Ban live blogging at Social Media Conferences? Be Serious.

Back a few weeks ago I gave Steve Crescenzo an unfavorable review for his role on a New Communications Forum panel called, "Winners and Sinners." A few seats away from me, Chip Griffin was also live blogging the event and he thought Steve's presentation was pretty good. In a follow up post, Steve himself characterized his panel as a "train wreck," but for some reason seemed to think that my live blogging was more to blame than his poor presenting. That's my live blogging--not Chip's

So it goes.  That's live blogging for you. It has as many viewpoints as the impassioned people who stood on soapboxes in Boston Commons when I was a kid. I've had my share of bad reviews and some have hurt a bit.  More times than that, I've learned from bad reviews and have altered course in future presentations because of them.

It turns out that Steve and I have mutual friends who have, in the back channel said that the two of us would probably get along if we met at some other time in some other venue. Perhaps.  I've had altercations on more serious matters than this and have wound up good friends with people who I first met through a blogcentric argument.

But that is not the way this one has gone.  Shel Holtz reviewed this dust up coming out also disagreeing with Steve. At that point I thought this matter had run its natural course. But since then, the thing has turned out to have more legs than a centipede.  In the past three days, there have been 17 comments added to Shel's post, one of them from none other than Mark Ragan, founder and CEO of Ragan Communications and co-producer of the New Communications Frum where the bit first hit the fan.

It turns out that Steve, along with Shel Holtz, is a regular speaker at Ragan events and if nothing else, Mark displays great loyalty to his own. He also asserts that Steve is more credible than I am because Steve is more popular. If the arena happens to be blogging, I think Technorati may be a more impartial judge of that, but in retrospect, what has popularity to do with it.

But it was Mark's other comment that as caused the stir and indeed taken the issue beyond and Steve v. [this] Shel. Mark declared in a comment on Steve's post that he was considering banning live blogging from Ragan events.

Ban live blogging from the pre-eminent conference on communications?  There is at once something quite funny about the thought, but simultaneously Orwellian.

It happens I am a senior fellow of the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) founder of the event and Ragan's co-producer. In that role, I have to say Ragan Communications did a great job in upgrading the selected venue and doubling the attendance. I have spoken two years running at the Forum, and I  have some trepidation that Mark will see to it, that there won't be a third time.  I can live with that and I'm certain so can the event.

But ban live blogging from the pre-eminent conference of New Communications? I certainly hope the thought entered in the heat of the moment and the moment will pass.

It would be a terrible mistake to make because I gave a poor review. What would Chip do next year?






Technorati Tags: shelholtz, markragan, stevecresenzo, chipgriffin, newcommunicationsforum