Dave is keynoting. He takes his usual expansive view of what is a blog. And, he gently chides Michael Gartenberg for saying that you should keep your business blog free of personal opinion. Dave says that by including personal stuff you give your customers, clients and partners a sense of who you are.

He sees blogging as part of a much broader social change: speaking in your own voice, admitting that you’re not perfect. (At one point Dave used “We make shitty software” as a disclaimer for his company.) He ties blogs to The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Dave has an equally expansive view of journalism: if you disclose your conflicts of interest and you don’t lie, you’re a journalist. That allows for a lot of overlap. Dave takes a question: Doesn’t journalism have to be edited? Dave says that editing doesn’t always improve the article. Doc says that all of his stuff is edited: some gets edited by an editor and some gets edited by his readers. Now there’s an audience free-for-all about the differences between blogging and journalism. Few hold out for a strong distinction. (Jeff Jarvis argues for a difference between having a trained journalist reporting from a site and a blogger commenting on it.)

Very interactive for a keynote. And his last line: “Idealism: Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

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