All in good fun, of course, Mister Roboto has officially declared Rebecca MacKinnon as Miss BlogNashville 2005.

Congratulations, Rebecca! Tell her what she's won, Roboto!

Dave Winer's "Respectful Disagreement" session just opened up at BlogNashville. The concept for the group will be to, in reality, have respectful disagreements with those in the room. Talk about on-the-job learning.

[3:08] Promptly enough, the show kicks off with a debate over whether the Republican party would be able to nominate a pro-choice candidate for president.

[3:15] Dave brings up perceptions of Rush Limbaugh by the left, which sets off a bit of a rumble.

[3:22] Transparency and accountability - "the best blogs have transparency and accountability." Someone else calls those terms "cliche."

[3:26] Rex Hammock brings up how disagreements get personal most of the time, when they don't need to, citing an example of his doing so with Winer.

[3:30] John Cox of Cox & Forkum engaged Winer because he was addressed after speaking on the side with Chris Muir. This has reached about five minutes or so of firestorm, concluding with Cox stating "I'm done." I hate to say it, but I did expect to have some vim and vigor.

[3:39] "You can have a debate, or you can have a dialogue." - Leonard Witt. So far, this is my take home of the session. But then again, it's only been thirty-nine minutes so far.

[3:45] Lots of discussion around "Crossfire" and other television programs making it big because of the fire that comes forth during the program. A few people state that those shows are entertainment, with one mentioning that they are just created for that purpose.

[3:50] Apparently, Dave Winer shrugging his shoulders and sighing off a comment by someone the room is supposed to be an example of "respectful disagreement." I think I made the mistake (?) of pointing out to him that doing so was the example of what people were trying to say is a frustrating thing about getting into discussions about politics, religion, etc. Of course, I didn't mean *personally* to make a point of using Winer as an example, but it happened to be put forth and I thought it was a proper thing to say. Apparently not, because I got shut down and Dave took a seat, leaving the group to "discuss among themselves."

[3:58] Check out Scared Monkeys, also liveblogging this shindig.

[4:07] Rex Hammock says that what has happened in the room is a metaphor for what has gone on in the blogosphere, from harsh talk (and overtalk) plus some decent conversation.

[4:20] Just noticed that Glenn Reynolds left when Winer sat down. He has the same thought I did when I spoke up about DW's mannerisms being impolite and disrespectful.

[4:21] DW just chided Stan Brown, who he accused of laughing at him.

[4:24] "You can't call a sonofabitch a sonofabitch without calling him a sonofabitch." - John Jay Hooker, Attorney at Law.

[update 5/11/05] Jason Clarke has some video over at Network Landscape.

The "Building Blogospheres" session at BlogNashville has just begun, led by Hossein Derakhshan (or Hoder if you're like that). He began by telling us a little bit of how he got involved in blogging after 9/11, and mentioned how his blog is filtered in some places, leading to a high subscriber by email number.

[1:42] Hoder says that unicode is the reason that Persian, and even Arabic, blogs have proliferated.

[1:48] "We couldn't find a way to show people which blog was recently updated," says Hoder, which led to the popularity of blogrolling.com as a tool. I think this is the case overall, in general, not just specially for bloggers in Iran or otherwise.

[1:53] PersianBlog.com made it really easy for many Persian speakers to get into blogging, because a user wouldn't have to know a shred of English to get into it. He says that Blogger.com is doing a good job right now with translating its service into multiple languages.

[1:55] While there have been a few mentions about "celebrity" bloggers linking to so-and-so's site as a way to build blogs or blogospheres, I'm not sure that it always needs to be the case. I think a lot of that thinking gets people to be stuck in a rut of contacting a Glenn Reynolds or Jeff Jarvis or Dan Gillmor and just waiting for the hyperlink to show up on their respective sites. Takes a bit of the fun out of organic growth, IMHO. I mean, don't get me wrong, but one huge link that's up on a main page for a day or two is great, but it's not what is going to get people to come again.

[2:01] Blogs are affecting society and culture as "windows, doorways, and cafes." More details here.

[2:08] Topics like nuclear power in Iran are comparable to the debates over Social Security, Terri Schiavo, and more.

[2:46] Rebecca MacKinnon wonders if getting Iranian bloggers to post more photographs to sites like Flickr, since images tend to add a high level of value for the reader.

Dan Gillmor is just opened up the Citizen's Media session at BlogNashville, and we just had a laugh about how people used to say that "using a computer would be as easy as using the telephone." Of course, then he pulled out his PDAphone, saying "Uh oh, this isn't what I was expecting!"

To get the room thinking, he's "asking" a lot of questions to the group, such as how a citizen's media world would work financially, defamation problems, whether enough people would ultimately read the websites, etc.

Evan Erwin from Mister Orange just told a story about a post he put up about a car lot that he had some problems with on his blog, and the lot's ownership got a bit upset when he became very relevant in the Google Juice and threatened to sue him. He says that he's received numerous letters from the company, but no lawsuit, after a few months. Some concern from a few other people in the room about the possibility of defamation suits and the like becoming a big deal.

[11:03] Lots of talk about libel and such...

[11:06] Terry Heaton suggests that while we're all discussing how citizen's media is going to "conform" to how today's media is, this is probably not how we should be looking at how it's growing.

[11:12] Someone who works in the music business takes issue with how copyright laws are said to be "Draconian," and that it is illegal to be posting other people's music, etc.

[11:18] Dan Gillmor: "A world full of stringers..."

[11:20] Linda Seebach of the Rocky Mountain News introduces YourHub.com, a site that the News and the Denver Post have recently launched to allow folks in the Denver area to blog at will about anything and everything.

FYI: Tom @ Scared Monkeys is also liveblogging this session.

...

Here at BlogNashville, there are about 25 people in the Anoniblogging Roundtable here at the Freedom Forum on the Vanderbilt campus.

We've had significant discussions on the technical aspects of blogging anonymously, including what measures that various governments have at their disposal to track down the original source of blog comments. Matthew Sheffield discussed some suggestions that he had posted on his blog a week ago about the use of P2P software to bury IP addresses and protect identities.

Adam Shostack from Spirit of America brought up the social aspects of getting people interested in writing or distributing information from behind whatever "wall" they were behind, such as bloggers in China. The concern arose after one person (can't remember her name!) asked how we really know that so-and-so is who s/he says s/he is when they show up on the blogging scene to report on what is going on in China, Nepal, etc. He suggests "letting a thousand flowers bloom," which is a simple way of saying that good information and bad information will always arise, but theoretically the truth will rise to the top. I'm in agreement with that, as I'd rather see whatever reports and stories might be coming out of a country where the media might not be reporting on it. Of course, you have to take everything with a grain of salt until photos, independent corroboration, etc. can be acquired.

"Knowledge about tools" seems to be a good take home from the session - as in, getting people aware of what websites they can write through, having someone else "re-write" your work so that your writing patterns won't be tracked down, or using some high-tech solution to work anonymously, among other things.

I'll be heading off to BlogNashville early tomorrow morning, and will be online a good portion of the next few days, as it looks like the hotel will have WiFi access with no problems. Looking forward to meeting a great number of folks there.

I've got to echo Matthew Sheffield's sentiments about all the hard work that fellow Media Bloggers Association members Bob Cox and Jason Clarke have put in to get this event off the ground, which includes hounding folks like me to choose the dinners I'm interested in attending and so on and so forth.

See ya there!

Rebecca MacKinnon is looking for thoughts, suggestions, and comments on her upcoming session on Global Voices at the BlogNashville event, coming up May 5-7 in Nashville, TN. Let's help Rebecca out with some ideas on things we'd like to have be part of the discussion, points you'd like to her to expand upon, or things that you believe you could share with the group.