I am still unpacking what happened during the Emotional Life of Weblogs discussion on Saturday. It was the last session of the conference, and it was like a dessert. It was rich and sweet. It was something to be savored. It was satisfying. From what I've heard and read, I think others in the room felt the same.

Since I was leading the discussion, I wasn't able to take notes myself but Enoch Choi and Susan Mernit posted great collections of quotes.
 
Our journey together as a group explored many of the areas I had mentioned in my description of the session: Public versus private. Integration and liberation. Welcome and respect. What causes change? Making connections. Listening and linking. Sharing stories.

The session ended with a minute of silence for reflection, as someone suggested.
 
Afterwards, people told me it was a favorite session. The group was small and intimate, 20 people or so in size. I think that everyone who wanted to share was able to share, even lengthy stories. At the end someone asked if we could all write our blog urls on the  white board so that we could keep in touch with each other. It seemed that we had built a sense of community together in a short time. I was encouraged.

I think that that topic of  "Emotional Life" is a powerful one.  Reading comments on blogs, I've noticed that sometimes people seemed to forget the exact name of the session or my name but they always described the way it impacted them. As the leader, I tried to provide sparks to start discussion. I listened and tried to ensure everyone was understood. I tried to create connections between participants and threads of conversation. I shared examples from my own life as illustrations. The group though probably would have done very well without me: conversation flowed constantly. Although I confess I would have liked more people to have been there and shared the experience, I think the smaller size was crucial for helping people connect and giving everyone an opportunity to speak.

Leading the session had deep personal meaning to me. At first I was nervous, knowing where I wanted the group to go, but not sure how to get us there. But then I realized that all I needed to do was speak from the passion inside me. When  Dave Winer first asked me if I wanted to lead a session, he offered that I could inherit John Perry Barlow's topic of Emotional Life from BloggerCon II. The thought of comparison to Barlow intimidated me. He and I are quite different and his session at BC II was amazing. On Saturday though I saw that that I can talk about emotional life too. I gave examples from my experience, sharing stories of connections I had found through blogging, ones that I was still feeling, intimate to the point of tears.

I believe that people have gifts and purpose in life. Maybe this sounds silly. But as I was leading the group, and afterwards, as others told me what it meant to them, I realized how much I enjoyed it. Talking about relationships, emotions and connections is what I want to do. I felt that through this time as a discussion leader at BloggerCon I discovered something inside me. I hope others made new discoveries too.

I hope that the "Emotional Life" topic will continue in future BloggerCons. Twice now it has been a powerful session. I would be curious though to see how it would translate through other cultures, such as the UK. I hope that what I have written here will help whoever wants to lead a similiar session.

Thank you again, Dave, for inviting me and trusting me. Thank you to readers of my blog whose comments on posts helped me think through the session. Thank you to everyone who came and shared the time we had together on Saturday afternoon, for the postive atmosphere and community we created.

On my blog I have posted a picture of the white board and the list of urls from the group . However, I hope we can begin continuing the discussion from this follow-up post on the BloggerCon site. I hope that those who are interested will gather here. Please comment and continue our conversation. If there is something we should do to create a conduit, such as start a group blog, then please suggest. I look forward to sharing with each other more and diving deeper into this mystery of humanity that we call emotional life.

# Posted by Julie Leung on 11/11/04; 3:16:28 PM - --