What is a blog? Why blog? Who should blog (journalists, marketers, CEOs, techies, educators, scientists, hobbyists)? Should blogging be pure or can you make money with a blog? Will blogging change everything?

Picture several hundred intense writer/thinker/bloggers at BlogCon in Cambridge, MA the weekend of Oct. 4 - 5, 2003 and you get the idea... a blogging conference is not for the faint-hearted. The metaphysics of blogging was a hot topic. The warmth of a virtual community enjoying face-to-face interaction was palpable.

As conference organizer (and veteran hackle-raiser) Dave Winer put it in his…

I love this article by Dave Gelerntner in the 29 Sept 03 issue of The Weekly Standard, although I'm not sure I agree. "Is (email) good or bad for the art of writing? Both. It devalues the written word; email is so fast and easy to send, correspondents exchange semi-articulate gibberings without a second thought. There used to be good letter writers, but there don't seem to be any good email writers (or barely any)." Not so. My 83-year-old father-in-law writes marvelously long and literate emails.