2009 Blogging While Brown Wrap Up

July 8, 2009

The 2^nd annual Blogging While Brown Conference, held at the University Center in Chicago, IL, was an extraordinary gathering of participants from diverse backgrounds and a wide range of technological skill levels with many ideas. Though the participant’s backgrounds were diverse, they gathered with one common goal; to discuss the issues affecting bloggers of color. The event, founded by Gina McCauley the founder of What About our Daughters, and Michelle Obama Watch, brought together speakers with different levels of expertise to provide tips, tools and insight on a wide array of topics including branding, creative and design, monetization, and industry trends and research. Speakers included; Hajj E. Flemings, founder of Brand Camp, Angel Laws founder of Concreteloop.com, and Eric Easter, Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing just to name a few.

New to this year’s conference was the Beginning Blogger Bootcamp (BBB); an intensive workshop for those who have a desire to blog, but don’t know how. The bootcamp, taught by McCauley, touched on a range of topics for beginners including; how to post text, links, images, audio, and video; to intermediate topics including; the use of widgets, and gadgets, search engine optimization, podcasting and social networking. “The bootcamp was modeled after a class I taught for the Red Cross NAACP, right after Hurricane Ike.”, said McCauley. “Each participant received course materials, and laptops were provided for those who did not bring their own; because I believe that in order for you to learn it you must do it.”

After monitoring the tweet stream it seemed like one of the most popular speakers was Hajj Flemings. Fleming’s session on branding introduced such terms as Grustling (Grinding + Hustling = Grustling), and a list of memorable one liners including:

If you’re the smartest person in your group, then you’re in the wrong group.
Create quality content that is credible & creating quality contacts is paramount.
The best time to start something was a year ago. The next best time is right now.

Another notable speaker was Naoko McCracken of Wordpress. Naoko, introduced the audience to Buddy Press, a Word Press plug-in that allows users to add social networking features to their blog. Gina was particularly excited, “I was just researching using Ning to add social networking features to my blog. Now I am really excited about trying Buddy Press”.

I spoke with multiple attendees who had nothing but high praises for this years’ conference. “The conference was great! It was intimate enough to allow some real, meaningful conversations and diverse enough (in experience) to learn some things from a lot of angles.” , says Fredric Mitchell of Bright Plum. Mitchell, a panelist and first time participant says, “…in all honesty, the conference benefits immensely from Gina’s personality… her admittance that she is a ‘do-er’ helped keep the focus that this isn’t a conference about airing out grievances or what minorities aren’t doing or covering…it’s about learning tools so that u can tackle any problem and make it an opportunity”.

As for the future of Blogging While Brown; Gina announced the development of two small spin-offs of the conference; one on the west coast focused on Accessing Capital and one the east coast focused on Social Justice and Community Organizing. The courses, which she hopes to start in 2010, will accommodate approx 50 people, and will focus on teaching the users the “hard-skills” necessary to move black and brown blogs to the next level. Locations and dates have not been finalized for these and future Blogging While Brown Events, though we will attempt to keep you posted as soon as plans are released. One thing’s for sure though, we can’t wait!

If you’re upset about missing this year’s BWB, don’t fret, the conference was recorded and is available at Next Generation Web.

Shout out to all the blogs represented at the conference:

Category: Blog, Conferences, web 2.0

Lois

What an amazing achievement. I've blogged in the past and dropped it but reading this has me inspired to start anew.

HajjFlemings

Thanks for including me in your 'Blogging While Brown Wrap Up' it was a tremendous event that I was extremely excited to be apart of. There was a lot of energy and talent in the room in Chicago. For those who didn't attend it is a must do for you next year.

Villager

I appreciate you taking time to share this summary of the BWB conference. The info about the two mini-conferences is new & I look forward to learning more about them. I'll add link to this post in my next Blog Safari...

peace, Villager

Naoko McCracken

Markus,
Thanks for mentioning me! It's a great write-up. It was a great event and I enjoyed talking to enthusiastic and talented bloggers there.
I'm happy to hear that Gina is planning more events around blogging & community organization!

Naoko

Anony

Not to be rude. But how do you have blogging while brown conference and the only blog on the list with any real traffic is concrete loop. What about YBF, Bossip, Media Take Out?

What good is listening to people who don't know how to build successful blogs (minus Angel, of course). What exactly are the panels about, how to build an unsuccessful blog?

Sorry if anyone is offended anyone. But whenever I see stuff like this it always strikes me as a HUGE wasted opportunity.

rmcaldwell

I wasn't at the conference, but wonder if that list is indicative of the attendees. If so, if they weren't present, then it wasn't a slight. Sorry you were offended. No offense intended.

OKnow

So polluting our people with Filth, is the way to go?
I per say don't consider any of those sites successful per say...
All know GOSSIP/DRAMA sells within our community sadly...

Lois

Well, if we were to follow your train of thought to its logical conclusion, we would only read and laud NYTimes best seller list authors, only listen to and laud music artists in Billboard's Top Ten, and only vote for politicians with 20 years experience. Well, thank goodness most people don't think that way or there wouldn't be any person such as President Barack Obama.

gochitchat.com

I found this to be interesting, I wish I would have known about this, As a Black Blogging /Community site gochitchat.com would have loved to have been part of this. Well maybe next year.

markusrobinson

Just because a blog hasn't reached a million+ page views, does not mean that they're unsuccessful. Traffic alone is not, and should not be the only gauge of a blogs success. Some people are focused on having a voice, others want to make an impact, others cater to a very niche audience. Meeting the authors goals, whatever they are should determine a blogs success.