a believable world of dysfunction and paranoia, but an agenda comes across in her story-telling.  The author has an obvious distaste for religion and traditional conservative values which for me detracted from my enjoyment of this novel.  Though the nature of the story calls for a feeling of detachment, the approach caused me to care little about any of the characters and the reading experience became more of an analytical exercise.

          The Handmaid's Tale is proficiently written and the story is interesting, but it still felt somewhat ponderous to read.  My biggest objection to the book is the tacked on ending.  Using the gimmick of purporting the story to be a found record by scholars in the future, the speech at the end came across as rather silly to me and diminished the power of the real story presented in the novel.  The book would have worked better for me without the added ending.

           I recently won a copy of L .J. Sellers' The Arranger and read it during my recent trip to Tennessee.  This is dystopian novel which I found to be more believable than Atwood's tale.  Sellers creates a world twelve years in the future that is familiar, yet logically has diverged into a society plagued with homelessness and lack of jobs.   As I read this I couldn't help but accept that the author had come to some astute conclusions of where we might be heading.

           The characters in this novel display insecurities that are in part a result of the societal decay which looms over them, as well as their own personal flaws and concerns.  Ex-cop Lara Evans has doubts about her age, physical stature, and past mistakes as she participates in a national endurance competition called The Gauntlet.  Paul Madsen is a dull government worker whose insecurity about his appearance and status causes him to turn to devious illegalities in hopes of eventually winning over the woman of his dreams.

          The paths of these two characters weave their ways to a denouement that, though somewhat contrived, is satisfying and entertaining.  The characters are well-drawn albeit somewhat stereotypical, but it worked for me in the capacity of this novel.  The Arranger is pure entertainment, fun and riveting, and left me feeling psyched like a good action film.

          Since writers often channel themselves into their characters, it makes sense that insecurity would show up in those characters.   If a work of fiction is going to come across as realistic then insecurity must be an essential part of the formula.   After all, a perfect and totally secure character would probably be pretty boring in the end and rather annoying as well.

           Do you have any favorite insecure characters?   How do you think an insecure character might reflect the insecurity of that character's creator?



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