Congratulations Felix on what the photo indicates was a busy event. I must say, however, that the excerpts from the editor's panel were pretty...how do I put this...crap. The publishers seemed to have something to talk about. The editors...well, I understand. I get paid to write, not talk, and there's a reason for that. (I'm too hopeless to even try reading about the tech angle.)

My takeaway from this is that the publishers have the vision and the editors seem more interested in attempting clever soundbites. Which is why I don't read those other New York blogs - they bring navel-gazing to a new dimension.

Which raises the question of what quality separates an uberblog from the chaff? Will blogs ever be anything more than vanity projects? Should they be anything more than vanity projects? If the answer to that last question is yes, then how - become Slate with comments, a branded journalism platform with instant reader feedback, with a full time comments editor? Who is going to spunk some cash on that? Publishers talked about "not selling out" - what exactly does that mean and why is it considered bad? Why didn't Felix namedrop Jame DiBiasio, to show that Memefirst flexes global expertise, particularly if it could have scored me a date with Choire? Is it impolite to use the word "spunk"?

Feel free to crib these questions for next year's event.

Where's my free trip to the rockies? Have you and Felix been bagging them all without telling the rest of us? Skullfuckers. [what, btw, is a skullfucker?]

One of my big mistakes was not repeating all the questions after they were asked: most of the people in the audience couldn't hear them, and certainly people in Stockholm couldn't. But Mike Derham was the only person in the audience with his hand up, and he did, in my defense, direct a question straight at me. And I'm sorry, my site is called felixsalmon.com. I have no idea how I'm meant to talk about it without being accused of talking about myself in the third person.

Reading the various posts in the blogosphere, I'm surprised at how many people really enjoyed the technology panel, which was very dry, and didn't feel the need for the fluffier conversation which Jen, Lock, Choire and I thought everybody wanted at the end of the evening. Then again, maybe the people blogging the event are not representative of the audience as a whole: after all, one person even went so far as to say that the most interesting part of the whole evening was when somebody asked a question about the difference between blogging tools and content management systems.

Also, Nick Denton threw down the gauntlet at the very beginning, when he said "group blogs don't work". Since I lost a bet with him later in the evening, I'm going to ask him about that when I take him out for a meal.

felixsalmon.com: try dropping the ".com" off your name and putting a space between the x and the s and then maybe people will be able to tell you apart from your website (unless we're at the end of a Philip Dick novel and its already too late), while still getting a hint at the answer to the question "will blogs ever amount to more than a vanity project?" Meanwhile, at Star Trek conventions I bet the makeup artists' table gets more attention than the scriptwriters' --why should it be any different with blog techies than with borg trekkies?

PS, I can't find any commentary on Felix's performance in the various blogs about the event, why not?

PPS, and why no section on 'the art of the blog comment.'

It's true, I am woefully overlooked in more than one commentary on the event. I will take this blow to my self-esteem as a man, however, and come out stronger. That said, Ellen does say that my panel "opened with Felix insulting all three of them. Excellent beginning." http://standard-deviance.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_standard-deviance_archive.html#108368487971409891 if you can somehow fit something that long into your browser.

I think that even asking about the art of the blog comment in the absence of Eurof would be sacreligious.

Best bit, I think, was the complete absence of politics from all the discussions. Blogs aren't just about politics!

Notes from the back of the room (I've managed to avoid showing up in any pictures I've seen, so far):

-The highlights from the Editor's Panel are crap, because in terms of "takeaway points", the panel really didn't have as many. The publisher's panel was billed very much as a "Battle of the Titans", with competing blogosphere views discussed; the tech panel discussed the undercarriage of MT or whatever software, and how to improve on it. The editor's panel was more entertaining, if less substantive, than the first two: it was more four friends shooting the shit than Lincoln-Douglas. So it was more difficult for anyone short of a professional stenographer to catch the highlights. I missed half of what Choire Sicha said, and I wasn't distracted by simul-blogging.

-Felix caught me out with my hand up right after he'd asked the question I wanted to ask (is there a role for real editors in blogging- God knows I need one), so I had to scramble for a lame solo-vs.-group blog question that never took off. As none of the people on the panel blog in a group, I threw Felix into the question to try to get some perspective. As always when trying to get perspective with Felix, the effort failed miserably.

-I don't think Felix namedropped Matthew. It was much more of a bizarre reverence-for-a-long-dead-guru-type reference, a tone made all the more odd by the fact that Matthew was sitting two rows from him at the time.

-the after-party was odd. everyone beyond the memefirst crowd seemd tame. Felix was the "name" to hang around the latest, and many of the others I was surprised/dissapointed to see bolt as soon as they could. As a now-certified B-list blogger, everyone Felix couldn't be bothered to talk to he waved over to me, and the inevitable "So you do Memefirst with Felix?" would be followed by a ten-minute narcissistic exposition I would have to nod my head through. The betrayal was compaounded by Matthew's penchant for abandoning ship as soon as we found ourselves in such a situation.

-finally, even though I know my (sainted) mother checks this site from time to time: http://www.gawker.com/topic/ryan_seacrest_needs_a_good_skullfucking_013921.php

this came up as an example of a post that resulted in an advertiser pulling sponsorship because of offensive material. More generally, I thought it was interesting that Nick Denton (and Calacanis) was so insistent on the seperation of church & state in the editing-advertising sides of a for-profit blog, when there have been a couple of instances on Wonkette & elsewhere where he (I assume) has asked the blogger to tone it down (c.f. Wonkette's post yesterday on the Bloomberg party)

First off, terribly sorry about the length of my links. Blogger likes to archive posts very strangely. Secondly, I believe it is a testament to Felix's moderating skills (the not-repeating-of-the-questions notwithstanding) that he merged mostly into the background, as a good moderator should.

Good Lord, Mike, I just read your post. I didn't catch the names of all the Memefirsters I spoke to, thus you're likely talking about me. I prefer my expositions to be described as PAINFULLY narcissistic, thank you very much.

Ellen, Mike is the newest member of MemeFirst. He still needs some help with offending people. I take full responsibility, and I extend my deepest apologies if you were not properly insulted as prescribed by the Chicago Convention on Comedic Rights.

Since apologies are in the air, this is me refusing to give one to Mike for abandoning him in mid-conversation with various psycho-bloggers. I never again hope to hear the words from anyone's mouth: "are you a Memefirster?", and not only because it has overtones of a Blog Supremacist movement (the Brown Blogs?) but because, really, there are only about maybe 12 people in the world who should read this blog and that's pushing it. These other 2000 regular visitors? Who are you and what do you think you are doing?

Matthew, of course, no longer blogs with us. We at MemeFirst try to earn our alienation; insulting readers directly is too easy and rather cheap.

Actually, I think we do have 12 regular readers. Everybody else is here for our dogging post or the fake Puma ads.

The Chicago Convention has been violated several times. The first, of course, is Mike's violation, as cited by Stefan. Matthew committed the second violation by describing anyone who knows of Memefirst as a blog supremacist and then in the same breath excluding all but 12 of Memfirst's regular readers from having any rights to read the blog, thus showing himself to be the textbook example of a blog supremacist. It is well known that article 12 in the Chicago Convention clearly states that all humor must be consistent. You've been warned.

I wish I knew what you were talking about. I'm sure it's utterly fascinating. Especially all the bits about Chicago, a city of which I am quite fond.