BlogHer is the largest online group for women bloggers. Once a year, the women behind BlogHer hold a conference for all the people who consider themselves part of the BlogHer community. Last year, I wasn’t too familiar with BlogHer, but I heard about the breakout sessions they were holding in Second Life, and I was definitely intrigued. This year, they offered sessions in Second Life once again, and I was able to check-in on a few of them.

Friday morning began with the keynote speech, which due to a few technical difficulties I wasn’t able to listen in on. There were several technical issues as people worked to use the Voice capability in SL which was not available last year. There was some time between the keynote and the first breakout session while everyone worked to figure out the the Voice Chat options.

Breakout session #1 was about the Intersection of Blogging and Second Life. The panel was led by Cybergrrl Oh (aka Aliza Sherman), and featured:
* Ana Herzog (aka Nancy Hill)
* Gidge Uriza (aka Bridgette McNeal)
* Queen Tureaud (aka Erin Kotecki Vest)
The women on this panel are somewhat famous both within Second Life and out, for their blogs. They talked about the different ways that blogging both about real life things and Second Life things takes a great deal of prioritization. They also talked a great deal about how to get into Second Life, especially for those that want to get involved with different womens groups or activists groups within Second Life, of which there are many. The session was pretty open between conversation led from the panelists and questions from the audience. For those that were new to Second Life, there was some discussion on why and how people would create blogs about Second Life topics, as well as the discipline it can take to create blogs with multiple topics versus multiple blogs each with their own topic. There was also a bit of conversation between the panelists and audience about how much more talkative and community like a virtual world can make us feel.

The second Breakout session was about Second Life and Security. The panelists were:
* Padlurowncanoe Dibou, formerly in charge of Hillary Clinton’s in-world HQ and co-Founder of MUVErs, LLC
* Patty Streeter (aka Jody DeVere from AskPatty.com)
* Daisy Beauchamps (owner of Santuary Rock in SL)

I really enjoyed this panel because the ladies really talked a lot of common sense about security issues both in Second Life specifically, as well as in dealing with any groups in-world or out. They talked a bit about trust and how this can effect who you decide to work with in-world. Because virtual words can create a closer sense between people, it’s often difficult to assess a proper level of caution when it comes to business dealings. The ladies talked about how to investigate people that one might consider working with – and I think a lot of the topics they touched on could be useful in the real world, not just Second Life.

After the two Breakout sessions on Friday there was a event led by Patty Streeter on Motorability Island where the guests were given their own race cars to run around the available tracks. Yours truly came in First on the first race, and second on the second race.

The Breakfast Keynote speech Saturday morning was live from the BlogHer conference in San Fransisco. Lisa Stone moderates this conversation with Redbook editor-in-chief Stacy Morrison, Essence Communications Director of Digital Development, Lesley Pinckney and Bravo TV’s Senior VP of New Media and Digital, Lisa Hsia. I found this session really interesting to listen to. The women talked about the differences in the different types of media and how their different companies have been trying to bring some of these technologies together. Like BravoTV integrating more audience interaction in some of their shows (like the questions during Project Runway last season) or the tons of different blogs they’ve integrated into their website for all the different shows. There was also some discussion about how difficult it is to get some of these media giants to use new technology, and how some companies don’t want to “use the media, they want to be the media” (quote from Lesley Pinckney, talking about Twitter). Check out the live-blog of this session over at here.

Breakout Session #3 was about Second Life as an Educational or Training Tool. The panel was:
* Lila iReport (CNN)
* Dannette Veale (from Cisco)
* In Kenzo (aka Evonne Heyning, Creative Director and Interactive Producer for Amoration)
* Padlurowncanoe Dibou, formerly in charge of Hillary Clinton’s in-world HQ and co-Founder of MUVErs, LLC
* Fleep Tuque (aka Chris Collins from the University of Cincinnati)

All of these women are involved in different aspects of Second Life, and are using it in different ways to either train people, or educate people about a subject. CNN has created a whole group of in-world citizen journalists, and use Second Life to train people on citizen journalism. Cisco has been using it to help bring together people in their business – help them create an avatar in-world, and then attend different presentations or sessions about their business. The ladies talk about how useful SL can be because of the graphic capabilities that can be utilized to demonstrate differerent conversations. And how the visual aspects can help people retain knowledge of real world subjects. They talk a little bit about how different schools (like the University of Washington or Cincinnati) have been using it as part of their continuing education departments. There aren’t any degree programs yet available, but there’s a lot of different classes that are available if you sign up with the participating schools. There was some interaction here with the audience as well with people talking about the different types of learning environments (like Language Labs) they’d been involved with or discovered in-world. Personally, I find it really intriguing how much more it could affect a learning capability to be able to be immersed visually into a subject that someone is trying to learn.

Due to some real life appointments, I missed out on the fourth Breakout session about Using Second Life for Good, and the evening Keynote from SF called . Overall though, I’ll admit having a good time attending the SL sessions. It’s not the same as attending a conference like this in real life, but it’s a decent substitute. I also really have to give a hand to the organizers of the Second Life events, the whole thing had a much more conference feel to it this year than it did last year. The exhibitors area was definitely more organized than last year, and had the conference feel because it was in a different place than the sessions took place.

If you want to know more about the real world sessions of the BlogHer 2008 Conference, check out some of the links to the live-blogging that happened in San Fransisco. There’s a good round-up here.