A great start to building online community

Over the course of the Writer's Conference more than a dozen writers attended my blogging workshops. Many commented and a few became authors and contributed posts. Check out the new list of blogs and websites from folks who stopped by.

Big thanks to ALL!

Don't let it stop here. Authors may still contribute posts, comments (though moderated) are open to all.

Please join us to promote your writing projects, float ideas, link to your own blogs and websites, contribute ideas for next year's conference.

Another great big thanks to Amy Ruddell, Kathy Maddox and Geoff Herbert for taking a chance on bringing new technology within the reach of writers.

If you attended the 2008 Summer Writers Conference and you'd like to post on this blog, please contact me for an invitation.

Bill Pieper's Website

Here's the link to books by Bill Pieper, Sacramento author and member of the 2008 conference host committee.

I'm Younger than I Thought

After all these years of surfing the Interwebs, I never knew how to blog. These old bones might be creaky, but I feel like a kid at first light on Christmas morning. Ohboy, oh boy.

Home Run Writers' Conference

Dyamite info right in my own back yard. Last night's orientation to the Whistle Stop meetings with agents and editors by Babz Bitela was the single best hour I have spend at a writers' conference in decades. The facts in a nutshell, funny, plus encouraging. Dinah Lenney on memoir (my genre) was magical. The agents and editors were listeners par excellence, quite a feat when I was in the last group of "speed dating" and a whirlwind of 3-minute pitches!

The not-so-secret online lives of your workshop leaders

If you ever Googled yourself it may be a bit scary at first. Then (especially if you intended to have a presence in the public sphere) you realize what a totally cool web of information is at your fingertips. And you want to look up everyone you know.

Say, you searched the names of each of the workshop leaders in the 2008 Sacramento State Summer Writer's Conference. Here's the first (or best, IMHO) listing you'd find for each:

Dinah Lenney
Her eponymous Website with bio, book info, a Windows Media actor reel, and events listing.

Peter Grandbois Website

Jane Friedman
No, not THAT Jane Friedman, but a nice interview about this woman's publishing career with F+W Publishing.

Rick Foster, co-founder and Artistic Director of Duende and Vivien, his play

Judie Fertig Panneton's Random House listing

My (Catherine Stifter) top link is my bio on Mascomm.net

Linda Joy Singleton's Website

Jeff Knorr's top link is a poem called "Winter Turkeys" in the Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Barbara Bitela's top listing is a Canadian bookseller.

If I've managed to find a blog written by someone above, it's listed in the left column. If I've missed you, please contact for a listing.

What can you dig up on us that might make good blog content?

What everybody ought to know about blog software...

If you are just entering the blogsphere, I highly recommend that you start with any of the many free blog services, such as Blogger or Wordpress.com those that offer a free trial such as Typepad. You don't have to spend a mint for an online presence. That's especially true if you're just getting started.

Take a look at this great post about Blogging Tools and click around the Websites to see what they offer. Take the tour, or just set up a trial account and play around.

There are paid services that offer plenty of customization that you might want later. But free services have plenty of sophistication for those who are just moderately proficient at technical stuff.

Another way to do your research on the right blog service is to read your favorite writer blogs, scroll down to the bottom of the page and see who hosts the blogs you like. Most of the writers on the Writer's Blogs list use Blogger! And so do we.

You could also view this massive chart by the Online Journalism Review that compares all the services. But it's kinda scary. Fair warning!

Blog like you mean it: an introduction to the power of online community

Welcome to the very first blog of the 2008 Sacramento State Summer Writers' Conference.

Please note: The views expressed here are those of myself (the workshop presenter), other writers on the blog team and not those of Sacramento State Continuing Education.

As the presenter of the blog workshops, facilitator for the blog lab, and instigator of this little experiment, I want to encourage every writer attending the conference to join our online community by contributing to the blog by posting or commenting.

You could post a poem or a chapter of your book, create a link to a blog you're already writing, or list your favorite blogs or blogging resources in the Learn More column.

This will be a team blog. Writers from my workshops will gain instant invitations. Others will only need to contact me to receive one. You are welcome to post here and comment whether you attend my workshops or not.

I know many of the presenters from this conference are already part of online communities or have their own blogs. I've begun to list them in the resource column. If I've somehow missed you, please let me know or feel free to post it yourself.

If you're interested in blogging, I can help get you started. I've written or contributed to 3 or 4 successful blogs over the past 5 years. My interest is how blogs can create a sense of community, contribute to a community knowledge base, and offer resources for groups of people with something in common.

According to Wikipedia, the blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs as of December 2007. Some are just personal diaries in text, images, audio or video. But others have a purpose of social networking: increasing understanding across time, geographical and organizational boundaries and connecting people through storytelling.

My workshops offer a broad overview of blogs as a social networking tool for building online community.

We'll take a brief look at Blog history, survey current (free!) technology (like the Blogger.com service we are using for this blog), and get a chance to practice by blogging the Writer's Conference LIVE!

Check out these two blogs that I've been a part of for the past few years.

At Saving The Sierra, a regional media project exploring grassroots conservation across California's magnificent mountain range, our blog contains personal entries and conservation news related to the documentary that's now airing on public radio stations across the country.

At New Routes to Community Health, a national partnership of community media centers, immigrant serving organizations, and local funders or community conveners, our news items relate to the immigrant projects and groups in our projects, and our blog contains more personal postings from staff, grantees, and like-minded supporters.

I'll tell you a couple of stories about how both of these blogs (and the websites they are part of) have created online community.