Blogtropol.us at Web 2.0 Expo: Bloggers Have Arrived
by
on April 26, 2008,
I have a lot of posting to catch up on after Web 2.0 Expo this week, but I'm not saving the best for last; I'm starting off my catch-up posts with my review of the Blogtropol.us Bloggers Lounge.
When I first arrived at Web 2.0 Expo, I was a little bit incensed that bloggers had their own lounge rather than admittance to the "media room." Here I was at a conference about Web 2.0 and the bloggers weren't considered media?
Forget it. As Richard Brandt noted on Entrepreneur Watch, the Blogtropol.us Lounge was THE place to be. There were massages, Wii tournaments, a constant interview stream from Webware with Rafe Needleman (who cannot POSSIBLY still have a voice today!). There was WiFi and adorable robot dinosaurs, great giveaways, food, drinks, and contests. The hosts (The Conversation Group) bent over backward to make sure we were happy, well-beveraged, well-fed, and overall, well-treated.
Every single upcoming conference should take their cues from Blogtropol.us. It was the place to hang out, meet and greet, and those without passes or blogs were jealous as all get out that I was able to go up there.
In an era where bloggers are often looked down upon as being "less than" traditional journalists (Hey, I would have made a GREAT columnist!), it was a great morale booster to be treated so well by the Web 2.0 Expo organizers and the sponsors of the Blogtropol.us Lounge. We felt valued.
If I could have come up with any gripe at all, it would be that a great deal of the scheduling of events conflicted for those of us pulling double-duty covering the conference as well as staffing the event. I'd have liked it to stay open for a little while longer after the Expo Hall closed so that those of us who were double agents could come up, decompress, and start cranking out posts as well as take advantage of some of the additional perks. Other than that, I can't think of a single thing I'd have done differently if I were running the Blogtropol.us Lounge, and I'm looking forward to the next event I get to attend where it appears again. I never did get that much-needed massage!
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major
raj
Svetlana Gladkova
CopyrightLawSucks 
kwarren84 
Michael Fidler 
Jaime A. Restrepo 
Yolanda
Cyndy - thank you so much for the kind words about the Bloggers Lounge - it really was a great time all around and we were very fortunate to get to talk with so many great bloggers, media producers and entrepreneurs. It was great to do 5 separate ’shows’ with Rafe Needleman over the course of the expo (one each morning and 2 wrap up shows) which were fun and informative.
I was also fortunate to do 30+ interviews with some of the brightest and most interesting people at Web 2.0 Expo. My favorite interviews of the show were with Clay Shirky, Ross Mayfield, Charlene Li and Chris Brogan, though it is really hard to pick just one. We will be editing down the interviews and releasing them over the next several weeks, but you can access the archive of all the video on Ustream http://www.ustream.tv/channel/blogtropolus-at-web-2.0
Our team at The Conversation Group really worked incredibly hard to make the lounge a success - so they all really deserve the kudos for a job well done.
Chris, thank YOU! Thanks also for letting me know about the video; we were wondering if the archives would be posted.