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A solid N&R piece on Elizabeth Edwards and ConvergeSouth. Below, Elizabeth and Susan Ladd pay attention during the first journalism session, while Ben Holder rests between scoops.

         

Mike Krempasky, co-founder of the conservative Red State blog, said at ConvergeSouth that he had never endorsed a Democrat, but that Brad Miller (who was seated in the crowd) should be reelected in NC-13.

I stole the idea of having everyone sing (like so many ideas for ConvergeSouth) from Dave Winer.

Hoggard led us in a (mercifully truncated) version of Nothing Could Be Finer Than To Be In Carolina In the Morning, which happens to be true. Xark: "[I]t confirmed Ed's theory that group humiliation is a bonding experience."

Something important from the last session: William Wingo said ConvergeSouth was the best bit of branding Greensboro could have hoped for today.

Below, Hoggard and Wingo, center and right on the second row.

         

Thanks to all who collaborated to make ConvergeSouth a success.

The session leaders, and the participants, the sponsors, and the hosts. You all made it work.

The Scobles came a long damn way. Elizabeth Edwards gave up some of her very limited downtime in the midst of a book tour. People sacrificed their weekends to make it to Greensboro. Everyone invested their time or money in something that we gave away for free.

         

Above, Robert and Maryam Scoble during their session.

Our youngest participant at ConvergeSouth was Ukweli Macha, age 4, pictured here with his dad, Ndesanjo.

               

Sandy Carmany presents the Scobles with a key to the city.

Then we had a party.

Lots of folks I expected to see were there, plus some I did not know were coming.

And then we ate, a lot.

Lenslinger shot a ConvergeSouth piece, it's supposed to run on Fox 8 during tonight's 10 o'clock newscast and should be is up on the website (click on the sidebar video link to watch).

How to get onto A&T's wireless network (pdf) if you're coming to ConvergeSouth.

How to get to the conference.

Indie Rock Mayhem podcast with Mr Sun and me, yapping about web creativity and ConvergeSouth and all kinds of stuff we sort of think we know something about...Josh was generous with his time and gently steered us in interesting directions and still got some good music into the mix...Sol and I come in around minute 33, but check out the rest of the show, too. Or just skip us and listen to the music.

Elizabeth Edwards tells the AP about the community she found online while dealing with the death of her son, Wade, and her bout with breast cancer. The best-selling author's ConvergeSouth session on building communities on the web is going to go way beyond politics, I'm guessing...

Scoble tells the NYT he learns a lot from the folks he sits next to on airplanes (big pic of him in the print edition).

And Sue gets some face time to talk about the conference on NC14.

Hoggard has the skinny on Friday night's ConvergeSouth dinner.

We have so many podcasters and vid-bloggers coming to ConvergeSouth that I'm wondering if we should make rooms available for breakout sessions on those topics...or maybe such will just spontaneously generate in the hallways and the atrium...Kind of like going to the Fiddler's Convention in Galax, where the best music is often found far from the stages, amidst the campers and trailers and trucks in the parking lots and fields.

Check out a most excellent ad for ConvergeSouth, starting about halfway through this video. You may not believe this, but we improvised the whole thing...

The unsung hero of ConvergeSouth: Sue Polinsky.

More than 200 people (and counting) are signed up for Greensboro's unconference about life online. Sue has done the more than anyone to make it all happen.

Thanks, Sue.

An interview with ConvergeSouth big-thinker Ben Hwang.

We are going to have to close registration at some point, but you can still sign up.

Amber Rhea and Rusty Tanton of the Georgia Podcast Network are signed up for ConvergeSouth.

Are you?

Related: The AAA crew and I shot a really goofy promo spot for the conference today...posted soon if all goes well.

Below, Luna (foreground) with the Amanda Across America team (l-r:  Emily, Rob, Mario, Amanda, spiffy Ford hybrid; click to embiggen).

             

Dinner after ConvergeSouth with Red State co-founder Mike Krempasky for those fortunate few who sign up in time...

Thanks for the mention, Dave.

And for a lot more. I was talking last night with Paul Jones about our first GSO blog conference -- what may well have been the first local/regional event of its kind, and certainly a seminal moment in the emergence of Greensboro as a blogging hotbed -- and I found myself crediting Dave with a lot of its success. Not just because he pioneered the blogging unconference, and allowed me to grow into the role of session leader on the job, but in GSO-specific ways -- he stopped in and encouraged us to stretch and trust our attendees and do it right...and it worked really well.

And of course ConvergeSouth is a direct descendant of the BloggerCons and of the Piedmont '04 event.

Happy to see that Mike Krempasky is signed up to attend ConvergeSouth. His work at Red State should make him an asset in the community session, as should his work at Edelman. Plus, it's always interesting to meet in person folks you've only known online.

Another Philadelphian coming to ConvergeSouth is Wendy Warren, an editor at the Philadelphia Daily News.

What's the deal with Philly?

Having both the city's big papers up for sale helped focus a lot of smart folks in that area on the future of journalism, and the role of the web in that future. An email discussion group evolved around the idea of norgs, or news organizations that could thrive in this new hybridized world of print and electronic media. Some local folks, including Lex and me, joined in, along with big thinkers around the country...

...and we are fortunate to have the opportunity to share in some of the accrued wisdom in Greensboro.

Have I mentioned that the Philly Inquirer's Daniel Rubin will be helping out at ConvergeSouth?

Creativity on the web. For everyone.

Greensboro, October 14.

Smart, fun, free.

JR gives some detail and background in his column about ConvergeSouth: "The unconference will be followed by live music at Solaris and the Flying Anvil.

"The Joseph M. Bryan Foundation and the Tannenbaum-Sternberger Foundation are the two major sponsors again. (And special recognition to PayPerPost.com and Edelman for asking -- without any arm-twisting -- to be sponsors.)"

Action Greensboro is hosting a branding meeting for our fair city this afternoon. I have to be somewhere else, but I did give moderator Justin Catanoso my two cents...

One obvious point is that we need to brand ourselves on our actual strengths and attributes, not rely on some one-size-fits-all catchphrase (e.g. Greensboro Connects) that says very little about us. People won't move here or move their companies here because we have a slogan, they'll come because we are green, comfortable, well-situated, and have excellent schools.

Well, we're green, comfortable, and well-located, that's a start.

A big part of the branding job is explaining ourselves to ourselves, and coordinating efforts to become our best selves. Action Greensboro did a great job last weekend of bringing thousands of college students together downtown (an event grievously undercovered by the N&R...) We need to understand ourselves as a college town, not just a town with colleges in it. Saturday night was a good step in that direction.

Sometimes, though, I feel that Action Greensboro and the powers that be don't really get some of the things right in front of them. ConvergeSouth, for one, a homegrown event that's all about the web and creativity, draws attention of the most positive sort to the city, but is unknown to much of the city. The big plan is for ConvergeSouth to grow into something similar to SXSW. Colleges, creativity and the web, a real music scene...we could be branding ourselves in some very good ways that the branders may grasp only tangentially.

A clean, green city that values its homegrown creative culture and educates its kids as well as anyone in the land would be easy to brand. And it's within our reach, if not our grasp.

Beyond all the talk-talk-talking, ConvergeSouth will include some nuts-and-bolts how-to sessions on stuff like social networking. Here's the sked. More to come.

October 14, Greensboro.

Smart. Fun. Free.

Potato Stew made ConvergeSouth promo video. The free conference on creativity and journalism on the web will be held in Greensboro on October 14.

Thanks to Benny for reminding me of this audio clip of Elizabeth Edwards discussing the web and web communities. She is going to be a great discussion leader at ConvergeSouth.

And she's just one of the conversation starters we'll have on hand on October 14 in Greensboro. I guess some people will come for Scoble alone, and others will be there for the journalism track.

I've seen the unconference model at work, and it can produce some amazing results.

See for yourself.

                                       

A nice blurb on Elizabeth Edwards and ConvergeSouth in this morning's N&R (unposted). I guess I'd quibble over describing it as a "tech conference," because it's really a user conference for a largely non-techie group of people and journalists who want to do stuff on the web...a distinction without a difference? Maybe. But the whole point of this stuff is that it's so easy yahoos like me can do it, and I don't want to scare anyone off...

Speaking of EE's session on successful online communities, here's an example of not managing a community so well, as discussed by another of our session leaders, Robert Scoble.

And here are some thoughts on what it means for a person known best in a political context to lead an "apolitical" conversation.

A previous conversation about political diversity at web conferences. We did, of course, end up having a Nashville blog conference, which saw more political hackles raised than others I've attended...

UPDATE: Thoughts from Elizabeth Edwards.

The opening session at ConvergeSouth will be led by Elizabeth Edwards.

The topic is building web communities.

Elizabeth is a veteran of the John Edwards '04 and Kerry/Edwards campaigns, a key participant in the One America Committee community, and an author who is immersed in another kind of coummunity built around her story of illness and recovery.

This is not a political session, although of course Elizabeth is involved in politics, and it's not a book-tour event, although her experiences in that realm are relevant. This is an unconference session with Elizabeth as the leader and all conference attendees as potential participants.

Welcome, Elizabeth, we're happy to have you on board.

ConvergeSouth is a user conference for regular folks and working journalists who want to use the web. Attendance is free. It happens at NC A&T in Greensboro on October 14.

It's not the most glamorous event of the year, but it should be fun and interesting and useful.

If you need to spend a bunch of money on a Web 2.0 conference, you could go here.

If you need an invitation, well, you're invited.

Doug Fisher of Hartsville Today (and cook book fame) will be helping out with the citizen journalism session at ConvergeSouth, Greensboro, Oct 14.

Official Greensboro makes a lot of noise about our need for a "creative culture" while ignoring examples of Greensboro's actual creative culture.

This week, mayor Keith Holliday dissed the ConvergeSouth conference, a homegrown event that brings bigtime talent and attention to Greensboro, spotlights a local university, and builds on the creative energy and leadership of people from this city.

Last year, the conference included Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, ultimate blogfather Dave Winer, and Jay Rosen, one of the most respected thinkers about journalism and the web, along with hundreds of other people of the type Greensboro is so eager to attract. Even the theme was on-point: Creativity on the web for all people.

This year looks like another winner, a locally-conceived, locally-funded conference by and for the people of a creative culture. Once again our participants will stay downtown, enjoy our nightlife, and if all goes well, evangelize Greensboro as a hotbed of creativity and forward thinking.

It's free, even for City Council members. Drop on by, Keith, we'd love to see you.

Scoble will be one of the session leaders at ConvergeSouth. So will Scoble.

October 14, Greensboro. Journalism and the web, and how  to do cool stuff on the web. Free. Y'all come.

Registration for the ConvergeSouth conference opens tomorrow.

October 14, at NC A&T, Greensboro. A free unconference, with a focus on using the web and the future of journalism.

Sue wanted to have lunch, so we did, and suddenly there's going to be another Converge conference.

                         

That's an exaggeration: Sue had already done some legwork.

But we sat down at M'Coul's and she asked me what I thought and I said I thought I was too busy and tired to even consider helping to throw another one of these things together for next fall and she said, Great, here's what I need you to do...

Her vision is for a Saturday conference in October, very hands on, almost Uplifterish in places.

I'm supposed to come up with ideas and people for programs.

Already this morning Ross Myers called and we discussed using the milblogging stuff he's been working on as the core of a social networking session. Not a military blogging session per se, but a broader look at creating and participating in social networks that would capitalize on the experience of milbloggers. This stuff is huge, and it was a good conversation, and without making any firm plans I said the social networking idea was at the top of my list of possibilities (and at this moment the sum total of that list).

So I'm interested in ideas for programs.

Update: It occurs to me (duh) that there is the buzziest of buzzprases out there for all the cool stuff we want to help people do and that of course is Web 2.0, so I guess branding this thing as Web 2.0 in some way would be a smart move, because even though the term is semi-annoying it covers a lot of ground we want covered. And anyway, we were country when country wasn't cool, or 2.0 before it was cool, or something, so we might as well ride that buzz.

Evil Genius releases his long-awaited film de ConvergeSouth 2005.

Worth the wait. I love the street scenes of GSO.

Antonella Napolitano posts her report on ConvergeSouth.

Dave Winer on increasing diversity at conferences: "The Greensboro blogging conference earlier this month was more interesting because there were far more black people there than I've ever seen at a tech industry conference. How did this happen? They chose North Carolina A&T, a state college that's largely black, to host the event. The professors and students were all black [ed. note: not all, but predominantly], as were many participants of the community. There's a big lesson in that. If you want change, like Dorothy, you have to leave Kansas, you can't expect change to come to you, you have to go there."

A charming presence at ConvergeSouth was Antonella Napolitano, who came to us from Italy via Vassar, and captioned her Flickr photos in (mostly) Italian that even this North Carolinian can translate with a little help from context and French cognates. "Il keg" was an easy one...

Ross Myers has an interesting post about Greensboro's blog community, and the fact that it has yet to have a real economic impact on the city.

No doubt, whatever leadership we have shown around here is as a user community. That's something Chris Nolan nailed in her eWeek column about Greensboro.

As users, we've shown time and again that we're ahead of the curve -- from the original Piedmont Blog Conference, to Greensboro 101 and our blogging elected officials and our bloggy newspaper to ConvergeSouth.

But are there business opportunities that we've missed? Should we be creating progamming jobs and other high-tech employment? Are there VC dollars that need to be flowing our way?

As I said in a comment at Ross's site, I've been thinking about that a lot recently.

I'm a user. I'm a writer. I'm not a businessman or an economic developer. But it would be a shame for Greensboro to miss an opportunity...if the opportunity is really there.

I am pretty well plugged-in to the business and finance establishment around here. I'm listening.

Definitely worth discussing.

(link via GiT -- good comment discussion there, too.)

Yet more ConvergeSouth coverage, from Billy and Bora.

Which reminds me that I also need to thank Walker Sanders and his crew at the Community Foundation, who helped us put this thing together on the fly.

Sue notes an error in Ted Vaden's coverage of ConvergeSouth. Blog standards would suggest a quick public correction of the error...

Last word on ConvergeSouth from the Evil Genius. "I've been hearing about how great Greensboro is for years, and I never quite bought it. I was slap wrong, it is indeed a great town!"

OK, time to plan for next year.

ConvergeSouth Saturday night coverage. Sounds like the Alana Davis gig at Solaris turned out well.

Conover on Converge: "I'm ready to go out and get 'Wiki' tattooed on my ass inside a heart with an arrow through it."

Also, G3head, Dave Johnson (third of three posts, software designers are so thorough), Jim Buie, Brian Leon, Mickey McLean...

...lots more, including poetry, from Billy Jones, henceforth known as The Perfesser -- he made some wise comments in a session, preceded by "I'm not a journalist but...," and another participant then referred to him as "the professor"...maybe it's the beard?

A video interview from Saturday night with RTP TV, in which I divulge my just-invented plans for next year's ConvergeSouth, while looking every bit like someone who co-hosted a two-day conference, had a flat tire in the rain after the last session, and was served wine at dinner by a heavy-handed host...

Fun moment in the Biltmore Hotel lobby -- as Randall Gregg was shooting this on his teeny lil vidcam, Dave Slusher was across the room finishing an audio spot with Amanda Congdon and Mario Librandi, while Dan Conover snapped it all on his digital camera.

Amanda Congdon gives ConvergeSouth a nice shout-out on Rocketboom.

Thank you, Kevin. You put into words pretty much everything that we wanted ConvergeSouth to be about.

Jay Ovittore put a lot of work into the music portion of ConvergeSouth, running on caffeine and enthusiasm for days on end. Here's his writeup of the weekend.

He quotes our headliner, Alana Davis: "Blogging to me is the real free media. I have a lot of bitchin' to do, so I guess I'm going to have to start a blog."

Contrary to my statement below about making it to every session at ConvergeSouth '05, I did of course miss the ones opposite the one I co-hosted with Sue. And that meant I missed the military blogging discussion, which got rave reviews, and introduced me to this blog. I heard Michael Moran rocked, too.

Well, that was fun. I think it worked well as a user's conference, for students and bloggers and journalists, and I think it succeeded in being "for all people" as we intended from the start.

At every blog con I find a hidden gem, not in the biggest room or hosted by the most famous name, just superb conversation and a sense of something learned -- Eugene Volokh's Sunday session at the first BloggerCon comes to mind, as does La Shawn Barber's faith-blogging session in Nashville. This time around, I thought Tiffany Brown stole the show with Outsider Blogging.

Also, if you want to liven up your conference, invite George Curry.

That said, there were too many other highlights to, well, highlight. I'd single out the ethics session run by Jay Rosen and Lex Alexander on the first day -- not to mention Jay's remark during another discussion, in which it was asked if blogs were up to the standards set by the pros, and he responded that the pros need to ask as well if they are up to some of the standards set by bloggers (including corrections and transparency).

Ahead of the curve: Amanda Congdon's vid-blogging session. It felt to me that many in the room were a little intimidated by video -- not just tech issues in putting on blogs, but a sense that moving pictures are to be delivered unto us by studios and corporations, not stuff we can manipulate as easily as we do words and pics and sound. I think that was why this session was so important -- a year from now, we'll look back at it and see how far we've come.

A moment of satisfaction: sitting in a room with 50 or so blissed-out geeks as Jimbo Wales talked a little wiki-lore, and realizing, wow, this is happening here, one of the more important folks in this whole revolution is preaching in Greensboro.

I hated that I was unable to stay for all of any session, because as host I had to hit them all; I loved that I was able to see at least part of every session.

Regret: Hoder being held up by US immigration. The guy is a genuine freedom fighter, but our government has trouble seeing past the fact he's from Iran. Our loss.

I also regret that I didn't get to spend more time with our visiting session leaders. I think Mike Bowen and I could have talked for hours. As always, the conversations are the thing. I enjoyed catching up on Bryn Mawr with Duncan Black, kids' birthday parties with Jay Rosen, and eating lunch outdoors with Uncle Dave, Dan Conover, Janet Edens, and The Evil Genius himself.

Choice moment: Dave Slusher sees a guy wearing an Evil Genius t-shirt. Didn't know him. A fan. Cool.

I hear the music portion went really well, too -- looking forward to blogged accounts of it, I was so tired from being nice for too days that I just went to bed after hosting my dinner last night. Which was great, too.

Prediction: Calvin Williams Jr. will be famous (for something good).

Technorati links.

Coverage from Cobb, Paul Jones, Dave Slusher, Kevin Howarth.

Too many people to thank, but let me start with all of you who came to participate in the event. Your questions and comments, your conversations during the breaks, and the energy and ideas you take away from the weekend -- that's what this was all about.

Thanks also to our session leaders and panelists, those who traveled from as far away as California and those who could walk to A&T from their houses.

And thanks many times over to Dr. Teresa Styles, Val Nieman, Sheila Whitley and everyone at A&T; Shaka Singleton, Sue Polinsky, Jay Ovittore, Ben Hwang, and the N&R folks; to our great barbecue hosts, the families Hoggard and Wharton and Gross; to our generous sponsors; and to eveyone who volunteered time and energy and money and ideas.