I got an email from Dave Winer inviting me to a blogging conference at Harvard. I liked the varied list of speakers–the right-wing Instapundit balanced by Josh Marshall, one of my favorite lefties, and so on. Dave said:
We’re going to talk about how weblogs are used in politics, business, journalism, the law, medicine, engineering and education.
And yet, believe it or not, when you consider that there are at least 200 notable bloggers addressing any one of these topics, the evil elitists of Harvard have invited only about 10 people to address this one-day event. Shocking!
Still, the price tag is $500–more than my blogging budget for the decade. And–sour grapes time–with that price tag, I picture BlogCon as industry-oriented do–aimed at showing the business world how some of our most successful bloggers do things. That isn’t the part of blogging I do anyway.
Now there’s a mini-firestorm in blogworld.
One good result of the hubbub is that Andrew Orlowski has chimed in to praise the bloggers attacking BlogCon. Since this is the first time I’ve ever seen Orlowski express anything but contempt for bloggers, his change of heart must surely be a good thing.