TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG?….I got an email the other day offering me a press pass to the BlogHer conference on July 30, which is described thusly:
BlogHer Conference ’05 will provide an open, inclusive forum to:
1. Discuss the role of women within the larger blog community
2. Examine the developing (and debatable) code of blogging ethics
3. Discover how blogging is shrinking the world and amplifying the voices of women worldwide
Hmmm. Registration information is here. Should I put on my flak jacket and go?
It’s too bad it’s not in LA. I’d go for sure if it were. Instead it’s at the Network Meeting Center in the TechMart in Santa Clara. I remember it well: a functional if somewhat chrome-and-blonde-wood obsessed corporate space. Let’s see….when was the last time I was there? Oh yes: early 2001. We were trying to buy a company and scheduled a meeting of their executives and ours at the TechMart in order to perform what is laughingly described in the biz as “due diligence.” Tedious stuff, due diligence ? and of course, in the end the deal failed for the usual reason.
Anyway, it’s been a long time since I had to do the whole Silicon Valley routine: wake up at some ungodly predawn hour, leave the house half an hour later, catch the 7:00 flight to San Jose, arrive at 8:10 feeling like you’ve been hit over the head with a mallet, and then hustle out to the Avis counter in time to drive across town to make a 9:00 meeting at which you spend most of your energy just forcing yourself not to nod off. Damn I hated doing that. I really like the fact that I don’t have to anymore.
Still….I wonder what it costs to fly from OC to San Jose these days? I suppose Southwest must still fly there. But how early? And anyway, I’ve loathed Southwest ever since they pulled me over for secondary screening 14 consecutive times back when I was flying up and back to the Valley twice a week during a 3-day-a-week consulting thing. I finally switched to American and they never hassled me. I never did figure out what glitch in Southwest’s computer had me pegged as a potential terrorist.
Right. But enough about that. Should I go?
UPDATE: My mother says I should go. Chris Nolan says I should go. Good enough for me! But I’m flying up the night before….
