Blogging Friends

One of the great advantages of blogging is that you meet so many interesting bloggers face to face that you've been reading.  I've been lucky enough to meet Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By, Yvonne DeVita at Lipsticking, and  the Diva of Marketing, Toby Bloomberg. 

Others I've met at Blogging Gatherings, at the first Blogger Con, back when I was just a reader and the idea of actually writing a blog seemed terrifying.    I've learned a lot and met a few people at the Thursday meetings at Harvard's Berkman Center even though I'm only a sporadic attendee.  People like Bill Ives, Dave Weinberger, Lisa Williams who also posts at a very interesting and local H20 town and Amanda Watlington.

The most recent blogger bash was an after-hours American Marketing Association where I met John Cass of Backbone Media whose recent survey of corporate blogging has just been published and which I plan to discuss over at Estate Legacy Vaults blog.  You can download it here and join the conversation at its very own blog.

One of my new blogging friends, Dina Lynch, is the Mediation Mensch.  That's mediation, not meditation.  Mediation uses a neutral third party to resolve disputes between two parties, well short of the all out warfare that  lawsuits too often engender.

I have a soft spot for mediators since my Dad was one and an arbitrator too, at one point, President of the American Academy of Arbitrators.  I'm happy to see how far the field of mediation has come in public acceptance as a legitimate and preferred alternative method of resolving disputes.  It means that we are learning to rise above our differences to stand on a higher common ground.

If you're interested in mediation, jump over to Mediation Mensch.  Dina is even making the generous  offer to coach two new practitioners for free.  Hard to beat that.

Many of my other blogging friends, and they are legion, I will meet at Blogher on July 30 out in Santa Clara.  Registration is almost full, but you still have time until registration closes on July 25th or until they fill the last 40 seats whichever comes first.