So I went to the Politics Online conference on Tuesday and Wednesday for some networking and professional development. Many of my clients are in PR and advocacy fields, so I like to learn as much about their business as I can. (Speaking of PR, many thanks to Mike Krempasky of Edelman for being so generous with his network- he totally hooked me up with a pass.)

Due to work commitments, I was only able to attend a couple of sessions, one on blogging and whether the blogosphere demonstrates “emergent behavior,” and one that was supposed to be on PR and how it has changed with the growing popularity of blogs.

Now, I’ve gone to several blogging-related panels in the last few weeks, what with it being the new hotness in DC even though it’s old news everywhere else, and they’ve all fallen prey to one or both of my two biggest pet peeves about such events:

1. Panels discussing bloggers almost always devolve into a very distant, arm’s-length view of bloggers and blogging, as though bloggers are some special and unique breed, mysterious and nearly unknowable. Give me a break. Bloggers have a subculture to be sure, with its own pioneers, influencers, hubs, and jargon, but in that we are no different than the practicioners of any other hobby, whether it’s bird-watching, sports, scrapbooking, or anything else. Aside from that, the only thing that’s different about bloggers from the rest of the population is that we actually think what we have to say is interesting enough that it needs to be available for others to read, and we take advantage of the modern technology that enables it to happen. As a panelist, Mike tried to bring the conversation back into focus that way, but unfortunately we were out of time.

2. In any discussion of anything relating to blogging, the conversation is almost always derailed by the two or three people in the room who have heard about “these blogs” but have no working knowledge of the topic. There’s always someone who says, “You might as well be speaking Greek- what’s a trackback?” This happened in the PR panel, and one of the panelists gave a very lengthy, rambling, and almost wholly-inaccurate answer, which was just insult to injury. Guys, if you don’t know anything about blogging, you might consider boning up before going to a panel about how blogging has changed your industry. That way, you don’t force the panel to waste everyone else’s time with Blogging 101.

Of course, part of this is just the fact that I’m in DC- our Federal City isn’t exactly a hotbed of early adoption. Since the PR business here is focused (directly or indirectly) on getting those 437 people on Capitol Hill’s attention, there has historically been a real reluctance to trying things other than the tried-and-true methods.

Now that like-minded people have an easy way to find each other and have conversations, it’s changing the way voters are persuaded, and of course our advocacy-driven town is sitting up to take notice. It’s nice and all, but until people get caught up and join the 21st century, I fear that those of us who have known about it all along are going to be sitting in a lot of boring panel discussions.

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