First of all, I must confess that, as far as blogging is concerned, I am a newbie, but I thought I might share some of my observations on two similar conferences on blogging where I went.
I divided my discourse into 7 chapters: 1. The Conferences 2. The Target and the Speakers 3. The Organization 4. The After-Conference Get-together 5. The After-After-Conference 6. Moral of the Story (or Conclusion) 7. What to do?
1. The Conferences
A) On April 25 I was in Paris (France). I accompanied Ludo, who was invited to take part to the panel Nanopublishing and vertical blogging of the mega galactic conference titled Les Blogs: Blogs and Social Software, organized by Loic Le Meur, President of Six Apart Europe. The conference was held under the auspices of the President of the French Senate.
The registration fee was very expensive for ordinary bloggers.
B) On September 24 I was in Turin (Italy). I accompanied Ludo, who wanted to put his nose in the Italian conference titled Web Days: Le giornate della rete. The conference was supported by the municipality, and others.
The registration fee was free.
2. The Target and the Speakers
A) The target of Les Blogs was a wide public of A-bloggers.
Big shots at international level have been invited to give a speech, world class speakers in fact. I want to mention a few of them, whom I recall better for one reason or the other: the stylish, and apparently lonely, Joi Ito, who gave an interesting and funny keynote speech (to which I made some observations in my previous post My Comments to Joi Ito's Speech @ Les Blogs, to which he unexpectedly made a long, well pondered explanation in real time -- to my post, the post of a newbie with no claim or expectations of becoming important on the web!); Ross Mayfield of SocialText, who accepted with a lot of self-irony to pose for me (he chose to be Napoleon! and as for the relative pictures, check out Flikr under boh mah yes); the extremely self-conscious (just to use an euphemism) Euan of the BBC; the hilarious, brilliant, heavy-drinker cartoonist Hugh Macleod, who graciously gave me as gift several of his wonderful small cards; the shark-like Jason McCabe Calacanis of WeblogsInc --smart and quick, nothing to say, but...; Halley Suitt of Worthwhile Magazine, always engaged as a heavy pr but, all in all, pleasant (though I should admit that what I like most of her blog is the image of a woman's legs holding a lap top near the title); the well-balanced and (only superficially) easy going Julio Alonso of Weblogs SL; Gaby Darbyshire of Gawker media, who during the panel was engaged in a fake public discussion with Jason (fake since it was made up for the audience -- and, however, though she played poor-baby, no doubt that she really looked like a poor-baby: Jason was smarter and much quicker at taking advantage of her game! well, we "general public" felt a bit used, since Jason was a real primadonna, and Gaby wished she could overcome him and become a primadonna as well, a I-wish-but-I-can't game all the time..), and who tried to make a pass at a few best looking men of the party ending the conference (no names please!); Doc Searls, Senior Editor of Linux Journal, who kept me and Ludo entartained while dining with his stories on his (sincerely) amazing life -- of the series "How to Make a Revolution in Your Life When You Are Over 50 and be Happy!"; and, last but not least, Loic, who is tall, let's say handsome (besides the fact his hair is reciding), perhaps important in the comp world, I don't know, but he is incredibly, amazingly pompous (in fact, everything he did and said had a touch of French grandeur). I really liked Doc, he is obviously in love with what he does, and passion in life is just indispensable. According to his words, he's having the life he precisely wants to live: what else?
B) The target of Webdays were the people over 60.
The speakers were perhaps known only locally, or in Italy. Nevertheless, the goal of the conference has been correctly scored: the assistants in the space near the conference room taught many people over 60 to surf the Web, to make an easy search, and so on.
And I enjoyed the talk by Sergio Maistrello "Folksonomy: condividere etichette per le idee": it was educative, nicely presented with short movies and schemes, and often funny.
Leggo che ieri è stato il No music day, un'iniziativa che dura cinque anni nel giorno precedente alla celebrazione di Santa Cecilia, patrona della musica. Vi sono tanti motivi per un giorno senza musica, ognuno può avere il suo.
In tema di 
-- Mi scusi se la interrompo, ha forse bisogno di qualcosa? --