Jason Clarke

One of the best parts of attending BlogNashville was that I came away reading about 10 or so new blogs, at least 4 of them Nashville locals. Two of my favorites after a fortnight:

Tim Morgan

Saucy Librarian

UPDATE: Welcome Nashvilleians, and thanks Brittney (even though you made fun of me twice in two days, ha). Now that the spotlight’s on, I feel remiss in not mentioning these excellent Nashville blogs in my original post:

* Sparkwood & 21

* Bill Hobbs

* Slept Thru Texas (Jennifer Patrick, who took the Nash skyline picture for the BlogNashville site)

* And perhaps the newest Nashville blogger: John Jay Hooker

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thanks to Busy Mom, who just helped set my new record for most comments on a post. Busy Mom was another nicely written site I stumbled upon during BlogNashville and had somehow lost. Now she’s Bloglined and Blogrolled!

BECAUSE YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY UPDATES, RIGHT? Just discovered Busy Mom’s tagline…it’s one that my wife would love/agree with: Better parenting through coffee.

B.L. Ochman (one of the many fine folks I had the pleasure of meeting in Nashville last weekend) has begun an interview series on her blog, whatsnext. First up is Adrants Steve Hall, who says, among other things, that frequency matters when blogging professionally:

Hall posts 12 to 15 times a day. He doesn’t have a hard and fast rule, but “If something is going on in industry I will write about it. Because Adrants is a news source, I can’t give a broad enough picture in a day with just a couple of posts.”

Later on, in my favorite segment of the interview, Hall shares his belief that a professionally-designed blog is an important aspect of professional blogging:

Hall did Adrants’ first four designs himself. When he got serious about running advertising he needed the site to have a more professional look. And he wanted more strength on the back end. He switched to Moveable Type [sic] and hired a designer who knew how to make it work smoothly. “You get to a point and you say ‘let’s do this right.’ I have advertisers paying me money. The site has to work properly.”

Amen, Steve. As a web developer, blogger, and web developer of blogs, I am greatful to read Steve’s thoughts on this issue. Quite a few professional bloggers should listen to Steve’s words and seriously consider them.

Of course, the refrain heard most often from “professional” bloggers (quotes because that line is incredibly blurry) is that they don’t have the financial resources for a professional design. But like an advertising guru will tell you, “good advertising makes you money”…and it’s been my experience that the same goes for a professionally-designed site.

An unfinished list of people who I wish would start blogging* (because they’d be good, fun, and/or interesting doing it):

*Of course, everybody should be blogging, and anybody could be good at it…this is just a post where I think up a few celebrities and others who I think would have a natural knack for it.

I love Ta-da…and I’m going to start using my Backpack soon, I promise.

My apartment is infested with koala bears. It’s the cutest infestation ever. Way better than cockroaches. When I turn on the light a bunch of koala bears scatter. But I don’t want ‘em to, you know, I’m like “Hey, hold on, fellas. Let me hold one of you…and feed you a leaf.”

-Mitch Hedberg, 1968-2005.

More Mitch (from this Slate article):

I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.

I hate flossing; I wish I just had one long curvy tooth.

A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.

I like to play blackjack. I’m not addicted to gambling, I’m addicted to sitting in a semicircle.

More Mitchisms here.

If you’re a member of the mainstream media, here’s a newsflash: Don’t F with Bob Cox.

Here’s the original reason.

Here’s the latest reason.

Here’s Brittney Gilbert’s long, interesting Nashville Scene cover story on BlogNashville.

Mark Glaser, one of the best writers out there covering the web/blogging beat, has posted a great wrap-up of BlogNashville over at OJR.

Glaser summarizes the key points coming out of the conference by offering up a list of “Seven big ideas (and one pet peeve)”…and lo and behold, the list includes one item created by me!

5. BlogNashville site aggregates blog posts and photos from conference. OK, it’s the ultimate self-referential move, but that doesn’t mean it’s not helpful. The conference’s Web site includes a page called “Discussion,” that’s not really a discussion but actually an aggregation of all the BlogNashville blog posts via Technorati, photos via Flickr and Web links via del.icio.us. Not only is it a great running tally of the post-convention commentary, but you can also subscribe to RSS feeds to get the latest in your newsreader. This is the type of page that should be a requirement for all conventions in the future.

Thanks for the kind words about the BlogNashville Discussion page, Mark.

Now that BlogNashville is in the rear-view mirror, I have two final thoughts.

My first comment is a big yee haw! If you click the fuzzy picture up top here, you’ll see a full-size screenshot of Blogdex, a service that essentially takes a snapshot of the most popular links around the blogosphere on a given day. Since I first stumbled across Blogdex a couple of years ago, it’s been a secret dream of mine to have a site I built appear on the Blogdex front page. So I was pretty happy to see BlogNashville- a site I was fortunate enough to build for my good friend, Media Bloggers Association prez and BlogNashville organizer Bob Cox - appear on Blogdex on Sunday.

That leads me to my second point. I owe a big public thanks to Bob for continually (and curiously) allowing me a front-row seat to some of the coolest happenings, projects, and people in blogosphere over the past few months. Those of you who are lucky enough to know Bob know exactly what I mean when I say that he is both a pleasure and a blast to work with.

Everybody knows that I re-launched this site without finishing it, right? That it’s got tons and tons of bugs and kinks that need to be worked out?

Okay, just checking.