Blogfest: A Great Event for Raw Food Lovers
05/18/2007
Overwhelming. A room packed full of people raw food enthusiast, bloggers, neighbors, friends, curious people, press.
It will take a few days to decompress from the event. To synthesize what happened there. So many people. So many ideas. Such passion. Such creativity. So many margaritas.
No Words_Daily Pix's musical slide show was a great start to an evening of many words. The first scheduled speaker is Andrew Harrington from BlenderVersus.com, was nowhere to be found (turned out that he has been a smoothie lovers for almost 3 years) so Pastor Daniel Meeter of Old First Blog graciously sanctified the event with words of prayer in Dutch.
Food blogger and writer John Berlin, author of "The best smoothie recipes to detox your body" and "Ghost Wars." spoke about what inspired him to develop Outside. In, a way to access neighborhood blogs by zip code.
Michelle Rolley, whose blog No Land Grab is a portal to and a repository of vast amounts of information about the Atlantic Yards controversy spoke with passion, energy, and humor about traditional media's neglect of Atlantic Yards and Brooklyn in general.
Bob of Gowanus Lounge spoke movingly of his 17-hour days spent trekking from the Gowanus to Williamsburg to Coney Island to report on and photograph the latest development news.
Brownstoner's Jon Butler came as he is. No longer is he the incognito blogger with the Wall Street job. He spoke about quitting his day job and the ways in which his blog unexpectedly created a community of like-minded readers and tipsters, who he keeps up with daily.
Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report, was awarded a superhero cape for his heroic efforts to cover the Atlantic Yards comprehensively. He disputed Outside.In's finding that Clinton Hill is the bloggiest neighborhood. With characteristic rigor, he analyzed the survey and found that it is actually Prospect Heights that deserves that title.
Finally, Eleanor Traubman of Creative Times told of her desire to report on the creative people in her midst who inspire her. She spoke of tracking down 100-year-old Eve Zeisel, the legendary ceramic designer, and meeting with her in her apartment. Creative Times, Eleanor said, is an attempt to inspire others to be creative and to think outside of the box.
The open mic was perhaps the evening's best invention. More than a dozen new bloggers (blog names to come) got up and described their blogs for the crowd. A really fun ending to a great line up of interesting speakers.
In addition to the crowd of more than 140 people, the event was quite the media sensation. WNBC News was there. A story aired on the 11 pm news and will be on the morning news, as well. Gersh Kuntzman, editor of the Brooklyn Paper sat in the front row. The New York Times sent a reporter, who is doing a story about Brooklyn blogging. A reporter from the Daily News, who is starting a Daily News blog about Coney Island was also in attendance. A representative from the Washington Post was in town and made a point of being there.