Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

Maybe you heard (though likely you didn’t), but yesterday was the first annual Utah Bloggers Conference. It was held at the Larry H. Miller conference center (just off 90th south, by SLCC). I arrived early and claimed my free tee-shirt (picture coming soon).

Basically it was about 180 geeky dudes with 20 or so metrosexual business types crowded around tables staring at a panel of six “blog experts”, none of whom I knew. (Discussion question: how does one become a blog expert?) Pizza and Connect magazines were provided. The panel talked about, um, blogs and stuff.

I guess I’m not part of the exclusive Utah technocracy, because I didn’t know anyone there and yet, strangely enough, they all seemed to know one another. Interesting statistic: 99.999% of the attendees apparently work for Mr. Paul Allen (who made a cameo) .

Then there was me. And then there was this one woman. She made me chuckle. During the open-question-asking part of the conference she asked, “where are all the women bloggers?” That’s when I laughed out loud. In an esprit de l’escalier sort of reply, I think they either 1- had much better things to do, or 2- they were all on myspace.

I’ll admit I had my misgivings about the conference going in. I thought it would be akin to one of those “come and get a free vacation while we high pressure-sell you into purchasing a time-share” scenerios. It wasn’t. Nor was it too long. It was only an hour or so, somewhat informative, and rather entertaining.

You should have been there; particularly all you elusive Utah women bloggers.