We're a few hours out from the start of the second day of WebZine 2005 so I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts on how the whole thing is going so far....

• Good: Crowd seems to be more folks enjoying themselves and paying attention to the panels than the usual trying to "work angles" or be seen talking to the right people.
• Bad: Lots of dead air on the panels. The moderators aren't pushing things along or asking interesting enough questions to keep them lively.
• Good: Jabob Appelbaum's talk about visiting Iraq / New Orleans was the must see speech of the entire conference. More people should advocate doing something dangerous from time to time, especially publically.
• Bad: The sound, power, wifi, and network connection could really use some help. Trying to get online for anything is near useless and don't even think about finding a socket to plug your laptop into. There are sockets, but non of them have power going to them. The bad wifi / no power combo is ugly for web conferences and probably the reason there isn't tons of live blogging going on.
• Good: Accessable. The low door price and interesting-to-the-general-public topics are probably one of the main reasons there is such a diverse crowd.
• Good: Lots of women. I'm actually annoyed that I even need to mention that but since it's such a hot topic recently I thought it was worth noting. Lots of women on the panels, lots of women in the audience (maybe 50/50 with men even). This is good.
• Bad: The blogware dance off turned out to be just three short presentations on the new features of Worpress, Blogger, and MovableTypepadJournal. And everyone was friendly. I can safely say that 100% of the people watching were hoping there would be at least a little debate, and maybe a little feature compairison.
• Good: The location is very cool. Lots of character and lots of food/coffee near by.
• Good: The badges are mostly unreadable and thus useless.
• Bad: The badges are mostly unreadable and thus useless.
• Neutral: 1" buttons are the new stickers.
• Good: Everyone seems to be having a great time.
• Ammusing: Someone on a panel actually said "if you want people to read your writing the more people that read it the better."
• Sorry: To anyone sitting just below the balcony during the online journalism panel who thought it might have been raining inside. That was just me spitting out a mouthful of water when one of the panelists mentioned that his site was called Blackosphere. Yeah, wasn't expecting that one. Sorry.

That's a few quick thoughts. I'm speaking today at 3PM on a panel about neighborhood blogging which I'm sure will be full of dead air and boring, but at least you won't be able to find me via my badge later and complain to me about it. [tag: webzine2005]