I'm BlogHer14 Bound. Are You?

The BlogHer14 conference is in one week, in fabulous downtown San Jose. I am speaking there. Twice! As you might have guessed by all those banners to the left. Are you coming to the conference? If not, here is the agenda and how to register*. Please come. Because I am freaking out a bit.

Old-timey camaraderie at BlogHer '06:
SJ & Laura & my natural hair color.

I am not freaking about speaking, not so much. I speak all over the place all the time (plus I spoke at BlogHer '08, BlogHer '10, & BlogHer '11). Speaking is monologuing and that is easy; small talk, & conversations with people with whom I am not already on a fart joke basis, is hard. And there are just not that many fart joke friends coming to BlogHer this year. Jen Myers, my long-suffering social crutch, had the nerve to go out and get an office job, damn her. Jenijen will be working her cute little butt off as a BlogHer staffer (as opposed to BlogHer 2006, where she worked her cute little butt off as a conference volunteer). Beloved SJ of I, Asshole? Also not coming. So if you are coming and you know me and you like fart jokes, please say so.

I am excited about next week's conference though. Because, ha ha ha ha, the funny BlogHer people have me and the very impressive Danah Boyd warming up the crowd for The Bloggess's conference opening keynote. (Danah & I are participating in the very cool 10x10 project.) The Bloggess shares extensive tone cues with SJ & I, Asshole, and Danah professionally groks networked teens like my Iz, so even if people throw rotten fruit at me, I will be on stage with cool people. Here is more info on that event:

Welcome Keynote featuring Jenny Lawson, and the 10X10 Project

Best-selling author of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened and blogger extraordinaire -- aka The Bloggess -- opens our anniversary conference with her special, and wildly successful, brand of off-the-wall humor, as she launches her second book, Furiously Happy.

10x10 Project: Danah Boyd and Shannon Des Roches Rosa look back at what the blogosphere built and look ahead to where we’re going, covering 10 years in 10 minutes.

Then I'm speaking again the next day, at the Special Needs Caregiving mini-con, along with Kristina Chew and Jen Lee Reeves. This will be three (!) hours of intra- and inter-communities communing, and I hope many different voices will be there so we can all learn a lot from each other. That might seem snarky, especially if you are imagining that sentence read in my typical speaking voice, but I am sincere. Hope to speak at, and awkwardly converse with, many many folks there.

The most exciting part of the conference doesn't involve me at all, though. I am talking about the Closing Keynote: Meet Us at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Feminism and the Internet, which echoes what may be my favorite BlogHer session of all time: 2008's Mirrors: Ours, the Media's, Our Cultures', and Our Kids'. The link between the two sessions? Unsurprisingly, the incomparable Kelly Wickham, AKA Mocha Momma. Here's what the closing keynote is all about, and who will be speaking:

Our hope is to host a conversation where we can be real, we can get uncomfortable, we can walk a mile in other women's shoes, and—most of all—we can walk away feeling like we know how to be better and do better. Understand more and speak up more. Together, we can extinguish the flame-war-ridden Web and be a part of the powerful and boundary-breaking Web. Are we all in?

Speakers:

• Feminista Jones, BlogHer's own Sex and Relationships editor, who has been at the center of some raging Internet debates. 

• Grace Hwang Lynch, BlogHer's own News and Politics editor, who also blogs about her mixed-race Asian family at Hapamama. 

• Kelly Wickham, manifesto-maker at MochaMomma. 

• Kristen Howerton, regularly raising her voice on the intersection of race and gender and faith at Rage Against the Minivan. 

• Natalia Oberti Noguera, working for change within the power structure as founder of the Pipeline Fellowship. 

• Patrice Lee, a conservative woman of color who immigrated to the U.S. as a child and represents an oft-unheard perspective.

Looking forward to seeing you at BlogHer '14, folks. Right? 

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*So sorry, students; your passes are already sold out.