Last week, I attended the 1st Annual Blogworld conference in Las Vegas, as part of a team of editors and writers from Blogcritics, the online magazine where I have been a writer for going on three years now, and where I currently serve as assistant music editor.
Blogcritics is read by about two million people every month, and has played a very big role (along with this blog) in revitalizing my writing (which I had basically put on a shelf somewhere to gather dust for about ten years, for reasons I'm not sure I'll ever completely understand).
All I know is that the past 2 1/2 years, I've written nearly 200 articles for BC and owe them a debt of gratitude for basically re-energizing my writing muse. Right now, I feel I'm doing some of the best work I've ever done, and over the past year or so my work for BC has been recognized in one way or another by everyone from ABC News to Howard Stern.
They have provided me the best forum for getting my work out there of my entire career as a writer, and as I already said I am extremely thankful to them for that. Besides that, they are also -- besides being some of the most intelligent folks I've ever met, some of the nicest as well.
Some of those folks are seen in the picture above, taken at our booth at the conference, including (L to R) executive editor Lisa McKay (whose husband Jim also took the pictures you see here), Gordon "El Bicho" Miller, Josh Lasser, Phillip Winn (back to camera), Matt "Suss" Sussman, Dave Nalle, our publisher Eric Olsen, and Anna Creech.
So as you can imagine, I was very excited about meeting the Blogcritics crew, and they did not disapoint. We had a blast in Vegas, and actually got a lot of work done as well -- that is, when we weren't out drinking until all hours of the morning anyway.
For most of the trip, the hardcore party crew basically boiled down to myself, Bicho, Phillip (who I also roomed with), and surprisingly (to me anyway) our culture editor Diana Hartman, who despite the "proper" image I had of her (online perceptions can be quite deceiving) more than held her own during one night out which began at the Hard Rock and ended up at 3 AM at an IHOP on the Strip.
Phillip, Bicho, and myself are pictured on a critics panel here that was attended by pretty much no one (a panel on ethics across the hall held at the same time was SRO I later heard). I'm in the middle between Phillip and Bicho, and the gentlemen on the end's name unfortunately escapes me. Speaking of that panel, we did have a very good discussion about the whole "critic" thing, although I fear I may have bored the others somewhat with my continuous references to Springsteen.
What can I say?
On the final night though, our publisher Eric Olsen and his lovely wife Dawn also got into the party act. Besides being every bit as fun (and funny) as her Glosslip columns would indicate, Dawn is also one hell of a dancer! Eric for his part is the master schmoozer, and was absolutely the right guy to have representing us with all the bigwigs at the conference.
As for the Blogcritics booth, we had a great location in the center of the convention hall, and seemed to be a lot busier during the event, then the big boys at Yahoo located directly across from us. I was also told by many we had the best swag at the event -- with our free books including one by "fake Steve Jobs," and the 2007 edition of Best Music Writing being particularly big hits. Blogcritics had great presesnse at Blogworld. 
It was also nice getting to hang with my fellow music editor Connie Phillips at the event (we are pictured together here). Connie's kind of like the female equivalent of a teddy bear -- just a total sweetheart.
But she is also sharp as a tack and was all about business at Blogworld. We did a lot of tag teaming on the conference floor at the booth talking to folks about Blogcritics, including one gal who had a common link with me from my past -- Public Enemy's "Media Assassin" Harry Allen.
So over all, it was a very gratifying trip for me on a personal level, and I have to believe it was a very successful one for Blogcritics as well.
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