Dispatches from the BlogOn Boot Camp’s hunt for a business model (first of two parts).

(Ed. Note: To make this feel like a real blog, pretend you’re reading it from the bottom up. Otherwise, this stream-of-consciousness approach will just seem weird. This is just as I wrote it during the 4-hour Boot Camp, although we corrected spelling, since I have dyslexic fingers.)

BERKELEY, CA -- And so it begins.

I’m at the BlogOn boot camp. A whole bunch of people (30ish) in “business casual” (read: Dockers and polo shirts -- but not me, I'm allergic) are trying to figure out what the hell social networking is -- or social media are. We actually started on time. First up is Susan Mernit from 5ive (full disclosure: she’s my old boss and a good friend, and iMedia sponsored part of this event). Sounds like this will be very hands on. I’ve been wanting to blog, but even I was clueless. I’m going to try to keep up here, so you get the full flavor of what this is.

What are audience’s questions, Susan wants to know. First one is about incorporating video -- pretty high level stuff for an opener. I ask if there’s a business model here. How does this intersect with traditional media? Are large companies in this for research? How do I use a corporate blog to communicate our message? Best practices, of course, come up. How does this work as a tool for social change?

Oh, yeah, BTW, we’re all on wireless -- gotta love those heavily endowed MBA schools (we’re at UC Berkeley’s Haas).

It’s not a business yet, and we all know that, Susan says. But, it’s on the verge. And that’s why we’re all here. Interesting factoid: Craigslist  has taken away 13 percent of the San Francisco Chronicle’s classified business, she says.

Halley’s a real comet

A few folks are still having trouble getting online. Moving on, first presenter is blogger Halley Suitt of Halley’s Comment on Blog Basics. My god, these people are mega-focused on staying on schedule.

She blames David Weinberger for getting her started two years ago. Describes her blog as sexy and obnoxious, despite its start as a chronicle of her dad’s death.

When you have a corporate blog, how personal can you get? What are you liable for? HS says any time you have a way of having a strong, interesting voice talking about your product, go for it. Human resources and legal won’t agree, but it’s all about the intimacy. PR and advertising cannot do this. She’s checking the time again. She wrote an article for Harvard Business Review on this corporate conundrum, but it’s not available online.

HS says her blog is a prototyping tool. Throw an idea up there, to see what you or others want to do with it.

She’s shifting to what is a good blog post? Blog often -- a lot, all day. Bob Scoble at Microsoft does 50 a day. It’s like fresh rolls. Funny is great. Let’s kick publishing’s ass here. Somebody called her on the 50 thing. There are people with good stuff to say who blog weekly. Key is the audience. Back to tips -- make them short, quick, link to others. She loves to be over loaded … me, not so much. Other styles -- op/ed, word of mouth. You, as an editor, can become a brand. Be something you can’t get anywhere else -- that’s No. 1. Be original or die. And be faster than anyone else. Someone called it reverse voyeurism. Narcissism watch. Be daring and blunt. And of course, it’s a community.

She says she gets mean when she doesn’t blog -- I believe it. There’s a certain addictive nature you have to have to be a top blogger.

Now we’re blogging. Or surfing -- do you surf blogs? It’s an insomniac’s medium, she says. You can blog and save for later posting. She’s walking us through a typical blog. Time stamps, permalinks (I assume she’ll explain those). Comments about other people’s stuff. She says her blog hosting is free, someone asked how much you would pay -- no one has an answer.

Spam posts are a problem, apparently. None for HS, more for others.

Her blog is built on Blogger  (Google’s tool). Mentions a new blog called Worthwhile. Misbehaving.net about women and technology. Those are group blogs. So there are individual and group blogs.

This is odd, IMing, blogging and sipping green tea -- all at the same time. Look Ma, no hands!

She’s getting ready to blog – HS, not Ma. We’re all breathless, especially since she sounds pre-orgasmic about it.

Going into Blogger.com. Dashboard opens with all your blogs. Simple enough interface. Type and publish, watch the nerdling doodad, and there it is.

How’s this for old-school -- they’re passing around paper to get email addresses.

Hold onto your hats, now she’s adding a link to the post. My sarcastic tone aside, this really is easy. No reason to be afraid of it, folks.

Now we’re at Movable Type, a different tool for blogging. Now it’s our turn.

While we’ve been listening, they emailed us an invite to a practice blog on TypePad, so it’s our turn. Have to register… and I’m in. Posted a bit of philosophy -- “You get what you settle for…. Not more and no less.” Life’s good.

So, you can allow comments or not. And you can ask it to tell you when someone else posts or links to you. Halley previews. I didn’t and sure enough, there’s a typo. Proofreading is good. Otherwise it’s seat-of-your-pants. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Things to remember -- these things post fast, and Google and others will grab them fast. Don’t blog anything you don’t want on the front page of the NY Times. Good rule in general.

There’s some odd stuff out there. We Quit Drinking, a blog started by someone who thinks Japan drinks too much. WTF? Some of these blogs remind me of student films. Blogging just because you can. But “is that so wrong?” as Harvey Fierstein would growl.

Trackbacks actually lets your blog know someone else wrote about yours. Somebody in the room just photoblogged her -- but it can’t be her, since she’s standing still.

Comments live on my blog; trackbacks live on others’ blogs. Why are we still talking about this? Ahhh … people who comment may get nasty, but if they comment on their own blog, they’ll be more polite. You want trackbacks, especially if your product sucks (hmmm … I just realized I’m getting snarky, must be a blog thing).

Blogs can be effective as a one-way thing, without comments. Or as a two-way with comments, which can be entertaining and can build the community you want and need around your products. Just don’t be scared of giving up control.

Why are people still confused about trackbacks? It’s the T&Cs of blogging.

RSS? Huh?

Next speaker. I’m tired -- this is moving at a hellish pace <g>. Time to open another window. Browser window that is.

JD Lasica, king of RSS, and from Open Media, is next up. More tools -- woohoo! Newmediamusings.com is his blog. Journalist, consultant, author, blogger -- sounds familiar -- or will, when I start my blog.

Time to talk RSS and syndication. Half know what RSS is, half have used it, half are clueless. Bloglines -- good place to start. Web interface, so you get it all no matter where you are.

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. Short version of his talk -- RSS is his friend and should be yours. Which ones? FeedDemon,  NetNewswire lite. 

RSS lets you snag disparate feeds from many places, then you can comment and play. Every major blog tool has RSS built into it. You don’t have to know how to code. Other things can be RSS syndicated, too. Newspapers use them, various publishers and news and health sites, stock quotes.

RSS allows users to reduce the clutter and focus on the info. You just get what you want.

The gang’s confused -- what’s RSS, what’s a feed? It’s the new XML, which was the new black, which was the new brown last year in Paris.

Buzzwords: RSS, Atom, feed, XML, newsreader, aggregator, subscription, syndication. Is this stuff sexy, or what?

RSS and Atom are two different formats. XML is the underlying stuff. They allow you to “roll” your own newspaper (whoa! '70s flashback, but I never rolled anything in newspaper). Get only what you want.

Newsreaders and aggregators are how you read that stuff. They go to a URL that points to a feed file, grabs it, and presents it to you at your convenience. But you don’t have to worry about it, because the blog sites will do it for you.

Now we’re walking through Bloglines. NewsGator. Also have plug-ins for your Outlook or for browsers. NetNewswire lite is free. The paid version has more tools built in and you can publish with it.

They’re putting more buzzwords up, but you don’t need to worry about them. That’s why there are blogging tools. And if you have a tech department, guy or whatever, he, she or it can set it up for you. I need an aggregator -- note to self.

Good analogy coming up. Back in the day, if you weren’t on the Web you were missing a level of societal conversation. Now that you’re on the Web, RSS is it. It’s a way for you to tap into what your customers are saying in real time (or close to it).

RSS is TiVo for the Web. Perfect. OK, now can we move on?

Not yet. This is interesting. Only one RSS feed requires registration. But they don’t all put all the content up. And RSS ensures that your content is actually being seen. NYTimes.com visitors go three times a month, feeders see it every day.

Again, feeds are your friend.

And write sexy, cool headlines. It’s all about the clicks, baby.

Link me, baby

Next up -- linking with Mary Potter? Related to Harry? Oh, my bad, it’s Hodder, and she’s from Technorati. OK, I’m getting punchy -- I need tea and a biology break. BTW, if you want to see what XML looks like, go to any blog and click on the XML button.

Back to linking. She’s been in this for four years -- that’s 100 years in blog time. She’s talking about what happens when you create something and the RSS info goes out.

Second-order tools? That means Technorati, Feedster and other aggregation system. They spider or collect RSS information.

Sorry, went away for a minute to enter a Boot Camp blog contest to make Susan Mernit laugh with a link. Let’s hope Wavy Gravy’s Web site  does the trick.

We’re back with Pub Sub. It finds new content as it appears on the Internet. I have to investigate this. The home page says they match new sites to user subscriptions, pretty much in real time. You can tell it to search for a specific word or phrase, and it’ll keep you alerted until you cry “Uncle!” It also has interesting stats on who’s linking to whom. This is a cool tool, but…

OK, to be honest, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by all this. Do I want to be connected in real-time to everything? I recognize this feeling from the launch of CNN. Just have to learn to shut it off, I guess.

Now we’re looking at Feedster. They have 800,000 RSS feeds. Technocratic has 3.2 million -- how do that many people have time to blog?!? There are 264,000 links from 19,000 sources alone to the New York Times at this moment. I’m fascinated by people’s fascination with linking.

Even if you don’t have a blog, use these two and search for your company to find out what folks are saying about you.

This all is the realization, to some extent, of push technology. Remember how much that sucked when it first came out? This time it works, if you understand the rules.

BTW, these tools are free for now. And so are we -- for the next 30 minutes, anyway.

Read part two