It sounds like you found the blog set up for the event - blognashville.org - which would be the best place to get a straight read on what the event was all about.

I am little surprised that the “the actual conference schedule that led me to not attend” because you previously indicated that you stayed away because of something to do with political leanings. I say surprised as a group I believe it is safe to say the discussion leaders skewed to the left.

The truth is I did not worry about right/left in selecting discussion leaders - I just picked smart people I respected and who knew the topic I asked them to discuss.

It tone of the post that I referenced from months ago is what led me to that characterization. It was the actual conference schedule that led me to not attend.

you wrote “BlogNashville was created because a few right-wing bloggers didn’t feel comfortable participating in the other blog conferences because they felt those conferences were a hotbed of liberal hedonism because they are located in the ‘liberal coasts’”

I run the Media Bloggers Association, the organizer of BlogNashville. While it is true that I am a right-of-center blogger I live just outside New York City and have no problem living, working or conferring with people who don’t have identifical political or cultural views. The idea for what became BlogNashville was driven by my experience attending BloggerCon II (Cambridge, MA) and BloggerCon III (Palo Alto, CA) where I always felt welcome and made some great blog-friends including a number of folks who became founding members of the MBA.

My hope in re-creating a Dave Winer style bloggercon event and bringing it to Tennessee is actually the opposite of what you wrote. As I am readily accessible via the MBA site, the BlogNashville site and my own site, The National Debate, I can only conclude that the same laziness that prevented you from joining us this weekend is what prevented you from contacting me about my motivation for organizing BlogNashville.

Had you called I would have told you my intention was to draw a more ideologically diverse group to a bloggercon-style event and have the participants mix it up on a variety of topics (some political, some not). The problem with BC II and BC III, in my opinion was that sessions often resulted in “group think” because close to all of the participants were politically and culturally on the left. As someone who was there I can tell you this is a fact not an opinion and certainly not the same thing as being “uncomfortable” or believing that the “coasts” are “hotbeds of liberal hedonism”.

I had never been to Nashville but, as best I could make it, Music City offered an ideal home for the event - a red state/blue city, a border state which could draw from the South and Midwest, an airline hub to pull in folks from around the country with low cost flights on SouthWest Airlines, a set of topics and discussion leaders from all parts of the politics spectrum and plenty of social events to get these folks to get to know each other as people rather than blogs.

Of course, I can’t contol who actually comes and so if the group skewed on various demographic metrics that’s just goes with the territory in running a free event that is open to all. We open the doors and see who walks thought. I am pretty sure, however, that Dan Gillmor, Staci Kramer, Dave Winer, Rebecca MacKinnon, Hossein Derakashan, Mark Glaser, Jay Dedman, Brendan Greeley, Henry Copeland and Ed Cone would be amused at your characterization that the event was designed to make “right-wing bloggers” feel comfortable. Other than Glenn Reynolds who did the welcome and wrap-up, there were two “right-wing bloggers” leading sessions - Robin Burk and LaShawn Barber.

Regardless, we had a good time, you would have been more than welcome and, in the future, I hope you will reconsider and join us.

Cheap seats? You cannot get much cheaper than a free conference.

I actually don’t think I was trying to belittle anyone. And I definitely don’t have any delusions of mental superiority. Though I admit I was being provocative if not trite.

I am glad to know you read this post. Thanks for commenting.

Indeed, if you had made the effort, you could have had a four-hour dinner with Dave (as I and all those who signed up for it did) during which you could have explored your theories of mental superiority. Are you so enlightened that having a four-hour dinner with Dave Winer, the guy who created most of the technology that enables you to spout off this crap, is beneath you? That’s what you chose by blowing-off BlogNashville.

Bottomline: It’s just the kind of simple-mindedness displayed in your post that Dave is reacting to. You are the problem, Jackson. Choosing not to attend was your mistake. You are compounding that mistake by trying to belittle those who did.