Why I'm going to SOBcon07?

As SOBcon07 approaches, I wondered what others were thinking about SOBcon07. SOBcon07 grew out of Liz Strauss' Successful and Outstanding Bloggers. It was a commitment by a terrific group of people, Liz, Mike, Ben and Chris to take successful blogging to the next level, to meet and learn about each other and make the virtual conversation and real one. TheGoodBlogs took an important step to support this effort, as a sponsor, promoter, speaker and attendee, i.e. we felt it was worth the time and the money.

So here's why Tony (aka Tealeaf) and I (aka TheIdeaDude) took this step and what we expect to achieve at the conference.

• It started off with the basic idea of meeting some of our members like Chris, Mike and Ben who were early adopters of TheGoodBlogs. They were great supporters of what we were trying to achieve and through the ongoing association, learning from their blogs and the email dialogue that followed, our respect for them as great bloggers, smart marketeers and terrific conversation conductors grew over time. Above all, they were simply great folk we were honored to call our blogging friends even though we had not met face to face.
  
• Through Mike, we learnt about SOBCon07 and we thought there was a terrific synergy. Unlike many conferences, where the aim was to make a lot of money and showcase technology, this conference was about bringing successful bloggers together, to share what made them successful and how they could reinforce relationships and make each other even better bloggers. This is what TheGoodBlogs was all about. Perhaps it was naivety on our part, we genuinely wanted to promote the good blogs first and revenue second. It was instrumental in our decision not to seek funding because we felt it would drive us to paths that may not have been complimentary to our passion.
  
• Just over a week ago, I had the pleasure to talk to Liz, a wonderfully warm, witty and intelligent woman. I knew after that conversation, why I started the good blogs, because if it was only for selfish reasons, I got to meet some terrific people that I would have otherwise probably not have met. My life would have been that much poorer otherwise. Liz, in her way, was on a similar quest, collecting good blogs (she calls them SOBs), but the idea was the same, to celebrate people who genuinely wanted to bring something to the Blogosphere.
  

So you can tell I'm excited...here's what I want out of SOBcon07.

• To meet all TheGoodBloggers face to face and to thank them for understanding and supporting our dream. You really get it. Blogging is about conversations not monologues.
  
• To share what we have learnt from the thousand or so blogs we have accumulated over the last few months. Bloggers see the world from their angle but it's like looking at the telescope from the large end. At TheGoodBlogs, we get to see it from the other end of the funnel.
  
• To learn from successful bloggers what makes them tick. What they think are the ingredients of successful blogging so we can share this with our community.
  
• To find out what successful bloggers want. Today, bloggers have so much choice beyond putting words to their blog. They can add pictures, video, podcasts, IM, blogrolls, widgets. What do successful bloggers really want? We really like to know because between Tony and I, we know we have technical skills that can make anything happen.
  
• Finally, to hang out with some really cool people and paint our virtual world with a little bit of reality.
  

If you want to participate in this conversation, simply click on this tag and get the code to add to our blog entry. You'll see why conversations can be greater than the sum of the individual blog entries.


sobcon07

See you at SOBCon07.