Last night, after closing the 12-hour marathon chatroom session we hosted for BlogHer Conference '05, I send a short email to to woman who had the initial notion to throw such an event, Lisa Stone:

You do realize that you've given birth to a monster, don't you? This baby is going to grow grow grow....

Congratulations to you all.

I clicked "send," let out a big breath, went downstairs ... and started to cry.

The chatroom was an unqualified success, despite the last-minute challenges (which I'll write about later). I don't have any official numbers, but the room was busy the entire time. Late morning and early afternoon seemed to be the peak times, with some 30-40 people in the room chatting all at once. You almost had to speed-read just to keep up. I was also pleased to see some eminent bloggers check in and stay a while. With the sensational live bloggers like Socal Mom, Spanglemonkey and Mary Beth (whose shoe blogging was a hoot) giving us near-real-time reports from the scene, we truly felt connected; the Santa Clara meet-up became a global event.

With little gestation time (and a whole lot of effort), BlogHer was born with a loud cry heard worldwide. To have been a part of that, to have helped in a small way to connect what was happening in that conference center of some 300 people, mostly women, to people in the rest of the US, in Canada, in the UK, Spain, France, India, China and who knows where else (I've not [yet] scoured the server logs) was a thrill for me.

Right then, when I sent that email, I knew in my bones that this was but the first of what will grow into something much bigger than any of us can imagine.

Blog+Her or Blog*Her? Or Her^Blog !

The internet is morphing and evolving so rapidly, nobody can predict what it will look like 10 years from now, 5 years from now. Even next year is vast mystery. Last year, who would've predicted that the relatively obscure practice of tagging would become a major tracking practice (as with the BlogHer Flickr photos and Technorati tags)? With all that uncertaintly, where do I get off predicting such a huge future for Blogher?

Because, as I see it, despite its name, the event was not about blogging. It wasn't about technology. It was about women finding their voices, women connecting with each other, women standing up and speaking out -- not to make any political statement, except that our voices matter.

There's incredible power in that simple concept. And as radical as it seems to be in America, it's revolutionary in places like Iran, Japan and, as we learned in the chatroom yesterday, India. The democratizing (small "d") effect something like blogging has on culture in general becomes transformative when it reaches populations and communities whose voices traditionally are not heard. The power of BlogHer Conference '05 was not its effect on blogging, but on how blogging can magnify, document and get noticed women's voices around this world of ours.

Back in March, in trying to explain what she hoped to achieve with a women's blogging conference, Lisa wrote:

I don't just mean reacting to what he said, what he wrote and the data behind what she's on about, important conversations all.

No, I'm talking about a conference that enables women bloggers to tesseract to proactive social and intellectual networking with each other.

From this vantage point, there's no question that BlogHer achieved that goal.

A fertile concept

The beauty of a multi-dimensional (tesseracting?) medium like the internet is that no longer are our communications limited by geography or access to corporate- or government-controlled media outlets. This offers magnitudes of greater opportunities than previous so-called "women's events" could enjoy.

I see potential for worldwide BlogHer meta-events held in multiple locations by regional leaders, with interconnected weblinks, video conferencing, remote panelists, live webcasting and audiocasting....and other interactive tools yet to be invented or disseminated. BlogHer is about connections, and the net is rich with ways to connect.

Call me Pollyanna, but I prefer to be an optimist. Sure, there are many things that can work to undercut, undermine or overwhelm future BlogHer Conference efforts. But those kinds of obstacles and uncertainties exist in any venture any of us takes on.

BlogHer proved that, when it comes to empowering women, if you build it, they will come. Right now, next year's conference is but a field of dreams, but with the tools at our disposal, the can-do spirit that inspired all the women (and men) involved this year, and the obvious yearning by women all over for ways and fora to speak and be heard, there's no question BlogHer '06 will not only happen, but manifest in ways we today might not be able to imagine.

I look forward to being a part of that, and helping to make it happen.

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