Is BlogHer’s Second Life conference the start of something big?

The organization of women bloggers BlogHer is hosting a conference in Chicago in July. This is not BlogHer’s first conference, so it isn’t big news.

No, the news is that BlogHer will be holding a virtual conference in Second Life (SL) that will run concurrently with the real physical conference. The announcement from Queen Tureaud, a SL avatar for real-life blogger Erin Kotecki Vest, says that the virtual conference will be complete with general sessions, audio feeds, and even a virtual cocktail party.

I see great conferences in far flung locations such as London, Australia and New Zealand that I would dearly love to attend, but will never be able to because of cost. It would be wonderful to participate in real time in SL’s virtual world instead of waiting weeks or months to hear podcasts or get access to speaker’s notes. I hope other conference organizers will follow BlogHer’s lead.

I'm speaking at BlogHerDisclaimer: I’m speaking at BlogHer in the technical track in Chicago in the real-world conference. I’ll be talking about adapting blogs for mobile users and about microformats. Love to see you there, in a real or a virtual way.

Leave a Reply