BlogHer ’08

Adele Nieves is a journalist, writer, blogger and speaker, focusing on politics, women's issues and race. She is Essence of Motown's "2007 Writer/Author of the Year," for her continued hard work, literary creativity, and her efforts to improve Michigan's literary community. Adele is co-organizer of Detroit Feminists, and an editor and contributing writer for Critical Moment Magazine. She also writes a monthly column for Women of Color (Yo Soy Mujer!) for Think Girl Monthly, a non-profit organization based in metro-Detroit dedicated to informing and empowering women through information and community programs.

Adrianne is an American Expatriate living in Europe since 2002.  She's lived and worked in London and Brussels and currently resides in Sweden.

She is the founder of the award winning Black Women in Europe Blog and the Black Women in Europe Social Network.  She is also active in the Swedish and international Expatriate community as the founder of several social networks.  She also authors the JobsinStockholm.com blog and is managing director of JobsinStockholm.com, a job site for English speaking professionals looking for jobs in Sweden.

Adrianne will be an official blogger at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August.

With founder Jennifer Cole, I am the current co-director of the GimpGirl Community, an online network which supports women with disabilities, their friends, and allies.

I'm a woman with a disability living in NYC, active in different projectsand circles, virtual and "real".  You can find me on Second Life as Aleja Asturias.

You'll find me at BlogHer online during Day 2, July 19th, 1:45-3:00 PM:
Second Life Break-Out Session #4: Using Second Life for Good
Led by Susan Tenby and featuring:
Connie Reece
Jennifer Cole and Aleja Ospina, the women behind GimpGirl.com

Alolita Sharma has been involved with open source since the early days of Linux. She has actively promoted open source software adoption in industry, government and developing economies for the past 12 years, working with leaders in US and India's IT industry, government and education to enable change and transparency. She believes that the ideas of open source can generate unbounded opportunity for the development of technology and economic prosperity in developing nations. She is co-founder of Technetra and has over 15 years in the industry. She co-created India's first open source business conference LinuxAsia, to serve as a platform for global industry leaders to interact with India's open source players from industry, government, academia and community. She speaks at major international conferences on open source trends and technologies. Her publications include a chapter on open source in India in Open Sources 2.0, a regular column on trends in Linux For You and open source technology reviews in Linux Journal. She holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from George Washington University where she also pursued doctoral studies. Her blog can be read at opensourcebuzz.technetra.com.

As the middle child in a family of four girls, I spent most of my life observing other people and committing their every move to memory so that I could hold it against them decades later and make them blush at social events. Fortunately, that tendency translated well to a career in journalism, which is what I have been doing since I was 18. Nothing makes me happier than making someone laugh or angrier than being in traffic. I enjoy waiting tables, running board meetings, having a beer on the front porch, cooking vegan cupcakes and holding hands with my short-armed husband. I also like to travel to places my parents warn me about and read books and magazines on the beach.Currently I spend my days revolutionizing women's media by throwing out experts and enlisting the wisdom of regular women with extraordinary insight at Capessa.com.

Amy Gahran is an info-provocateur, entrepreneur, consultant, trainer, coach, editor, and media strategist -- as well as a recovering journalist (with some lapses, it's a tough addiction). She blogs at Contentious.com , the Poynter Institute's  E-Media Tidbits, and several other places. At any given moment she is usually yammering about something on Twitter. (Although she's probably live-tweeting BlogHer 08 on her amylive Twitter account.) When she's not busy overthrowing the journalism and media establishments for the good of humankind, she's generally causing trouble in Boulder, CO. Or she's hanging out in her cabin in the Rockies, where odd things happen.

Angela Byron is an open source evangelist, for Drupal (an open source content management system) in particular. She got her start in both as a Google Summer of Code student in 2005. Since then, she has sought to immerse herself in the community as many different ways as possible. Her work includes coding and reviewing patches, creating and contributing to modules and themes, testing and quality assurance efforts within the project, improving documentation, and providing developer support on forums and IRC. Angela is on the Board of Directors for the Drupal Association, and is co-authoring the book Drupal JumpStart, to be published by O'Reilly in fall 2008.

Professionally, Angela works as a senior web architect for Lullabot, where she helps train other Drupal developers and provides consulting to high-profile clients such as BBC, Sony BMG Records, and MTV UK on how to build Drupal websites.

One of Angela's primary passions is talking to groups (particularly women) about the myriad of ways to get involved in open source, how it's done, and all the reasons why it's beneficial. She seeks to spread the word about how awesome open source is, and to help get that 1.5% of women involved a lot closer to 50%. :)

Anne-Marie is a 40-something WAHM, professional blogger, freelance copywriter, and social media consultant. Besides running several of her own blogs including A Mama’s Rant, This Mama Cooks! and My Readable Feast, she has blogged at ClubMom, 451Press, b5Media, DotMoms, and for clients like MOTHERS at MOTHERS Book Bag. Her blog for Studio One Networks, Citizen Mom’s Family Journal, won a 2006 webaward and a 2006 Silver Davey Award.

When she’s not showing Colorado book authors the hows and whys of blogging and social media, Anne-Marie is a community moderator at CafeMom and a social networking consultant for Mom Central Consulting. You can learn more about her at The Write Spot.

Beth Kanter is a trainer, blogger, and consultant to nonprofits and individuals in effective use of social media. Her expertise is how to use social media to support nonprofit missions.

She has worked on projects that include: training, curriculum development, research, and evaluation.

She is an experienced coach to "digital immigrants" in the personal mastery of these tools.

She is a professional blogger and writes about the use of social media tools in the nonprofit sector for social change at Beth's Blog.

In Second Life I'm Gidge Uriza and in Real Life I'm Bridgette (Gidge to friends) McNeal.  I blog several places around the digital world. My home/first blog is Live From The Wang of America. I am also a contributor on Draft Day Suit and Props and Pans I'm speaking at Blogher in Second Life at The Intersection of Blogging and Second Life.

I'm also one of your BlogHer In World Volunteers helping you learn enough about Second Life to truly enjoy the conference. I'm holding office hours for training on Mondays and Thursday from 8pm - 10pm at the iCNN center in Second Life and hope to see you there. 

A full time professional, mother of three and blogger, I play Second Life for fun and relaxation with my husband who also has an AV. We enjoy the social aspect, interacting with people from all over the world, as well as the vast arts community. To get a small slice of the Second Life world possibilities I encourage you to visit my Second Life blog, which is a fashion blog (yes - cartoon fashion, you heard it here).

Born in San Jose in 1979, Caille Millner was first published at age sixteen, and in 2002 she was named one of Columbia Journalism Review's Ten Young Writers on the Rise. A graduate of Harvard University, she is the author of a memoir, The Golden Road: Notes on My Gentrification (Penguin Press, 2007) and coauthor of Doubleday's The Promise: How One Woman Made Good on Her Extraordinary Pact to Send a Classroom of First Graders to College. She's received the Rona Jaffe Fiction Award as well as prizes from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, the National Press Club, and the New York Black Journalists Association. Currently on the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle, she has also written for Newsweek, Essence, The Washington Post, and The Fader.

Cathy has spent more than two decades working in and around media and communications. It began in 1982 with a job ripping wire copy (yes they actually still had wire copy machines) at the largest all news radio station in Philadelphia, PA. All these years later, Cathy’s experience in media encompasses reporting, writing, editing, broadcast management, strategy and syndication.

Cathy’s current media role brings together all of her skills in a very exciting venture – Seesmic. The fifth company of French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, Seesmic is an online media platform that enables global conversation using video as the conduit. At Seesmic Cathy leads Business Development. In this role she's responsible for working closely with Loic and driving any and all partnerships from technology integration to syndication/distribution of the Seesmic platform.

Cathy began working with Loic in the spring of 2007 helping develop the program for his conference, LeWeb. One of the largest and most well-known technology gatherings in Europe, the 2007 edition of LeWeb was the largest yet with almost 2,000 attendees from 40 countries and 110 speakers over the course of two
days.

Prior to Seesmic, Cathy spent several years working with Guidewire Group – a global analyst firm focused wholly on emerging markets and technologies. During that time, Cathy produced and hosted "I of Innovation" a weekly talk show providing a unique perspective an insight to the processes and people behind the latest technology trends. At Guidewire Cathy also led the charge for producing two of the firm’s conferences – Innovate!Europe and Leadership Forum.

Chris Collins (SL: Fleep Tuque) is an IT Analyst in the UCit Instructional & Research Computing department at the University of Cincinnati.  Chris specializes in developing supportable, sustainable enterprise services that integrate emerging technologies into existing and future curricula for distance learning, hybrid, and traditional courses, and researches effective uses of social media and virtual world technology in education.  She currently manages the campus-wide Podcasting and Second Life projects at the University of Cincinnati, serves as the Second Life Ambassador for the Ohio Learning Network, a consortium of 80 colleges and universities in Ohio, and is a co-chair for the Second Life Education Community Conference.  Chris also founded the Chilbo Community on the mainland of Second Life and reports as the Education Correspondent for the Metanomics weekly webcast show about business and policy in the metaverse.

A diabetic, a knitter, a cook. A writer. Using blogspace to heal myself and help others heal from sexual assault. Humor, darkness, truth and the beauty that remains when the layers are stripped away and accuracy remains.

Owner of Viva La Vida, a healing arts practice in California, Claudia Ruiz blogs to connect Colombian nationals worldwide who often feel lost and lonely. Her blog, written in Spanish, entitled “Latina Wife Wanted” encapsulates Ruiz’ shared story of the journey of a Latina wife, often feeling trapped in a silent and painful role as an immigrant in another country.

In March 2006, Ruiz was selected by El Tiempo newspaper in Bogota, Colombia after winning their contest for Colombian expatriates to create their own blog. With no experience blogging, Ruiz wrote to share her passions and frustrations accumulated throughout the 10 years after she'd immigrated to the U.S where she eventually gained citizenship.

Due to almost 50 years of drug wars, guerrillas, paramilitars, and a corrupt political government, there had been a huge exodus of Colombians to other countries. People leaving their homes, their children, and their lives behind. Through her writings, Ruiz' desire was to connect these readers who often felt wounded, but were respectful and supportive while participating in her blog.

While she’s not a journalist, Ruiz is still sending her own heartfelt messages engendering discussions about women’s issues, freedom for a better life both economically and socially, while engaging comments from both government politicos and the people living in the local communities in Colombia. Despite the intermittent personal attacks, Ruiz has learned to use dance as her 'therapy when under attack' for her opinions so she can keep on blogging while holding a very loyal readership worldwide.

U.S. Representative Allyson Y. Schwartz is serving in her second termrepresenting Pennsylvania’s 13th congressional district, which includes partsof Northeast Philadelphia and the close suburbs of Montgomery County. From 1990to 2004, Representative Schwartz served as a member of the Pennsylvania StateSenate. In Congress, she serves on theCommittee on Ways and Means, which has jurisdiction over tax, trade and revenueraising measures, as well as Medicare and Social Security. Schwartz also continuesto serve on the Budget Committee where she has distinguished herself as anoutspoken critic of deficit spending.

Long considered a leading advocate for children, Schwartz spearheadedPennsylvania’s legislative efforts to provide healthcare coverage to thechildren of middle-class families. Her leadership led to the creation of theChildren’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in 1992, which served as the modelfor the federal plan that now provides health insurance to millions ofchildren.

In Congress, Schwartz has continued to focus on healthcare, including workingfor the expansion of federal SCHIP to cover all eligible children. Schwartz isalso instrumental in legislative efforts redirecting the nation’s environmentaland energy policies towards energy independence and the reduction of globalwarming.

Schwartz cites the influences of her father, a Korean War veteran, and hermother, a Holocaust survivor, as the source of her commitment to publicservice. These personal family experiences compel Schwartz to be a strongadvocate for veterans and their families and to fight for foreign and domesticpolicies that build democracy, security, and opportunity for all people.

Schwartz earned a B.A. from Simmons College in Sociology and a Masters of SocialWork from Bryn Mawr College. She is married and has two grown sons.

Crystal McKee is a mother, writer and wife. She was supposed to marry Jon Bon Jovi, but that got all screwed up when he had no idea who she was. After the restraining order was issued, she began writing in a diary and it became a passion. Twenty years later, she has been published in The Manual For Motherhood (Volume 1), 26 Ordinary Americans and writes weekly on her personal blog, "Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper". She has also been featured in Memphis Parent Magazine. She has no idea where she'll go from here, but she's pretty sure there won't be restraining orders involved. Hopefully.

Dana Loesch blogs at www.mamalogues.com and hosts her own talk radio show on KFTK 97.1 FM; she’s also the founder of the St. Louis Bloggers’ Guild, one of the first of its kind in the country, and operates the St. Louis Blog Ad Network. Dana has also written for corporate parenting communities and major-market publications. She was named the Riverfront Times’ Best Columnist of 2007 for her popular newspaper column on motherhood. She has appeared on NBC and CBS affiliates KSDK Channel 5 and KMOV Channel 4, respectively; the Fine Living network; and speaks frequently on the subject of blogging. She and her husband, Chris, and their two young sons live in downtown St. Louis.

Dannette Veale
New Media Program Manager
Cisco

As a new media program manager at Cisco, Dannette Veale lives and breathes new media. In addition to producing virtual environment events, Dannette also manages global online programs for a variety of Cisco groups—most notably emerging markets. When she’s not traveling the (real) world as Cisco’s unofficial Second Life ambassador, you’ll find Dannette engaged in such varied hobbies as producing streaming media, designing Web sites, or watching classic films such as Blade Runner. Outside of her daily immersion in the bleeding edge of collaborative media, Dannette’s also been known partake in such real world activities as gardening, baking, and knitting—while watching cyberpunk anime, of course.

Dawn is a 30ish SAHM of 6 kids (7 if you count her husband). She likes writing, acting, and baking. She collects kids and dust. She hates shoes, the sound of styrofoam, and ridiculous, poorly written correspondence from companies requesting her to advertise for them in exchange for nothing.

She started her blog, Because I Said So, in June 2007 in an effort to make a little money from ads. Her blog rose to popularity when her silly auction for Pokemon cards on eBay went viral in August 2007.

On her blog, Dawn shares her exciting life of being a SAHM: cleaning yogurt off the TV, wiping marker off the walls, pulling her daughter out of the toilet, and telling her son to brush his teeth 4000 a day. "I think people read my blog because the insanity in my house makes them feel better about their own kids and their parenting. Either that, or they read it as a form of birth control."

Because of the attention her blog has received, Dawn was approached by agents and publishers and has since written a book, also entitled Because I Said So, scheduled to be released spring of 2009.

Dawn also contributes to the blog MamasLike, a blog that reviews WAHM businesses and products, and she recently started the blog Because I Said So Reviews where she highlights products and services from various companies.

Dawn is so honored (and insanely nervous) to speak at BlogHer. "I just hope I don't throw up on anyone."

Devra is an author of the under-the-radar cult hit book "Mommy Guilt" and she has been blogging at Parentopia since 2005 with Aviva Pflock (also an author of Mommy Guilt). Devra is a clinical social worker who provides consultation and training services all over the world and is a recognized expert when it comes to soothing parental angst, both online and off. Devra's commentary has been featured in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, USA Today, Babycenter, Parenting Magazine, Woman's Day, Cookie Magazine, American Baby and many others. Devra is a featured expert on PBS Parents and a consultant for Zero To Three. Devra is also a contributor at DC Metro Moms Blog and Loser Moms Blog.

Devra knows damn well policies and ethics are hot buttons for her. And she has been known to blog about what happens when these buttons get pushed. In addtion to bringing attention to policy and ethical issues by blogging about them, Devra makes phone calls and writes letters. But mainly she relies on the musical stylings of Tom Petty: Listening to "I Won't Back Down" on *Repeat* until she feels all is right with the world again.

Devra lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and two sons.

As the COO of GlobalGiving, Donna oversees strategies related to attracting, retaining and serving GlobalGiving's community of donors. This includes marketing, business and partner development, and development of technology and infrastructure for globalgiving.com and over a dozen custom websites. Donna also serves on the Board of the Washington Area Women's Foundation and previously served on the board of Business for Social Responsibility. In a prior life, she was a senior executive at Fannie Mae, where she last ran the company's strategic planning, business development and international consulting efforts, and prior to 1996 led the core purchase/securitization business, including marketing, product development, customer technology and negotiated transactions. She received a B.S. in Managerial Economics from UC Davis.

Elisa Camahort is a co-founder and COO of BlogHer, managing its events, marketing and corporate operations. A marketing executive with 18 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Elisa left her life in high tech product management to go online and join the social media world, and to help companies go there too.

She co-founded BlogHer as a labor of love in 2005 with Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone, and in three short years BlogHer has grown to be the number-one guide to and source for blogs by women. BlogHer serves its mission of creating opportunities for education, exposure, community and economic empowerment with its web community, sold-out conferences and advertising network that now features over 2,000 network members.

Elisa Camahort was at the vanguard of professional and business blogging and currently writes nine blogs. She blogs at various times about marketing, health issues, green and eco-conscious living, being a vegan, and reality TV talent shows like American Idol and Project Runway! She’s a frequent public speaker in the areas of business blogging and online community, and has been published frequently, including her monthly column for the Silicon Valley Metro, Silicon Veggie.

Once upon a time, a young girl ran up a $500 phone bill using her Dad's account on the Source, and a believer in the power of interactive communications was born. Since then, Ellen Gerstein has found ways to incorporate the words "online", "new media", "interactive" and now "social media" into everything she works on. With over 20 years of experience in publishing under her belt, she is currently working as Director of Marketing at John Wiley & Sons Publishing in Hoboken NJ. In addition to managing the world's #1 technology publishing program, she gets to work on some of the most innovative, cool and exciting books in the marketplace, as well as with some of the best-known brands in publishing. Ellen's had the privilege to work with many amazing authors, including, but not limited to Gina Trapani, Robert Scoble, Erin Manning, and many, many more. She's a big believer in the power of social media and works to evangelize this throughout the organization and the publishing industry as a whole.

Prior to this Ellen worked at American Institute of Physics as an Information Specialist (which for the record is every bit as geeky as it sounds), and held new media development and marketing positions at Hachette Publishing, Facts on File and Van Nostrand Reinhold publishers. She is a proud graduate of The University of Albany in Albany, NY and holds a BA in European History.

Ellen's main blog is ConfessionsofanITGirl.com. She also cont

Erin Kotecki Vest spent ten years as a broadcast journalist in Los Angeles, Orlando and Detroit winning six Golden Mic Awards with LA news institution KFWB. She now serves as Political Director and Election 08’ Producer for BlogHer.com as well as contributing regularly to the Huffington Post, MOMocrats.com, and her own site Queen of Spain Blog.You can find her on Twitter @queenofspain and make sure to ask her about her interview with Barack Obama.

Evany has been writing things for her online diary off and on and off since 1995. She has also written things for other websites (including Television Without Pity, The Morning News, and Wired), print publications (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, h2so4), and anthologies (Fray, Welcome to Wisteria Lane, The Ex-Files). She also wrote a handy, bed-sized book called The Secret Language of Sleep: A Couple's Guide to the Thirty-Nine Positions, which explores the meanings hidden inside a person's favorite sleeping pose. Evany lives in Oakland with her boyfriend, cat, dog, and one mean old turtle.

Fausta Wertz was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She's a graduate of the University of Georgia and has an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She blogs at Fausta's blog on American and Latin American politics, news, current events and culture.

Fausta podcasts every Tuesday and Friday at 11AM Eastern at Fausta's blog talk radio.

Fausta is a featured blogger at the Star Ledger NJ Voices, and a Pajamas Media and Forbes business and finance network blogger.

Gwen Bell is a globetrotting serial entrepreneur. She loves starting companies and helping others do the same.

She launched her first company in Japan at age 23 (Yoga Garden). Her irreverent weekly podcast co-hosted with Patrick of Yoga Garden, is one of the most popular in its field on iTunes. She recently wrapped up a successful campaign evangelizing for TechStars where she led the way to quadrupling the number of female applicants for 2008 (last year there were zero female participants, this year there are five)!

Gwen co-owns a design firm with her biz partner Paul in Berlin. Together they create gorgeous websites and paper products. Paper Karaoke will launch a new line of paper pr0n products soon.

A techy girl about town, Gwen also knows how to unplug and have fun. She's a Kirtsy Editor and absolutely adores the women with whom she works. She is currently available for brand and outreach consulting. She looks forward to meeting you at Blogher 2008!

Heather B. Armstrong was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee and went on to major in English at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah where she wrote for the unofficial student paper as well as underground music magazines. After enduring the original dot com boom, Armstrong started her personal site, dooce® in 2001. She gained notoriety in 2002 when she was fired for her writing on dooce. 

After a brief hiatus during which Armstrong got married, she resumed publishing on dooce and gained popularity from her open, honest posts about depression, parenting and living in Utah.

Armstrong has been featured on ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America, Nightline, CNN and the Today Show. She has also been profiled and featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

Armstrong has won numerous awards for her writing on dooce including Bloggies for Best American Weblog, Best Writing of a Weblog, Weblog of the Year, and Lifetime Achievement Award. She has been selected for Time magazine’s Top 50 Coolest Websites as well as included on Forbes Top 25 Web Celebrities.

I'm an empty-nest Mommy who isn't adjusting to the silence very well. After teaching middle school for many years, I quit and am now teaching writing in a community college. I am also a pro-blogger with several clients.

My hobbies are writing, reading, listening to music, baking, sewing, and telling my children how to live their lives.

Why, yes, I am a couch potato. No, I have no desire to go to the gym, but thank you for asking.

I do not suffer fools gladly. There is a catch, though. . . .

On my blog, Scheiss Weekly, I’m famous for giving rude and boorish people the old what-for, but in real life, I’m devastatingly shy. If you are a stranger or a student, I can stand up to you with little trouble, but if you are a friend or someone I hope will become a friend, my backbone is as soft and squishy as my pasty-white thighs, and I hover and tremble in the corner hoping you will say “hello” to me and include me in your fun. I can’t ask you. I can only shake in my dowdy shoes and cross my fingers.

The Blogosphere gives me a voice, and since you can’t see me there, I can be brave. Online, we become acquainted from the inside-out, not from the outside-in. Online, we get to know each other via personality and heart, not appearance. I think this is awesome.

Blogging is about community. There's power in that, power to elevate the conversation, to find a new path, to come together on the side of good. Using our voices to create change, whether it's armchair philosophy or in the trenches, it matters. It matters because we are taking the time to stand up for what we know to be true. When we come together in numbers we are saying this matters and we matter too. And that makes us unstoppable.  The Just Posts are one way to exercise this passion, a monthly roundtable of social justice issues from around the world that can be found at my personal blog one plus two.  I am also a contributing writer for MOMocrats, where we are working hard to see Barack Obama elected this November.

I'm lucky. I believe in the eradication of chronic poverty and homelessness and I get to work towards this passion every single day. I've got a great kid who teaches me daily about humility and joy and a partner who teaches me about adventure and a non-conforming life. And in a few short months we'll put it to the test by packing up and leaving the US and moving to the jungle. Our plans only reach so far, the rest is a leap of faith. We plan on getting pretty dirty and that makes me pretty happy. The rest will have to sort itself out as we go.

I started a personal, diary type blog in 2002 after discovering many other fantastic blogs. Having an audience for my intimate disussions and inane observations ended up being realy fulfilling. On my panel "Coming Out" via Blog, I will talk about my experiences with sharing intimate and very personal parts of my life on my blog and how writing those types of posts has affecting me and my readers. Even though I now do some writing for other blogs, the personal blog continues to be my primary and most personal outlet.

I have a degree in Communications Studies and here I am, communicating! I have worked in web content, communications, and marketing. I love gardening, gossip magazines, and the craziness of online community, I can often be found on twitter even after bedtime. I also contribute on www.wecovet.com, www.alphamom.com and occasionally on www.realmental.org. The blog that launched a couple of ships is still at www.jenandtonic.ca.

Jennette Fulda was born weighing 8 pounds 5 ounces, but eventually tipped the scales at 372 pounds before losing almost 200 pounds through diet and exercise. After she lost half her weight, she ran a half marathon and wrote a book called Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir. She chronicles her life and weight loss in the popular blog, PastaQueen.com The book and blog have been featured on NBC’s Today Show, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, Women's Health, Glamour and other media outlets. For more information and bonus material related to the book, visit halfassedbook.com When she is not working her ass off, she works in Indianapolis as a web developer.

On the "Blog to Book" panel I'll be happy to talk about how my blog led to a book deal, the ways I used my blog to promote my book, and incentives I used to motivate my readers to get the word out. I can also answer questions about how to set up a book web site, how to plan your own book release party, and how to sell autographed books from a corner of your apartment with PayPal and a big box of bubble mailers.

Jennifer Graf Groneberg lives and writes at the foot of the Crazy Mountains in a 70-year-old log cabin with her family and their B pets: a dog named Baby, a cat named Bitty, and a horse named Blue. Her most recent book is Road Map to Holland: How I Found My Way Through My Son's First Two Years With Down Syndrome (NAL/Penguin, 2008), a memoir that provides emotional support and practical advice to parents of children with disabilities. She blogs about special needs, motherhood, and family life at Pinwheels, http://jennifergrafgroneberg.wordpress.com and is a regular columnist for mamazine.com and ParentDish, the AOL Living parenting site.

Jennifer L. Pozner is founder and executive director of Women In Media & News (WIMN), a media justice group dedicated to increasing women’s presence and power in the public debate through media analysis, education and advocacy. She runs WIMN’s POWER (Perspectives Of Women Expand Reporting) Sources Project, which helps increase the diversity and quantity of women’s voices appearing in the public debate. Through WIMN’s multimedia lecture series, Pozner has spoken on women, media, politics and pop culture at dozens of colleges across the country (contact WIMN for booking information). She is also managing editor of WIMN's Voices, the popular women’s media monitoring group blog.

Pozner’s journalism and media criticism has been widely published in corporate news outlets (eg., Newsday, Chicago Tribune, Boston Phoenix) independent media (eg., Ms., The American Prospect, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture), new media (eg., AlterNet, Salon, HuffingtonPost), and anthologies (eg., BitchFest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages Of Bitch Magazine, Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century, The W Effect: Bush’s War on Women), among others.

She has appeared as a commentator on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News Now, Comedy Central's “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” NPR, Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now!," and several documentary film… and, because she's a sucker for punishment, she's gone head to head with some of the most blustery boys of cable news, including Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Joe Scarborough.

Jess Howard is a single mother living on Vancouver Island with her four children. She has been writing at drowning in kids for four years. She writes about her struggles with depression, anxiety, motherhood, seperation and housecleaning.

Drowning in kids has been featured in several local papers on Vancouver Island and in Canada's national newspaper The Globe and Mail.

Jess also founded RealMental with Leah Peterson in 2007 and is a regular contributor to the site.

Joanne Bamberger is better known around the blogopshere as PunditMom, the blog she writes about the intersection of motherhood and politics. A writer and attorney for over 20 years, Joanne also writes about politics at MOMocrats and is a Contributing Editor for Politics & News at BlogHer. You can also find Joanne's writing at The Huffington Post, MomsRising and DC Metro Moms.

A former op-ed writer for The Washington Examiner, Joanne is a freelance writer who has contributed to numerous publications and outlets, including The Washington Post, MSN, and Marketplace Radio. As a political and media analyst, Joanne has appeared this election season on CNN, Fox News, XM Radio POTUS '08, ABC.com, BBC Radio, and more.  Joanne also spent a decade as a TV and radio journalist and, unfortunately, still remembers the day when stories were shot on film.

Jody DeVere, aka Patty Steeter Second Life, is the CEO, President of AskPatty.com, Inc. and has more than twenty-five years of achievement as a successful entrepreneur focused on sales and marketing leadership including ten years developing web based business solutions across diverse industries. DeVere is currently the President of the Woman's Automotive Association International , the premier women's organization for women automotive professionals, a member of the Car Care Council Women's Board , a member of the California State Advisory Board for SkillsUSA, member of the board of directors of United Spinal Association www.unitedspinal.org and a member of the SEMA Businesswomen's Networking Association.

DeVere manages Motorability Island a 7 sim car culture complex for United Spinal in Second Life as well as her own two locations in Second Life AskPatty Automtoive Advice and Wonderland Cardin a SL Certified Female Friendly dealership. www.motorability.com

She has conducted seminars with the National Automobile Dealer Association (NADA.org), National Independent Automobile Dealer Association (NIADA.org), Car Care Council Women’s Board, BlogHer.org, SEMA, SEMA Business Women’s Networking Association, and the Association of Automotive Internet Sales Professionals. She has been an expert guest on many radio shows, including Motor Trend Radio, Car Concerns, Oprah & Friend’s Radio Network on XM, Greenstone Media’s Radio Ritas,and National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” with Marti Barletta. 

Kaliya Hamlin is a facilitator of high quality participant driven interactive conferences that have recently in the tech community come to be known as unconferences.  She regularly facilitates events for professional technical communities and is hired to work with community leaders to help put on amazing events. With a natural talent for event design - navigating the options for which processes to use to achieve community goals, she draws on a "tool box" that includes over a dozen different methods. These are used to augment open space technology which is at the core of every unconference. She blogs about the techniques and processes in the field at unconference.net.

She got her start facilitating in the user-centric digital identity community with the first Internet Identity Workshop.  She is a subject matter in the field that includes OpenID, Information Cards and Vendor Relationship management tools to help citizens have more tools and control over how to share information about themselves online.  Her work has also involved the cultivation of Identity Commons is a collaborative community working together on addressing the range of social, technical and legal issues that arise with this emerging identity layer of the web.  She blogs on these topics at IdentityWoman.net.

She is a the lead producer and facilitator of a conference for women  called She's Geeky that brings together the diverse range of women in technology groups for shared agenda free conference.  The next conference will be in NYC in the Fall and on the West Coast in the Winter.

Kelly Phillips Erb is a hip urban mom living in Philadelphia – if you define hip as constantly being covered in yogurt, dragging strollers onto the bus and never quite having time to dry her hair.

Kelly also works as a tax attorney. She blogs about tax and tax law at taxgirl.com. She started writing her blog years ago as a hobby (yes, tax as a hobby, it could be worse) and found that there were not many attorneys writing user friendly tax blogs. Taxgirl became popular and Kelly eventually moved the blog to b5media, where she now serves as Editor for the Business Channel.

Kelly has served as a source for a number of recent tax articles including pieces for Forbes magazine and Dow Jones, as well as a guest on an upcoming documentary about taxes. She pens a monthly tax column, Capital Gains, for the Legal Intelligencer, the nation’s oldest legal journal. She also answers tax related questions in her role as Tax Guru at filife.com, a personal finance site owned by Dow Jones with assistance from the Wall Street Journal.

Before taxgirl.com, Kelly blogged about trying to balance her legal career with motherhood at lawmummy.com. She has added several blogs over the years including an entertainment blog and a lifestyles blog for b5media and two community and school related blogs. She is also a contributing writer to This Mommy Gig.

Kelly has promised her husband no more blogs. So she’s currently working on a second novel and a book about taxes. She also drinks a lot of coffee.

From education to coffee, blogger Kelly Wickham's passions are as diverse as her background. The self-proclaimed 'Mocha Momma' is a high school administrator and highly sought after speaker at state and national edu-events. She is a Senior Consultant for a change agency known as Focus On Results and coaches principals and superintendents in leadership efforts.

Kelly's personal blog Mocha Momma is laced with stories of her family, her amateur photography, her daily interaction with students, and even her passion for food, shoes and curly girl hair products. She also writes for Flawed But Authentic and is working on a new project for a Sunday Magazine while desperately trying to get that first novel out of her soul. She's got a transaction lined up with the devil for this to happen.

She lives in Illinois with her three phenomenally brilliant children and her achingly adorable dog, Lola.  

Koan is someone for whom personal blogging - naked blogging - was a significant mechanism to helping her move through, and beyond, some significant changes in her life. But those benefits did not come without some cost - and now Koan, as an individual, as a legal entity, no longer exists. She has a different identity, and will be attending BlogHer '08 in that identity. But she'll be participating on this panel as Koan, and hoping to relay some of the experience and insight she gained about the benefits of naked blogging... and the potential costs... and some ways to minimise the latter and maximise the former.

As a sincere personal favour, she asks that anybody who recognises her from the past please address her by the name she'll be showing on her badge, and not as Koan - and that people don't link the two names on e.g. a blog post or comment. There are personal safety reasons behind this request, which she'll explain in private, if asked.

Kristen Chase took the plunge into motherhood via a surprise pregnancy and is now knee deep with a four year old daughter, 18 month old son, and baby due in October. Those pregnancies were surprises too.

In her former life she was a published textbook author, musician, and college professor all of which she’s traded for a satisfying new position as wife of a pilot and National Guardsman, and stay-at-home-parent turned business owner and professional blogger currently residing in Atlanta. Kristen is the author of the blog Motherhood Uncensored, as well as Mominatrix, a sex column for parents at The Imperfect Parent. Additionally, she is co-founder of Cool Mom Picks, a cheeky shopping blog for discerning moms, as well as Parent Bloggers Network, a blog marketing agency connecting bloggers with PR professionals and business owners.

Her blogs have been recognized in various publications, including the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Real Simple, and Time, and she was recently featured along with several other mom bloggers on NBC's Today Show.

In 2006, Kristen was inspired by a year of unemployment, a baby and excessive "daytime drama" watching to start her own internet smart ass maternity tee business.Baby Brewing was born. Because she hasn't had a coherent thought since that fateful day in February 2005 when her oldest was born, it took Kristen over a year to be inspired by her own blog name and make "Mommy Needs a Cocktail" shirts. She wore the very first one to Blogher last year and the avalanche occurred. Kristen blatantly used her readers for their brilliant ideas to expand her line of maternity tees and to create a whole new kids line. One picture standing beside Mr. Big with her "Drinking for Two" daddy maternity tee and Kristen is up to her eyeballs in work.

When she's not pulling her children off the top of the fridge or coming up with the next fabulous tee in her basement, you can find Kristen sharing stories of her half-assed parenting at Mommy Needs a Cocktail, cheating on her blog at Twitter, planning Mommy Needs a Cocktail Party trunk shows, writing with her friends Angie and Trena at Mommy Needs a Review, contributing to DC Metro Moms, mompreneuring it at Mommy Needs a Business at Work It, Mom and blogging about motherhood with her In Real Life sisters Jen Lemen and Patience for Super

I'm an Assistant Professor of Classics at Saint Peter's College in Jersey City, New Jersey, and also Co-Director of the Honors Program and the Advisor for Prestigious Fellowships. And, I write the weblog Autism Vox in which I get on my (digital) soapbox about the latest issues, science, research, and more about autism and disability. My son Charlie is 11 and autistic and I'm writing a book, An Unexpected Childhood, about life with autism and "difference."

I also translate Latin poetry and am curently working on the Eclogues of the ancient Roman poet, Virgil.

Krystyn Heide is the heart behind hopeREVO.com, a revolution that began when she decided to hide encouraging notes around New York City. This simple act inspired other people who heard about it to do the same in their cities.

Krystyn grew up in a family of left and right brainers -- architects, musicians, software engineers, and artists. Her mixed up genes made her fall hard for web design, and upon entering the industry she soon became a self proclaimed CSS junkie. With a decade of experience designing for big brands and new media companies, she is equal parts style architect, user experience advocate and Squarespace evangelist.

Former speaking engagements have included exploring the beauty of your own online space, positive posting, and learning CSS.

Kyran Pittman was working toward respectability as a poet when she started screwing around with blogs and gave birth to her bastard love child, Notes to Self.

Notes is a cherished personal space in the midst of domestic life. It's a blank piece of typing paper in an old Underwood. It's a corkboard covered with family photos and milestones. It's a set of field notes on motherhood, marriage, and America, written by an expatriate Newfoundlander who wakes up every day wondering how she came to live in any of those mad realms.

It can be whatever it makes up its mind to be. She spoils it that way.

In return, Notes has launched Kyran's career as a freelance essayist, with publication credits in Good Housekeeping magazine and the Toronto Globe and Mail. It also provides her with a merry way to make lips curl in certain literary circles.

Kyran blogs shamelessly for Flawed But Authentic, AOL's WalletPop, and is the Mind, Body, Spirit Editor of Kirtsy. She is working on a first collection of essays, and is writing a coming-of-age memoir, So Far For Beauty.

I live in Ottawa, Canada. I am a mother (to two boys, aged 5 and 10), spouse, activist, writer (my book is coming out in spring 2009!), sister, friend and so many other things. I've also been blogging through breast cancer since January, 2006.

In December, 2005, as I was getting undressed one evening I found the lump that would lead to a diagnosis of breast cancer. After a gruelling treatment regimen (mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation), I joyfully returned to work , only to be diagnosed three weeks later with a metastasis (spread of the cancer) to my liver.

As my oncologist recently put it, “sixteen years ago, women with liver mets only had a matter of months to live,” yet here I am, miraculously in remission and continuing to defy the odds. I have now had four clean (no sign at all of cancer in my liver or anywhere else) CT scans (my first was in June 2006 and my most recent was last May, 2008) and the same oncologist has declared himself to be “amazingly optimistic” and going so far as to call my results “spectacular.

I started my blog to reach out to friends and others who might want to know what it's like to be diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer at 38. It has become so much more, as I find myself embraced by a vibrant, warm, caring and fun online community. They say that writing is transformative and I believe this to be true. My blog has also helped me through a number of important personal transformations over the last couple of years.

I blog with Debbie Notkin at “Body Impolitic”. We talk about body image issues in the broadest sense. I live in San Francisco. I’ve published Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes (edited and text by Debbie Notkin) and Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes (edited by Debbie Notkin, text by Debbie Notkin and Richard F. Dutcher). My photographs have been exhibited in many cities, including New York, Tokyo, Kyoto, Toronto, Boston, London, Shanghai and San Francisco. My solo exhibition “Meditations on the Body” at the National Museum of Art in Osaka featured 100 photographs. I recently completed Women of Japan, clothed portraits of women from many cultures and backgrounds. I’ve begun work on a life- sized nude portrait project. There will be an exhibition of photographs from all 3 projects at the Minato Center in Tokyo in June.

Laurie White is a writer, photographer, and perpetual eldest child from the small but mighty state of Maryland (plus five important formative years in Southwest Ohio.) A lifelong writer, blogging saved her life in the spring of 2005, when she stumbled across a link to TypePad in a post-breakup haze and LaurieWrites just...happened (not a name she'd pick now, but at that time it seemed to get the point across.) 

Laurie still lives in D.C.'s Maryland suburbs, where she bosses around/loves dearly a menagerie of family and friends of all ages and is addicted to her Nikon D80 and Canon PowerShot630, Flickr, hazelnut coffee, music, Bravo, New York City, all manner of magazines, the Internet, good food, the idea of the ocean, travel to anywhere under the sun and little dogs. Her next projects include the very-much-in-development food and culture site ringtumdiddy.com and an anthology of essays on the impact of Lloyd Dobler on way too many GenX women. 

Lesley Pinckney is the Director, Digital Development for Essence Communications Inc. Responsible for strategic partnerships and multi-platform development, she plays an integral role in the development of the brand’s online content and the creation and distribution of original programming produced by the magazine’s new multimedia division, ESSENCE Studios. With a broad range of online and television expertise, Pinckney oversaw the launch of the magazine’s highly successful first-ever interactive online reality dating show “30 Dates in 30 Days”. Prior to joining ESSENCE, Pinckney was a Vice President at MTV Networks’ Tempo and was previously Vice President, Talent Development & Casting at Spike TV. In that position, she handled all aspects of talent relations, negotiated contracts and managed schedules and logistics for several major television awards shows including the GQ Men of the Year Awards, Video Game Awards, Autorox and live event coverage at the Superbowl. Prior to her positions at MTV Networks, Pinckney was an Account Director and Project Manager at several top interactive agencies and was responsible for developing websites and online marketing strategies for Fortune 500 companies. Pinckney holds a bachelor’s degree in religion, and minored in philosophy from Hunter College in New York City.

LilaKing is a senior producer for CNN.com. She leads the site’s user participationefforts, including overseeing CNN’s user-generated news Web site, iReport.com.

Since coming to CNN.com in 2001, King has reported and produced several multimediastories on a wide range of topics in international news, working to integrate new technologies into storytelling presentations. King produced many of the online interactive maps and audio slideshows that distinguished CNN's Peabody Award-winning coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In 2006 King launched iReport, CNN’s highly successful citizen journalism initiative, and led the editorial development of iReport.com, the user-generated news site that launched in February 2008.

Lila started her career at CNN as a webmaster, putting to use the technical skills she developed as a freelance radio producer who wanted to put her work online. She graduated from the University of Georgia with degrees in Comparative Literature and Philosophy.