Blogging about blogging

Although this might be on the verge of being to navel-staring, I'm going to give it a shot and blog about blogging. Not my blogging in particular, but blogging in general, or more widely, user created content and can you make money out of it. The panel session I attended Friday afternoon at the Media Summit (which was too short alas) dealt with this topic specifically: is there money to be made from user generated content? The short answer is: maybe. The long answer is: we don't know. One of the audience members commented on the semantics of user created content like blogging, defining user created content as voluntary, not expecting payment for it, and anything other does not fall under that header. I'm very interested to see how this subject evolves, since there are so many different aspects to this subject, and every argument you want to make can be supported or refuted by evidence. I suspect we'll just have to wait and see.

One of the keynote speakers at the Media Summit was the CEO of Harper Collins UK, and I thought she was the best and most though provoking speaker at the conference. She touched on subjects such as 'why hasn't the physical format of the book not changed for hundreds of years' (answer: because no one has come up with something that is more practical and convenient than the current shape of the book) and 'what will be the role of publishers in the future' (answser: intermediary between authors and publishers). My book-historian's heart was warmed to see that my previous degrees haven't been wholly unuseful: I've studied the future of publishing before, and this felt like I was coming full circle.

Overall impression of the Media Summit: interesting stuff, well organised, lousy goody bag, great desserts, too tired to get the most out of it.