Wednesday, August 20, 2008

We laughed. We cried. We sang Kumbaya.

Just got back from the J-Blogger's Convention. I'm still smiling. At first it was a little strange looking at everybody's chests to see who was who (they gave us stickers to put our names on), but then I got used to it. Let me tell you there are alot of us bloggers out there. I spend half my life on the computer and there were blogs I never heard of. There were all kinds of people there; very religious, medium religious, not religious at all, black, white, left, right, middle, hairy, bald, tall, short, fat, thin, male, female. Sorry, no Arabs: this was a J-blogger's convention, the "J" standing for Jewish. But even this guy has a blog:


Come on Bibi, you can't expect me to put you on my blogroll if I'm not on yours!

There were about 200 bloggers in attendance and at the height of the meeting, 1300 bloggers were watching online. I got on line to be interviewed just so I could give a shout out to my blogger friends participating over the 'net. While I was waiting, I rehearsed what I was going to say and I sounded very poised in my head. Of course as soon the camera was on me, I sounded like a blubbering idiot. I wanted to say hi to Juggling Frogs, Phyllis, Ilana Davita, but I only got to Leora and Raizy. Did you guys see me? How did the feed work? Were you able to chat while the convention was running? What did you guys think? Maybe next year you can come!

I have lots of thoughts about the convention and PICTURES! But I am way to tired to put it all together now (it's 12:30 a.m. here in Israel). I'll probably do several posts over the next couple of days. But I will leave you a little taste:

Here are two favorites of mine:



The guy on the right is the notorious Jameel who lives at the Muqata. (Yep, I saw his face and its a perfectly nice face. Not sure why he feels the need to hide it.) Jameel came with his lovely wife Jameela and two of their kids, Osama and Obama. He couldn't think of other Arabic names for his other kids so he left them back at the Muqata. Interesting fact: J and J met over the internet. This was way before internet dating was around. Hmmmm.

Back to the picture. The guy on the left is my favorite blogger in the whole world, Benji. Benji is my favorite blogger because he thought my blog "sounded young" and because he thought I am his age. Isn't he just adorable? Bahn, if you don't have the best blog in the whole damn world, I'll be a monkey's uncle. (Is that even an expression?)

Okay, it's time to hit the sack. I promise more on the convention tomorrow.

18 comments:

Ezzie said...

I believe the reactions in the online chat for those watching was pretty excited when you got on. I yelled "BAILA!" and SuperRaizy gushed at the shoutout. :)

Juggling Frogs said...

Baila,

I watched almost the whole thing, and while it was very exciting to hear your voice, unfortunately my webcast connection only allowed me to hear you, not to see you!!

Throughout the transmission, sometimes the audio went out, sometimes the video stopped (I missed seeing entire bloggers on the panel, with just a still of the previous panel member showing!)

Every so often, only the 17th word or so would transmit. But, I was so excited, that I perservered (and twittered my head off about it throughout.

I'm looking forward to your updates and impressions.

(Here's a snarky, but funny set of posts at Mere Rhetoric.

SuperRaizy said...

Baila-
I loved my shout out! Thank you so much! That's probably the closest I'll ever come to achieving fame in my lifetime (although I did meet Steven Spielberg's mother once...)
Anyway, I'm glad you had fun. It was good to see what you look like, and BTW, you really did look mahvelous.
We were all typing away in the chatroom for the first hour or so. But when Bibi started going on and on, a lot of people left the chatroom.

Phyllis Sommer said...

i was there, but only for a brief time. unfortunately, i had a real-live meeting that i couldn't change. how inconsiderate! didn't they know that i had important international business to attend to!?:-) ha ha.... i was so excited and then this came up. unfortunately, i spent most of the time i did watch with bibi. oh well....next time we do it!!!! sounds like you guys had a great time IRL.

Fern Chasida said...

sounds great! i'm so jealous!

Benji Lovitt said...

You are too kind, Baila. It was great meeting you as well (and who can I thank for getting the "I'll call Baila" song stuck in my head? : )

Ech omrim "I'll be a monkey's uncle"?

Commenter Abbi said...

What, no mention of me and the babe?! And he was so quiet all through Bibi's boring speech!

:D It was great to meet you and i loved you ball gown.

Unknown said...

Nice meeting you yesterday. I enjoyed our conversation about facebook!

Jameel @ The Muqata said...

Baila: You're far too kind! :)

(And Benji is definitely on my favorite blogger's list now...thank G-D we didnt wear the same outfit :)

(And to the rest of you out there from the JBlogosphere in Chutz Laaretz. Sorry I didnt give a shout out...still a bit camera shy. I'm not a media hound like Benji)

Benji Lovitt said...

Jameel, I have only the following to say to you:

WOOF WOOF!

Mrs. S. said...

It sounds like it was really special. I wanted to go, but we had a previous commitment.
Looking forward to next year...

Batya said...

It was great meeting f2f. The convention was very impressive!

Gila said...

Lovely meeting you and I am looking forward to that soup!

Anonymous said...

Baila, thanks for the shouout. I am touched. Unfortunately since I am on vacation I couldn't watch it live. Still I had some regular updates via JugglingFrogs.
Do you know if the convention is available online?

Baila said...

Thanks everyone for stopping by. I'm working on getting more pictures up. I don't know if the convention is available online. I'd love to see what was going on in the chatroom. Anyone know if there is any way to access that?

SuperRaizy said...

NBN said that they would post the video on their website. I'm not sure if you can access the chat records there.

Unknown said...

Baila, it was wonderful to meet you and speak with you irl.

YMedad said...

You think you felt funny looking at chests so as to see and read the name tags? Because of that, I didn't meet any women there (okay, a few my wife was with). Good luck with blogging.

My suggestions to NBN, which I already sent to them, can be found here and the are more pics here