About 100-150 people attended the first semi-annual Utah Bloggers Conference tonight. Thanks to utahbloggers.com for organizing this.
After about a half hour of gathering a panel discussion was held on blogging in Utah. The discussion was mostly oriented towards business. 4 of the 5 panelists were business bloggers and one was political.
Panelists included:
Following the panel was a Q & A. Since I noticed the glaring disparity in gender on the panel, and in the room (about 4:1 men), and the fact that only men were asking questions, I asked the question of the panelists if the gender balance on the panel was representative of the percentage of women bloggers in Utah. This evoked a series of responses from panelists and audience memberes alike – women and men – with no clear cut answer being offered, but recognition that this is the way things are in Utah. I did learn, as a reult of the responses, of Blogher, a site that lists women bloggers and that there will be a Blogher Conference in San Diego July 28 and 29.
Overall the conference was interesting and very informal and comfortable. The organizers are planning another one in 6 months, details to be announced at a later date.
I met Rob Miller, of The Utah Amicus. It’s so great to meet bloggers in person!
Here are photos of the event:
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 
Dee, I was sitting at the next table from you and was going to come say hi but I was posting pictures when the thing wound to an end, and then I met Rob Miller, and next thing I knew you were gone. I’m sorry I missed saying hi.
Charley Foster
Oh, I’m so sorry! We’ve been working sooooo hard the past 2 weeks moving the school in which I teach and we are exhausted, so am getting ready to go to bed now – we really needed to get home. We have 2 more days of extremely strenuous work to do.
I hope to meet you sometime! Thanks!
Thanks for the coverage
Deanna,
Thanks for covering the conference. I wish I could’ve been there, but I’m in the St. George area…
Steve of http://obiterdictabysteve.blogspot.com
Women Bloggers
Dee, It was nice to have you participate at the Utah Bloggers conference. I highlighted some of the great women bloggers within the Know More Media on my post here:
http://www.knowmoremedia.com/2006/06/does_the_internet_tear_down_co.html
Women Bloggers
Sorry! I meant to introduce myself in the last post as Tim Stay. Thanks for attending.
Great Question!
Phil Burns here, I thought you asked us a great question about women bloggers. I mentioned Janet’s blog, and alluded to Provo Labs’ three female employee/bloggers (they all get aggregated at planet.provolabs.com) another awesome female blogger is my good friend Tara Hunt, she blogs at http://www.horsepigcow.com and is a huge influencer in the Silicon Valley community and is an organizer for BlogHer. Thanks for attending and thanks for the thought provoking question!
Re: Thanks for the coverage
I hope we can think of ways to include folks from all over the state – certainly with technology we should at least be able to provide cyber connections. I’ve seen it done!
Re: Women Bloggers
It was great to be there! Thanks for helping to organize it. I look forward to the next one! A suggestion: Could future conferences be a little less “techie” and a little more geared towards the “lay” blogger? A lot of us got muddled in the techie talk last night.
Having said that, I enjoyed myself and learned some things and thought it went very well.
Thanks for pointing me to your post!
Re: Great Question!
Thank you Phil and thanks for your participation last night. I plan to add yours and all the other blogs I learned about last night in my link to Utah blogs (left sidebar of my blog – “Other Blogs & Forums”).
Re: Great Question!
Dee, wish I had met you. I’m also a teacher! Just wanted to let you know I’m linking to you in a post for Blogher about the conference.
Kalyn
Re: Great Question!
Thank you Katlyn! I have so much catching up to do to read all these new blogs I found out about last night!