Glenn Hauman: A View From Above

Here at PhilCon as a panelist on "Sam Will Kill Him If He Tries Anything: Blogging and SF" with Charles Stross, Hugh Casey, Shadesong, Nathan Lilly, and Dusti Lewars.

Still not moderator.

Moderator joke gets big laugh from audience.

Nathan developed the Philcon Website. Hugh pimps for him some more. Nathan feigns humility.

Charlie Stross gripes about having three back-to-back panels on Sunday AM. Has been on the web since 93, blogging since 2000.

Shadesong speaks about her 900+ friends list, still a bit of a shock to her.

Dusti blogs as Elionwyr. This blogging panel stuff was all her idea, so she ends up on it.

I blather about myself, and find myself unable to blather and blog at the same time. I can blab verbally or textually, but not both simultaneously.

Hugh gives his intro, ex-Philcon chair, blogs on livejournal as hughcasey. New pick-up line: You look just like your icon!

What got us into blogging? Shadesong got here during a move, and started using to keep in contact with friends, and a way to keep busy during work. For me, it was all Peter David's fault, but now it's grown to the point where I have groupies. On cue, two of my groupies come into the hall and hand me a token of their affec-- all right, they hand me back my car keys.

End up explaining my Jesus at Philcon story to the crowd to counter Hugh's "WWHCD?" buttons.

Charles got on as an escape from Usenet, to publish some of his short stories, and then started adding pages. He now has 670 readers on his LJ. Minor digression about Warren Ellis outing his LJ account. Charles blames it on Warren accidentally ingesting inorganic monkey glands.

I explain why I blog, minor digression on why I don't like LJ. Commentary on LJ regional accents, including those who come from IM systems and uses of abbreviations.

Dusti uses LJ as a quick way to keep all her friends notifying on her upcoming and doings on her business. Hugh comments on how one person talks about having a bad day, leading to 500 people posting *huuuuuuuuuuugs!* and how it all gets a bit silly.

Audience Q: Why does everybody (except me) use LJ? Charlie talks about network externals and friends lists, so everybody else joins in. Nathan dislikes using it because he doesn't like the loss of control of his content.

11:40. Having trouble keeping up with discussion and keeping focus on myself. Still not moderator.

Audience provides lots of helpful discussions on how to work with LJ.

I ask stupid question, and get heckled from audience, and even more stupidly blog about it. Audience asks about panel title, which leads to explanation of The Very Secret Diaries. Shadesong says she doesn't like LOTR, crowd turns v. nasty.

Getting back to blogging and SF, I mention that blogging is becoming SF-- influencing elections, showing effects of Katrina, etc. Now passing laptop to Shadesong, who's looking over my shoulder-- she declines to write anything, saving it for her own traffic.

Nathan notes: "In the future, we'll all be famous for 15 megabytes." Comment from the audience, "In the future, we'll all be famous to 15 people." Wondering who my fifteen are...

Audience member pledges to write Firefox extension to append real names to LJ handles, in response to Kathryn Cramer's complaint, echoed by many, that most can't keep track of LJ names vs. real names. Lordy, I hope so.

End of panel. Can't find decent hotspot to send file in between panels, then have to get on the road. Posting when I get home, giving me time to put links in. Hope that Charles hasn't beaten me to posting. Of course, he could be posting on LJ, where I'd never see it. Damn youuuuuuu...!