When we put together this very first conference, we were only able to have four topics – kind of dipping our toe into the water. So we had to pick topics that would work for all medbloggers (docs, nurses, patients, admins). Hence, you see the more generalized topics this year.

If this works and we are able to expand beyond this year, we can hopefully have concurrent sessions and have a more specific voice for different groups.

Patients are included – there is a patient blogger on the “State of the Blogsophere” panel, Patients can carry the Healthblogger Code of Ethics (and they do!), Patients use blogs to help promote change and provide information and so it’s important to patient bloggers to know how their voice/blog can be used and why it’s important to know how these impact the media, institutions, etc.

Personally, I have a huge patient blog roll and can tell you I’ve always considered patient bloggers as an integral part of the medblogger genre. And this from the very beginning of my blog. Reading patient blogs is enlightening, and as I have mentioned to other patient blogger/friends, I have learned more about the patient experience online than I would ever learn through my practice.

In case all you medical professionals aren’t aware of it, patient blogging is a pretty robust field. If y’all think YOU have an interest in how healthcare goes, consider how patients feel about it.

If the existence of patient blogs is news to you I’ll see if I can gather a few names…

When I first had the idea for BlogWorld, I thought it was just going to be political bloggers because that was the world I lived in but I wanted something more then Yearly Kos (now Net Roots Nation). I always found my political leanings to be in the middle and I had friends on both sides of the political blogosphere so I wanted an event where I could learn to build my own community, create better content, learn more about the technology of new media, and that thing that crosses all of our minds when we realize we have a lot of eyeballs; a place where I could learn how to monetize my content.

But more than anything I wanted to meet my fellow bloggers on the left and the right. I wanted them to meet each other. These people who threw virtual hammers at each other day after day on the internet and see how they got along together in person.

Low and behold when I started doing research to figure out how practical holding an event like BlogWorld would be, I realized the blogosphere and social media as a whole was a much bigger place than I had ever realized. I also quickly realized I was not alone in my narrow vision of the blogosphere.

So from day one we made the conscious effort to reach out to communities of bloggers so they could meet their friends, network and learn from each other, but the big sneaky idea behind it all was that was they actually got to the event they would realize the same thing I did:

THE BLOGOSPHERE IS FREAKING HUGE! and we are all no matter which vertical community we belong to a part of something much much bigger than our little community. We all need to reach outside our comfortable circles if this amazing medium of ours is really going to change the world.

So if you are like Kim and belong to a social media community that isnt being represented yet please send me an email rick@blogworldexpo.com.

There is a place for you at BlogWorld too.

/rant off