I was told there’d be a road of yellow bricks.
I spent the night in Las Vegas’s airport in July because of a weather-related canceled late night flight. Quite unpleasant. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again!
(According to rumor, the flight crew had exceeded its in-the-air hours, but the airline blamed the weather. Airline’s fault = free hotel stay. Weather’s fault = sleeping on grody airport chairs or paying for your own expensive near-the-airport hotel room.)
Rest easy, everybody.
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A gathering of Christians working to advance the Kingdom through blogging + internet technologies.
I’m headed back to Vegas!
I’m returning to the God Blog Convention, sponsored by Biola University in La Mirada, California. This year’s convention will be held at the Blog World and New Media Expo on September 20 and 21. (Last year’s GodBlogCon was in Vegas, too.)
Why a Christian blogging convention in Vegas? Blog Expo founder Rick Calvert wanted to organize a sort of blogging tradeshow where all kinds of bloggers (faith, tech, business, etc.) could gather and network. He asked the GodBlogCon organizers if they’d consider holding their annual gathering at the Expo, and they were happy to do so.
Filed under: Bloggers, Faith, GodBlogCon
***Live-blogging at Boundless Line and below***
***For earlier live-blogging, see Part II***
This photo was taken yesterday by Jim of Gateway Pundit. More photos here. Pictured: Matt Sheffield of NewsBusters.org, me, and Soren Dayton of RedState.org.
10:05 a.m. PT: It’s Day Two of the Blog World Expo/GodBlogCon Convention. Biola University professor Paul Spears will discuss “Trafficking in Substance: A Blogging Dilemma: The Case for Blog Euthanasia.” Christians interested in God blogging need to be representatives of a “bigger thing.” What does it mean to have “substance” on your blog?
Paul says Christians have a responsibility to enable our audience to come to an understanding of larger things. It takes work, but there’s no other way around it. This assumes you want your blog to be significant, to come from a place of substance and help other Christians in their walk toward Christ. Paul showed a series of famous paintings. These artists created the kind of beauty that lasts. Lofty idea for mere bloggers, but we should strive to create something meaningful that endures.
What’s the story we’re telling? For me, I want to share the story of how Christ affects lives, my own and other people’s. There’s more than enough blogging out there about the latest trends and hottest politic topics. What we need is transcendence.
***Live-blogging at Boundless Line and below***
***For earlier live-blogging, see Part I***
1:20 p.m. PT: Ran into Matt Sheffield, blogging pal since the early days, and Henry Copeland of BlogAds, who remembered attending my faith blogging session at BlogNashville back in 2005. Met Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim. I did some consulting work through one of his former companies.
Rhett Smith is up. He’s discussing social media sites like Facebook and how Christians can use the “new media ministries” in youth ministry. Rhett does youth ministry and was reluctant to create a page on MySpace. His online forum was getting little traffic, so he decided to try MySpace. He started getting visitors to his site. He also joined Facebook, a site that I have yet to get into.
Rhett said he had to go where the teens are. Put yourself in the shoes of high school kids, he said, or young adults. They’ve always had the online world, with social networking sites. For an oldster like me, even though I’m a blog consultant, I have no use for MySpace or Facebook. Yet. If you do youth ministry, of course, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with those sites.
[UK update side note: I mentioned my desire to go to the UK to a couple of people this morning and got two more leads on places to stay. Cheaply. One sounds really cool - Related to C.S. Lewis. I’ll keep you posted.]
***Live-blogging at Boundless Line and below***
5:17 a.m. PT: Hi, my name is La Shawn, and I’m a coffeeholic. And I like to get up at 4 a.m.
I’m in Vegas, blogging before dawn. Lots of bloggers to try to meet today. Over the next two days, bloggers from many parts of the blogosphere - including Christian, political, business, tech, culture, sports, military, legal, and the “podosphere” - are here, talking about how to make money from blogs, win friends, and influence people. Bloggers will discuss how to use the new medium for God’s glory and connect the body of Christ in the digital age. Bloggers will show others how to use the “long tail” to their advantage. Business owners will learn how to hire bloggers. And on and on.
I probably won’t have time to meet all the bloggers on my list. Eric Olsen, a guy who created a little site called Blog Critics (and published a concert review I wrote) a few years ago and built it into an influential (press credentials), money-making venture, is near the top. I have a long list of business and tech bloggers I want to meet, many of whom don’t know me, I’m sure. Reading their blogs helped me shape my consulting business, and I continue to learn from them every day.
I’ll be on an NPR show called “The State of Nevada” this morning, along with fellow Godbloggers Joe Carter and Professor John Mark Reynolds, to talk about Blog World Expo (read convention updates here). The segment will air on KNPR between 9-10 a.m. PT.
I might be able to update this post today with photos and what’s happening at the convention. There seems to be an issue with the wireless.
9:37 a.m. PT: There’s something comforting about being around other Christians, even strangers. 
I was impressed that NPR’s producers dug deep into my blog to quote from Margaret Sanger of the Blogosphere:
“Even in cases of rape and incest, I do not believe the unborn baby should be killed. Is that clear enough? I’ll make it clearer. Even if a man rapes his 13-year-old daughter and impregnates her, the baby should live.”
I repeated what I wrote and what I believe. Even so-called pro-life people draw the line at rape and incest. Not me, for the reasons I stated in the post.
Yeah, Las Vegas is a little tacky (the strip), but so what? I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never seen the city, only the slot machine-filled airport on a layover.
You may recall that I mentioned attending two concerts on Hanson’s “The Walk Tour” so far. Well, I have an opportunity to attend a third. Just by “coincidence,” Hanson is playing in Las Vegas this Thursday night. All I have to do is let the publicist know I’ll be in town and…but I won’t.
The only thing stopping me from going to the venue, possibly walking in the door past a long line of excited girls and young women, and talking to the guys before the show is…pride. I’m too old to be any band’s groupie (although they don’t make me feel like one - last time I saw them, I didn’t want to bother them with picture-taking, but one said, “Hey, guys, let’s take pictures!” - yeah, I had my camera with me, buried deep in my bag, but they didn’t know that), and I don’t want to give the appearance of being a groupie, either. (But if I were 20 years younger…) Those guys are so nice, though.
(Also see Hanson Still a Family Act After 15 Years, an article/video for Hanson fans among LBC’s readers. And thanks for letting me know you’re out there!)
Anyway, I look forward to having dinner with fellow Christian bloggers that night. I’m not sure if it’s too late to sign up for GodBlogCon. If not, come on out! My presentation is on “writing well in the new media,” or something like that.
Update (11/7): A reader writes: “Life is short…go to the concert!! Don’t worry about the groupie thing…you never know what God is up to…maybe He needs you at the concert. Enjoy Vegas!”
So tempting…
(Thanks for the shout-out, Melonie!)
“For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered. That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebula, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.” - Q to Captain Picard, episode “All Good Things…” from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”
Well, that was fun. Where to now?
