I'm speaking on a panel at the 2006 Blogher Conference, so I'm here along with a bunch of other great folks from Weblogs, Inc. Most of my conference experience has been in finance, where few sponsors felt the need to "reach" the critical, overworked bunch.

As I get introduced to many of the other speakers, volunteers, workers and sponsors, I'm immediately struck at how much the sponsors want us. Last night in the pre-conference cocktail party for speakers and Blogher volunteers, a woman from a marketing consulting firm talked about how much Brands need us, almost as if Brands was the name of a geeky single guy longing for a dinner date. What's more, in many case, we want the Brands right back. As I type this, I'm drinking a lovely French mineral water that has almost all the calcium I need each day! And magnesium! (and what's more, Truman, my 15-month-old date for the conference, loves the bottle).

We're here to have fun, and we'll likely be blogging Blogher around the Weblogs, Inc. network, on Slashfood (after all, Meg Hourihan of Blogger fame says: food blogging is "what's next!"), on Blogging Stocks (I'm keen to write about Yahoo!'s flickr after the keynote talk by founder Caterina Fake), and of course, on Blogging Baby (mommy bloggers seem in especially high profile today).