blogworldexpo.com”>It’s not just because I’ve never been to Las Vegas, but that is something I’m looking forward to. And it’s not just that blogworldexpo.com”>BlogWorld & New Media Expo is featuring an exciting array of speakers across a range of topics - blogging, podcasting, videoblogging, social networking, search engine optimization.

That too.

But a big attraction for me is that for three days in November I am going to have the opportunity to hang out with a bunch of bloggers across a wide spectrum of interests, from the business bloggers like myself, to military bloggers and political bloggers and maybe knitting bloggers.

I think it was being interviewed by Jim Turner on BlogTalk Radio and picking up on his excitement about the event that got my attention. Not that I haven’t been looking forward to the event, but I’ve been pretty preoccupied with a more immediate trip - tomorrow in fact - to China, to speak at ad:tech Beijing.

You can listen to or download the half hourblogtalkradio.com/BlogWorldExpo/blog/2007/10/05/blog-worl-rexpo-goes-down-under”> interview, BlogTalk Radio Goes Downunder, here.

Looking at the conference program and knowing that the 20,00 sq feet of exhibition space is just abut booked out, I don’t think I’m going to have time for jetlag.

It has to be the place for bloggers to be in November. And if you’ve been thinking about it (or, for that matter, haven’t been till now but are starting to think about it), I’m happy to say that Rick Calvert, the organiser of the event, has offered a special discount for readers of this blog (and friends, family, etc), just by registering and quoting the code DWVIP. That will get you a 15% discount and it is available till Oct 30th. Pre-registration ends and prices rise on Oct 19th, so if you want to take advantage of the better prices now, make sure you register before Oct 19th.

My session, with Rich Brooks of Flyte New Media, will be just after lunch on the Executive & Entrepreneur Day, Nov 7. But whether you attend that session or not, I hope you will say hello (or even G’day).

If you are on a few “blog guru” mailing lists you will have seen promotions for courses on how to use your blog to create a book.

Today I used that thinking to save myself some unnecessary extra work and help me meet a deadline. Not that I created a book out of a blog. Rather, I was able to update a whole section of a book, without having to re-research the content and re-write the whole section.

blog.com”>The book is my blog.com”>7 Step Business Blog. The section in question was about feed (RSS) readers.

I’d been vacillating about doing an update or new edition of the book. It was about a year in the making, off and on, and was originally published a couple of years ago. So much has changed, I was thinking that maybe I should re-cast the book completely and had even started to work on a new framework. But that had started to look like a whole new book and I did not believe I could fit that in before my imminent trip to China and then shortly after to the USA.

I seem to be noticing more and more blogs with a little array of different national flags, clickable to transform the text of a blog instantly into a language of choice. And I know from stats reports that visitors to this site are by no means all from English-speaking countries. So while I imagine a lot of those visitors are fluent in English I’ve been wondering lately whether it would be a good idea, or not, to have automatic language translation installed.

The flags are of course not essential. Sun Microsystem’s CEO blogs.sun.com/jonathan/”>Jonathan Schwartz’s blog has a dropdown menu with the languages listed, on the header of the blog.

For WordPress blogs, there are plugins to provide a translation facility. It seems to me that there are at least three issues for anyone thinking about using one of these plugins for a business blog:

• where do you find a reliable plugin
• how do you install it and get it running properly
• how good is the translation?

blogs-useful/#more-618″>(more…)

I’m pretty sure my blog/”>search for a new WordPress theme for this blog is done.

This brief - I suspect my briefest ever - post is to:

• mention that the theme for this blog is being changed today
• apologize in advance for any confusion, as I can’t guarantee I’ll get it right first time!

I’m finding it a bit of a juggle at the moment to post here consistently. I seem to be spending more time on reorganizing the machinery than I really want to, but I’m going to be doing a lot of travelling soon - China, USA - and this sort of thing is better done, in my experience, at home base rather than on the road.

A good slab of researching and writing time yesterday went on the blogoz-australian-blogging-conference-roundup/”>blogoz overview post I did for my deswalsh.com blog. The day before and late into the evening, I spent a lot of time checking out potential new themes for that blog and then installing and tweaking the one I finally decided upon, Brian Gardner’s Silhouette theme. I swapped that for another of his themes, Vertigo Blue 3-column, which is a very good theme, but was not really what I wanted for the longer term.

I quite like also the theme I’m currently using here, Vertigo Red 3-column, which is the same as Vertigo Blue 3-column except for the colour. But again, I’m not comfortable with the graphic image in terms of how I see this blog’s future development. Not sure how best to put that, but while I see it as stylish, I also see it as a bit sombre or heavy for what I want.

Another consideration is that I’m really irritated by a problem for which I can’t find an instant solution, a database error, which manifests itself as I type this, in a block of text - below the editing tool box - as follows:

WordPress database error: [Table ‘wordpress_thinkinghomebusiness_com.wp_post2cat’ doesn’t exist]
SELECT cat_ID AS ID, MAX(post_modified) AS last_mod FROM `wp_posts` p LEFT JOIN `wp_post2cat` pc ON p.ID = pc.post_id LEFT JOIN `wp_categories` c ON pc.category_id = c.cat_ID WHERE post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY cat_ID

I’m not unique in experiencing this problem. Nor does it appear that anyone has a simple solution - at least that’s how it looks to my non-technical eye from studying exchanges like this. The problem is apparently related to installation of the latest version of WordPress, 2.3.

I’ve tried out a whole stack of WordPress themes today/tonight. I’ve been sticking largely to the 3 column ones, as I find that gives me more scope for placing items in the sidebars. And, as this site is using the latest version of WordPress, 2.3, at first I was using just themes that are listed by WordPress as compatible with WP 2.3. Then I started to try a few others. I’m guessing that there are themes which are in fact WP 2.3 compatible but for some or other reason are not on the list. My inclination is to err on the side of prudence and install a theme which is on the list.

One theme I like - and have tested successfully on one of my currently less-trafficked blogs (not, however, upgraded as yet to WP 2.3 - is blogohblog.net/”>Big Blue. It has a lot of what I’m looking for and is on the list as WP 2.3 compatible.

I’ve noticed also, here and there, some warnings that some plugins might not be compatible with WP2.3, so I will be checking that list too.

Suggestions, preferably not too technical, welcome.

blogoz is the tag adopted for posting about the Australian Blogging Conference held in Brisbane a week ago.

Today I’ve put together and posted on my deswalsh.com site a blogoz-australian-blogging-conference-roundup/”>roundup of posts about the conference, including the blogging-conference/”>post on this site last weekend.

blogoz-australian-blogging-conference-roundup/”>blogozpost.jpg” alt=”blogoz post on deswalsh.com” align=”middle” border=”0″ height=”193″ width=”450″ />

My intention is to put future posts on the topic on that blog, rather than here.

A couple of weeks ago, along with a lot of other people, I signed up for blogrush.com”>BlogRush, which was then the latest and greatest hope for a system offering the prospect of generating amazing traffic to your blog while you sleep.
In blogrush-traffic-klondyke-or-fools-gold/”>BlogRush: Traffic Klondike or Fool’s Gold? I rounded up a range of comments on the new system and indicated my mixture of mildly hopeful curiosity and scepticism.

A few days later I read a blogrush-stats-can-john-reese-make-this-work/”>post by Yaro Starak who had been an early adopter of BlogRush. When I saw the stats Yaro displayed for his BlogRush account, including credits of nearly 300,000 and 733 bloggers in his BlogRush network, and then saw how pathetic my figures were against that, I thought it was game over, shut the gate, at least as far as I was concerned.

But further on in the post in question, Yaro made the point that because BlogRush is set up to display post links, from other blogs, with some affinity with your own blog’s topics, one of the benefits of BlogRush could be to help us find other bloggers of like mind or similar interests, whom we might not otherwise come across.

Tonight I’ve put that observation of Yaro’s together with a contribution he made last Friday when, moderating a discussion at the blogging-conference/”>Australian Blogging Conference, I put him on the spot to come up instantly with three key ways people could use to increase their blog traffic. His first point? “The best source of traffic is another blogger linking to you”. And what’s the first thing that has to happen before a blogger can know about me/my blog, and vice versa? We have to find out that the other exists.

So maybe BlogRush could even be helpful for bloggers like me, who do not have the large numbers Yaro and some others can boast.

What is a bit frustrating is that I don’t have any idea what figures I may now have. And tonight when I logged in again in the hope of getting some up to date figures, I got the following message.

We don’t yet have enough data for your account. Please check back soon for custom reporting.

Odd, that. They had figures a couple of weeks ago.

Actually, on most of the occasions over the past couple of weeks that I’ve logged in to get a report there’s been some sort of “we’re working on it, please be patient” type message. No doubt they’ll have it all working properly, one of these days, but the lack of availability after the breathlessness of the launch reminds me that cautiousness may not be such a bad thing in the face of heavily hyped Great New Traffic Things for the Web/blogosphere.

I’ll leave the widget in place for a while, just to see if there is anything of interest. And if it helps me make contact with some interesting new bloggers I might not connect with otherwise, that can only be good.

I have however dropped the widget well down the page, out of the prime space it was taking up for a short while. That will mean even less traffic, no doubt. It will also mean I won’t need to fret about it.

I had a full-on and very rewarding experience on Friday 28th, participating with around a hundred others in the blogoz/blog_index.html”>Australian Blogging Conference in Brisbane, at the Queensland University of Technology campus.

The schedule covered a range of topics, from blogging and politics, through legal issues to business blogging and the future of blogging.

It’s a great tribute to the organiser of the conference, lawyer and QUT academic Peter Black, to have sustained through several setbacks his vision of creating this event and finally achieving it.

The proceedings were launched graciously by Professor The Hon. Michael Lavarch, Professor of Law and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, and probably known better outside Queensland as Federal Attorney-General during the Keating era.

That and the rest of the morning part of the event were pretty cruisy for me as I had no official responsibilities till the afternoon. So I was able to relax and enjoy the initial, general session, with Peter Black in the chair and featuring blog/”>Senator Andrew Bartlett, Professor John Quiggin and Duncan Riley, on :

* Why are blogs becoming so ubiquitous?
* What is unique about the Australian blogosphere?

After the coffee break I sat in on a very absorbing two hour session on legal issues, including copyright and defamation. The discussion was led very ably and authoritatively by Professor Brian Fitzgerald, with Dale Clapperton and Nic Suzor. Lots of food for thought and valuable information for any of us advising businessess on blogging issues. And a moral of the story for me, as a non-lawyer, was: you need to be careful about the legal implications of blogging but if you always anticipate the worst possible outcomes you will probably not blog.

Derek Barry has posted a report on another of the pre-lunch sessions, on blogspot.com/2007/09/australian-blogging-conference-politics.html”>politics and blogging.

After lunch - and by the way, hat tip to the organisers, sponsors and caterers for the provision of ample supplies of excellent refreshments - it was time for me to saddle up and join my very knowledgeable colleagues Joanne Jacobs and Nick Hodge in leading the two hour session on Business and Corporate Blogging. Our session was sponsored by Microsoft. We followed the guidelines Peter Black had sent us, especially the section “Think of it as a weblog”:

Think of the conference as if it were a weblog. At the beginning of each session, the leader talks between five and fifteen minutes. He or she will introduce the idea and some of the people in the room.

Then he or she will facilitate the discussion among all the contributors in the room, inviting others to comment and asking questions of others. It is hoped that everyone who would like to contribute to the discussion will be able to do so in the allotted time.

The response to this approach was really good and the feedback we’ve had was that people appreciated the level of participation by the people formerly known as the audience.

Check out Joanne’s notes on the session and Nick’s, with picture of the three discussion leaders. And see David Jacobson’s report on the session.

Yaro Starak responded positively to a late alert by me about the conference and my invitation to join me in leading one of the final sessions, a discussion about promoting your blog: Yaro has posted about the conference at his blogging-conference-recommend-links/”>Entrepreneur’s Journey site. It was great to have Yaro there, sharing what works - and doesn’t. Again, we worked on seeking full participation and were not disappointed, with some excellent contributions from participants.

One of those participants, John Harking, a SEO specialist, has written a blog.com/?p=108″>brief report on the session.

Special thanks to Duncan Riley who, seeing I was having a bit of a challenge in both helping to lead the discussion and bring up some sites online, jumped in and took over the latter role, very effectively of course.

Robyn Rebollo on her blogspot.com/2007/09/australian-blogging-confernece.html”>Accidental Aussie site reports on several sessions, including the other final session, led by Dan Walsh, one of the founders of conference sponsor Kwoff, on the future of blogging (Dan and I are not related, but the listing led to a little frisson of confusion - “Des, how come you are leading two sessions at the same time?”).

At the end of the day’s proceedings, a number of us adjourned to the nearby Normanby pub where over a few ales/wines/bevvies of choice we continued the conversation, got to know more of some new people and others we had previously known only virtually or only by name.

All in all, a great day. Social networking was excellent: as Julie Edwards says, “meeting new friends is great”. And it’s good that Peter Black is keen to continue the event, with Melbourne flagged as the venue city for 2008.

A word on sponsorship. From past experience with helping to organise sponsorship in this country, for even the most worthy and timely of events, I know it is a hard slog. Most Australian companies, in my experience, don’t want to be the first to sponsor something, or to sponsor an as yet untried idea. So in the annals of blogging in Australia, there should be recorded a special mention of the inaugural sponsors and hosts of the Australian Blogging Conference:

Gold Sponsor

Premiere Sponsors

Hosts

• ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation
• Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Law

If you have posted a report or comment on the day’s events and I haven’t caught it yet, or if you know of other reports of the event than the ones I have linked to here, please share the link in the comments here.

Yesterday I was dismayed to see so little media or blogosphere coverage of the crisis in Burma. Today my impression is that there is more mainstream media coverage starting to happen.

It’s different this time around. Not a repeat of 1988, when 3,000 people were killed out of sight of the rest of the world, thanks to the military junta’s control of communications then.

What’s different now is that we have not just the Internet, but camera-equipped cell phones and YouTube.

And according to The Guardian’s Mark Tran’s story Burma Bloggers keep one step ahead of the junta, bloggers are playing a key role in getting the story out:

Despite attempts at erecting a digital wall around Burma, the bloggers, working around the clock, have managed to post pictures and videos of events almost as soon as they occur.

Many images have been picked up by mainstream news organisations, because bloggers have caught images that no one else can capture.

And now the junta is, according to a story by David Pallister in The Guardian, “desperately” trying to shut down internet and phone links to the outside world.

For hourly updates, as close to “on-the-spot” as most are likely to get, there is the Thailand-based Irrawaddy Journal, run by Burmese exiles.

Still not much sign of activity from the leading bloggers of the free world. A search on Technorati showed “burma” as a hot topic, but with no top listings from any blog with a Technorati authority over 30. Nor did Google Blogsearch give any more joy on that front.

So are we bloggers in free countries with the Burma bloggers, risking their freedom and maybe their lives, or not?

I’m generally not the guy to ask about signing petitions: so often the wording is too all-encompassing and I am by no means a poltical radical. But I’m making an exception for the AVAAZ.org “Stand With the Burmese Protestors” petition. Yesterday it had just over 45,000 signatures. Today there are over 85,000, which suggests that it won’t take a lot to reach the target of 100,000. Yes, if you sign you will probably get email about other campaigns, but if that’s a problem you can always unsubscribe.

Normally, on this blog, I refrain from any political posts. Today is different. Today, not too far to the north of where I live, men with guns are terrorizing unarmed citizens and monks, who are peacefully defying the terror.

I’ve been looking around the web/blogosphere this morning. Not much sign of outrage or anxiety. Items on several media sites tell basically the same discouraging story - The Guardian for example. And there are some blogs, such as blog.blogspot.com/2007/09/myanmar-monk-revolution-continues.html”>The Buddhist Blog, providing updates.

Early conditioning is powerful. I still find it a bit of a challenge to remember that Burma is also called Myanmar - but that’s the junta’s name for it and a lot of pro-democracy people are happier with Burma, so I’ll stick with Burma.

I’ve never been there. Looked across the river from Thailand, but that’s it. And at that time my attitude was (and is) that democracy-loving people should show solidarity with the people of Burma by not going there as tourists, although I know there is an argument that such a stance makes things worse.

But to date, that refusal to go into the country as a tourist has been my sole protest on behalf of the people of Burma.

Has the rest of the world - have I - become inured to thinking that things can’t improve there? Have the generals succeeded in convincing the world that resistance is futile?

Where are the crowds in Western cities, demonstrating in support of the monks and citizens who are risking their lives?

Where do we go in person or online to sign a petition? And would that help? Here’s one you could check out.

The “no attribution, please” caption on this picture reinforces the story of repression.

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