Blogger Summit

When big wig Washington DC politico and famous gay republican outer Mike Rogers called me to tell me I had been accepted to the GLBT Blogger Summit in DC I was honored and excited. Even though I applied to the program, checked off boxes, listed my blog, the reasons I choose to blog and described myself in 500 words or less I still didn’t truly understand what I would experience if I got accepted.

As the weekend approached I had learned through email and google searches that The Bilerico Project’s, Bil Browning and Michael Crawford, two men who over the past year I have shared countless emails and correspondence with, were attending and I would finally have the opportunity to meet them face-to-face and shake the very hands they use to post posts and speak their GLBT minds. I also knew that my NYC home boys Father “Farmboyz” Tony and Joe.My.God would be joining me as well. I couldn’t wait. Who else was I going to meet? What would I learn? What an opportunity this was going to be.

In short the GLBT Blogger summit was 50 some odd bloggers from across the nation brought together for a writing, activist and blogging intensive workshop with the intention for us to network with each other and learn how to become better, more self-promoted citizen journalists. There were workshops on everything ranging from “Taking our Place in the Larger Blogosphere” where we learned how to use self promotion and interject ourselves into larger channels of exposure and media, to “Fighting back: Using the web as a power tool in the fight for equality” which I of course salivated over, to a session entitled “So, you want to be a Journalist” and even, “Reviewing Our History, Assessing Our Present and Planning our Future,” an inspiring presentation of gay history over the last 40 years and a projection into where we as GLBT people are headed, all this while, 50 of the most diverse GLBT’ers co-mingled with one another and shared ideas, thoughts and business cards.

Throughout the weekend and during and many of the workshops, mainly those dealing with activism and history I choked back the urge to cry. For me there was something in those rooms, something in those workshops, a static I cannot put my finger on – I don’t know, maybe it was the sense of community or the downright simple feeling of being empowered by teachers, writers, techies and activists but something in that room made me feel as though we were all on our digital surfborads, in this new world of ours, riding the crest of the wave of this new movement. There was something there that made all the writing, ranting, celebrating, urging, screaming, caring, frustration, and excitement seem worth it – like there’s a reason for all of it, a reason to keep writing, a reason to keep shouting and a reason to keep fighting. As someone said in one of the workshops, “All of us in here are a special breed of people, who do what we do because we wake up every morning feeling as though there is something not quite right in this world and we have the ability to change it.”

Thank you Mike Rogers for the invaluable weekend. Thank you Bil Browning and Michael Crawford for cultivating a family and allowing us to write whatever we want from wherever we are and thank you to all who were part of this summit, for being that special breed of people and lastly thank you everyone in the GLBT community for you give me so many reasons, every day to be proud of who I am and the family to which I belong. You don’t have to be part of the GLBT Summit, all of us change this world every day for just being who we are. Never quiet your voice because all of us, in every single way, matter.

Now as I ride my bus from DC back to New York I’m shedding the tears I held back all weekend as I reflect upon the summit, the people I met and as I look onward toward the future.