Saturday, after a meeting, I headed over for the Blogging/Vlogging Conference, hosted by the
Coalition for Critical Inquiry.
I was only able to make it to the very last session. It was a panel session which focused on the impact and future of blogs and vlogs. It was moderated by
Allison Kaftan and the panel consisted of
Joey Baer,
Tayler Mayer,
Jared Evans and
Shane Feldman.
It was a very interesting session about blogs and vlogs. I was particularly interested in Joey's presentation about vlogs. Several times, I've considered doing a vlog. However, I was telling
Chris Kaftan that I'm overly critical of my signs. By the time I review myself before posting, I find myself deleting the entire vlog post. Maybe I should just ignore and just go ahead and post.
Another interesting thing to consider was the credibility of blogs and vlogs. I forgot who (Shane?) mentioned it but I thought was an interesting point. Mainstreamed (read: hearing) blogs and vlogs are often commentaries of news that have been reported in newspapers and in television. News in newspapers and television are supposed to be verified facts.
Ok, now, with Deaf blogs and vlogs, readers often assume or rely postings to be facts. The problem is that we don't have Deaf newspapers or television shows reporting on Deaf events. We also don't have the mainstreamed media reporting on Deaf events. So, where and how can we present verified facts in our postings?
Next, we need to raise accountability in bloggers and vloggers. Bloggers & vloggers need to explicitly clarify when something is factual and when something is of their own opinions. I believe this is going to raise everyone's (bloggers, vloggers, readers, commenters) awareness of accountability and credibility. Deaf blogs and vlogs have been in the infant stage these few years. However, with the exponential growth of Deaf bloggers and vloggers, we're moving up to the next stage. The next stage comes with maturity and scrutiny, which is needed.
Like I said, it was an interesting panel session. Also, I learned the new signs for blog and vlog. Hopefully, someone will do a vlog to show the new signs.
After that, I took the opportunity to meet bloggers in person. It was so nice to actually get to know each other. The people I met for the first time were: Jared Evans,
Mike McConnell,
David Evans and Joey Baer. I thought it was my first time meeting Tayler Mayer but he said that we met while we were graduate students at Gallaudet. Anyways, it was nice to meet him again. It was nice to see Katie Roberts again, after so many years. (I'm not sure if she has an active blog. I do know that she's an active commenter in many blogs.) There were a few people that I recognized but did not have a chance to formally introduce myself:
Amy Cohen Efron,
David Fulmer and
Carl Schroeder.
Hopefully, there'll be another conference next year. If so, I do hope more Deaf bloggers and vloggers will attend.
By the way, congratulations to all the Deaf bloggers and vloggers who won the DeafRead 2006 Deaf Blogs awards! *hands waving*
Labels: Deaf events
