This was the first annual BlogWorld conference held in Las Vegas on Nov. 8th and 9th.  It was a two day conference and was filled with marketers, bloggers, PR professionals, etc.  I attended the following sessions:

My first session of BlogWorld was Chris Heuer and Marshall Kirkpatrick presenting "Understanding the Social Media Landscape."

Social media Web sites are places where people, businesses and organizations can connect with each other. Chris described some of the tenets of social media:

Building relationships with bloggers has been the hot topic of the last year, with an emphasis on the last couple of weeks – courtesy of Mr. Chris Anderson.

There were two interesting things–among many–that I learned from attending Leo Laporte and Justine Ezarik’s session at BlogWorld.

First, from Justine, I discovered a new video player from Viddler that has the cool feature of allowing you to tag and comment on segments of a video.

In a session called “The Cult of Blogging,” the sect turned out to be a little smaller than expected; out of three scheduled speakers, only one managed to show up. 

Om Malik gets a pass – the poor fellow apparently threw his back out – but Michael Arrington simply forgot to come, leaving us with Leo Laporte and surprise guest Justine Ezarik.

Yesterday saw the real first day of BlogWorld–the previous day was an extra entrepreneur and corporate day–and 1500 bloggers descended on the Las Vegas convention center. Despite a few teething problems–poor audio at the keynote, not enough session moderators, and few microphones for audience questions–the conference was a success.

A lot of the blogs you’ll see are all text; there are also plenty featuring only video.  But according to Leo Laporte, a sweet spot exists around the concept of podcasting.

Bloggers can now extend their reach and engage their audiences by teaming up with other blogs they like.

Lead by Sue Bohle – a few friends on the panel, including Brian Solis and John Earnhardt of Cisco. Eastman Kodak, SAP, PRWeb and BlogAds were also part of the panel.

Amy Gahran ran her panel at the Blog World Expo on Ethics – with a cool group of people, including friends Lynne Johnson of Fast Company and Toby Bloomberg.

By writing a blog, you get to air your thoughts and feelings, converse with intelligent people in the comments section, and do all other sorts of nice things.  Yet what’s really nice is making money, and blog syndication can give you the best of both worlds.

Blogging can be all fun and games, and a great thing about it is that no one’s likely to get hurt.  Unfortunately, people are likely to be sued, and at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, attorney Brett Trout discussed that subject.

The evening keynote panel from BlogWorld talked about the challenges their firms face, and how this might reflect on the general blogging world.

Credibility separates the wanna-bes from the somebodies in the blogging world, which makes building your online reputation a critical part of blogging success.

The opening day for Blogworld was a great success. While aimed mostly at corporate attendees–the real geeks get here today–there was still enough of a buzz surrounding the inaugural conference.

I spoke on two different panels.

WebProNews is at the BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas. In a session on "Smart Ways To Monetize Your Blog" the speakers discussed strategies to generate revenue for blogs.

Matt Mullenweg is the man behind WordPress, Automattic, and the popular blog “Photo Matt.”  So as the keynote speaker at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, he discussed blogging, Automattic, and WordPress.

It’s just a puppy, Maggie Fox said of social media with regards to adding it to one’s marketing mix, meaning it’s going to grow up to be a big doggie.

WebProNews is in Las Vegas this week at the BlogWorld and New Media Expo. In the session "Search Engine Optimization: Best Practices", the speakers focused on SEO tips for bloggers.