8.30.2006

Vloggersations


Listen to the mp3


A sound gift from your favorite sound geek. I use it as a ring tone. This one's been gifted to the public domain.

In other news, Scoble asks about critical mass for productive conversation.

My take, four max per conversation. A dozen for dinner gets 3 simultaneous conversations going. Palatable. Just enough variety toward choice.

Seating arrangements and capacity to change seats during the event facilitate the process. Different courses in different locations. The venerable post-meal retirement to the library for port and cigars comes to mind. As is my custom, I take the notion farther.

One of my problems in conversing in the vlogosphere is finding subject matter that engages me on enough levels to compel action. Scoble's question engages me intellectually, artistically, gustatorially & auditorially. As I recall the best conversations and their circumstances, memories of moments of great conversation flood.

All the best conversations happen around food & drink.

Past dinner parties given and taken emerge, among them Scoble's Off-the-Grid Geek Camp. I do so love a grande dinner party. Here are two of my own for inspiration:
1. An early flash mob / faux ballet instructed guests to meet in the park in front of the Plaza Hotel where further instructions were provided, specifically

a) You are dancers who will walk through the Plaza Hotel taking as many flash photographs of one another as possible.

b) Once outside the hotel, hail cabs to the location specified in the faux press pads for an intimate eight-course meal with live jazz piano.

2. An excerpt from a Valentine's Day Faux Parade given in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Instructions were to meet at magic hour (then 5:30 p.m.) near the M train's Bedford Avenue Subway Stop - listen for the brass band - join the parade. Afterward, we ate tapas & drank wine. The resulting full-length film is 28 mintues long and features all my dinner guests along with lots of new friends & other local folks I love.
The advantage of such events is that you are provided with properly fresh & delicious fodder for conversational topics. More than that, adrenaline and laughter fuel the thing. After trust has been established, it's ever so easy to move on to the deep topics that we love.

A nod to MMeiser for creating the word 'vloggersation' - a thing that requires a lot more work to facilitate ease-of-use.

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4 comments:

  1. hey I want to use that sound for my ringtone. How great would that be? But... despite my being a tech geek, I don't know how to get new rintones into my phone. In fact, I'm not sure you can with my phone -- the Samsung i500. Any ideas people? It's a palm device, and a Sprint phone. Hmm... Here's hoping Apple does announce the best phone ever. (On Sept 16 that is. After they announce updated MacBook Pros on Sept 5 -- so I can order my new laptop on the 5th and get the phone for my birthday present to myself in Oct.)

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  2. Welcome back, Jen!!!! Missed ya! How was Europe?

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  3. I just rediscovered this post when doing a google search for vloggersations. I missed it. And am pleased to find it now. :)

    Most definitely on meme. How does a dinner party of 12 work. How do we get that right mix of simultaneous, varied and interesting threads going by which we can "engage at will" in the subjects at hand. I think blogging is a natural smorgusboard(sp?) of ideas and topics of interest. Sometimes it's just to hard though to find the threads that interest you, and even more often it's harder to follow those threads. Memes spring up, tags suffice in tying meme's int he raw... comments are very limited successes. Reblogging/ re-vlogging I find to be the most successful. Raymond and I seem to have discovered a renewed interest in farming on evilvlog. It becomes a channel that seems at once random... but yet there's rythm to it to those who participate. It's capable of public, varied and focused threads that weave along through the otherwise seemingly random posts. All that is required is that you know the posters, you participate by posting what interests you and that you occasionally ping, IM, or email the person or persons you had in mind... in case they missed your comments directed their way.

    In fact, I'm going to repost this comment and your post here to evilvlog.

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  4. Yeah, MM, pinging.

    I tend to get well lost in silly pursuits.

    Trying to get better at staying in touch.

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