In related blogs, Hugh MacLeod says it's probably time to stop having blog conferences and Robert Scoble agrees, adding that there is nothing new to learn from them. Scoble may have attended more of them than any three other living beings, so he may know. This on the heels of Steve Rubel's.
Wow. These are among the people who most shaped my thinking on blogging. They are truly leaders of whatever it is that just happened. My inclination is to say that if they say it , it must be true, and I believe it probably true for them.
The passion they had on their first dates with blogging must have been much greater than what they feel now after so many eons of living and working and talking in the blogosphere. Those three have been such great seducers of so many of us who followed.
Now they are saying it's over? I think it may be for them. Scoble, Rubel & MacLeod (sounds sort of like a law firm, doesn't it?) have little more to learn from blog conferences. They have also said pretty much what they needed to say to ignite sparks in the rest of us.
But blogging isn't over. Neither are blog conferences. Geek conferences on blogging may be over. But millions of people, ordinary people, in regular jobs, in traditional PR agencies, in journalism, in developing countries, in countries where it is still dangerous to blog--they are just starting to come to the party. Their conferences would probably be boring and old hat to these three blogging myths. Hell, it would be boring to me, unless I was having the pleasure of spreading the word to the attendees as a speaker.
People who live in the front of the comet are always looking for a brighter light. I'm among them. But when we start getting restless, when we start looking for a new place to hang out, where we can see some new cool stuff that is not blog-related, let's not discount the partiers who will get to the scene after we have left.