Name Dropping....or How I Got to Meet the Stars of the J-Blogosphere

Spent a good part of the day reading blogs reactions to yesterday's convention. Some got pretty snarky but were kind of funny. Let's not take ourselves to seriously, guys. For me the whole thing was just a fun event. I went to meet people I knew, but yet didn't. It was an experience unlike any I had ever had before. I'm starting to think of some of these bloggers as friends. Weird.

Just a note--it wasn't like a Trekkie convention at all. Captain Kirk was nowhere to be found.

So here goes:



Here's Ruti Mizrachi. She left her first comment on my recent Gratitude post. Also crazy enough to make Aliyah with teens.





There's RivkA of Coffee and Chemo. Unfortunately most of us know someone living with cancer. RivkA really tells you what that's like in a tender, humorous way. (And that's me with her; I believe I'm "outing" myself on my blog!)





Here are Oleh Girl, Safranit, and Zehava (because behind every great man blogger is a woman saying, "You sure you want to write that?")



That's Trep, the only blogger who got to do both panels and sit in business class on the NBN flight. "Be nice", he said.





That's Bibi asking how many of us are living in Israel. Lots of raised hands. "This is your land, this is your city and it will stay your city", he said.

Lots of security around, especially when Bibi was there. You can always tell the security people by the curly wire behind their ears, and the dark madras shirts. It's a look I guess. The soldier girl worked for Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) and held her hand up high near the speaker for the 40 minutes that Bibi spoke (yes, he spoke that long). In general, I didn't worry about security; I noticed lots of people packing guns. And you know how I love Jews carrying weapons.

My Shrapnel's Gila. As intelligent and witty in real life as she is on the blog. "I write for me", she said, during her presentation on one of the panels. (Don't we all?)

I also met, but didn't take pictures of Batya, Mom, Baka Diary, Chayyei Sarah, Rafi G., Commenter Abbi (who brought quite a babe to the convention), Eli's mom, and Robert Avrech of Seraphic Secret (he was chatting with Trep when I went to say hello. I wanted a picture, but was totally embarrassed to ask--felt like a groupie. Oh well. Maybe next year).

I didn't get to meet West Bank Mom or Joe Settler who were there. Emah S. and RR couldn't make it and I was truly disappointed when I heard that Jack (current manager of Haveil Havalim) didn't make it after all. I hope all is well, Jack.

I was thinking of linking to every blog I read that talked about the convention, but I'm to lazy to do that. Jameel probably has one of the most comprehensive blogrolls, so if you go there you can link to all the snarky, witty commentary you want.

Overall I thought the convention was fun. The organizers did a good job and I'm sure will do even better next year. I think some bloggers, and perhaps organizers took themselves a bit to seriously. There are certain things that could be improved upon in my opinion:

1. I think most bloggers wanted more "meet and greet" time.
2. Bibi was a fun surprise, but he spoke way to long. [Is he the best we've got for Prime Minister? Sigh.] I personally wanted to hear more from the panelists, and from Frum Satire--whose comedy routine brought a chuckle or two.
3. The panelists should probably have had more direction in what they were going to speak about. It was all quite vague and general. Any tips they gave about increasing traffic were pretty basic stuff, even for a computer illiterate like me.
4. I personally would have liked to have more interaction with the bloggers who were participating via the web.
5. A waffle maker for a raffle? The only one hoping to win was Jameel (who still owes a bunch of us some waffles).
6. Food was good, but we definitely needed Russian dressing for the turkey.

This was NBN's baby, so of course they had a specific agenda, to promote Aliyah. That's okay with me. The purpose of my blog is to express myself and to write. The fact that I happened to have made Aliyah jives with NBN's agenda. For now. As far as increasing traffic by linking and promoting and blah blah blah, well that's not for me either. This is a hobby for me, not a profession. I like and want people to read the blog,but I'm not willing to spend that much time or effort to make that happen.

I have one more post about the convention, actually about a specific blogger that I met, to put up tomorrow, and then I think I will have finished beating this dead horse.

For now, good night.