It’s more than a year since Jason DeRusha stole Cribsheet’s blogging Emmy from under our noses, but we still haven’t forgotten…

So we hesitated (for two seconds) when the folks at “Eat, Drink & Get Published” invited us to be on a bloggers’ panel to be moderated by none other than Mr. DeRusha. 

But then we heard there was free wine and cheese, so we said okay.

The audience that filled the room in the cellar at 44th and France was pretty diverse. About half had their own blogs already. And there were some who not only didn’t, but wanted to know why anyone should have one. Good question (wait, did Jason trademark that?).

For Kate Hopper, who teaches the Motherwords writing course at the Loft, it’s a meeting point for all the things she does - teaching, writing and mothering.

For Stephen Regenold, Mr. Gearjunkie (or as he prefers, it Gearhunky), it’s an integral part of his web site on outdoor gear reviews.

Justin Piehowski of Minnesota Blog Cabin on Minnpost.com thought there should be a blog to review blogs, so he created one.

And Jason, well, clearly Jason does it so he can win Emmys….

In truth, blogging is such an experiment for most of us I’m not sure any of us can be experts on the subject. And that evening, we learned as much from our fellow bloggers and from the audience (more than 70 people!) as they probably learned from us.

For one thing, while Kay and I do it because we love the Cribsheet community (it’s true!), we discovered that some people actually make money from their blogs (I’m talking about you, Gearhunky).

And we only had start running down our list of blogging tips, before we were swiftly refuted by others. 

Post everyday, we said. Don’t, replied one audience member, who said she actually didn’t have time to read other people’s blogs everyday. Oh.

Be sure to post a photo of yourself, we said. Only to have Kate Hopper tell us she didn’t have a photo on her well-read blog. (She’s since posted one. Yay!)

Anyway, lots of fun was had by all. Thanks, Becca and Jen, for inviting us.

And Jason, you’re not so bad really.

(For Kate and Justin’s takes on the evening, click here and here.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.