I just finished listening to a podcast of the closing session at BloggerCon III [1], titled The Fat Man Sings [2]. In it, Jay Rosen [3] made an interesting observation:
I was at the first BloggerCon and when I came back I thought, “wow, this is really cool, this cult of bloggers.” Then I was at the second BloggerCon and I came back and said, “that was really cool, a community of bloggers.” And after this one, I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna say … I just know it … “a nation of bloggers.” And I think for the fourth one, you've gotta go global, a globe of bloggers.
Dave Winer [4] then suggests Europe and more specifically, London. While it's crucial to take BloggerCon to the international stage in order to emphasize the global community of bloggers, I think it would be a mistake to move the (un)conference from wealthy, white, Western universities in the US to a wealthy, white, and Western city in Europe.
BloggerCon is surely the most important forum of ideas, strategies, and experiences amongst bloggers and podcasters and it is important to not further enforce a Western hegemony which already exists in the blogosphere. Ed Cone [5] is right: as blogging and podcasting grows, we're going to need to start holding local BloggerCons. I think this is a good thing which will help get bloggers more active in their community offline. But the original BloggerCon will always be necessary to discuss issues on an international scale.
So for BlogerCon IV I suggest holding the conference not in London or anywhere else in Europe, but rather in a technological center of what is otherwise a developing country. Three cities come to mind:
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia [6]
- Hyderabad, India [7]
- Monterrey, Mexico [8]
Seoul, South Korea [9] would be another promising site in a non-developing country. Hosting BloggerCon in a non-Western country would present its share of difficulties including, perhaps, the need for some multilingual sessions. I don't think this is a bad thing. If we're going to seriously try to bridge the divide [10] online, then we must also face the challenge offline.
Furthermore, if the struggle for control between users and vendors persists into the next BloggerCon, at least it will hopefully be with vendors from developing countries whom usually are not paid their fair share of attention.
I'd be curious to hear any comments or other suggestions to non-Western sites to host BloggerCon IV.