Yesterday’s post, hastily written and short, was mostly about the stuff.  The SWAG.  And the swag is good.  And it’s fun.  I got a video camera and a massage and some other cool stuff out of the deal…so I’m not complaining or anything.

But BlogHer is about so much more than just the stuff.  It’s about people.

And I’ve just gotten back from the Community Keynote, which was amazing.  A room full of women(and a few guys) laughed at stories*** about missing tampons, cried over relationships never formed, laughed and cried over struggles with infertility, had our hearts swell as a dad read what he’d written to his little girl on her fifth birthday, had stereotypes** blown out of the water.  We were all wrapped up in the stories these guys and girls shared.  These glimpses…these very, very tiny glimpses into the lives of real people.   Real people with faces that are larger than their 2×2 twitter picture.  Real people with real voices.  Real people who are no longer strangers, but weren’t really strangers before now either.

The blogging community is a unique one.  One that I like.  One that I’m glad to be a part of.  One that’s hard for non-bloggers to understand.  And one that occasionally is even hard for me to comprehend.   Before I left home, I saw someone say this on twitter(pardon me, I can’t remember who!):

Don’t talk to strangers, and don’t meet people you meet on the internet.

Perfectly sensible advice that I’m glad I didn’t take.

*My roommate, CityStreams, was a live blogger for this…check out her post for more details on all the speakers! There were too many great ones to link here!
**This is my friend Issa!!!!
***Links soon to follow! I promise!