"So what did you think of the Blog Summit?" I asked Hepcat this morning.

"’We would like you to be our unpaid stringers’ is probably the simplest reading of the event," Hepcat replied sleepily. He went to sleep at 5 a.m. doing his "day job."

But what about the baseball caps? Those were really nice," I said. 

"But what’s that weird shape that looks like a flattened rat in the center lane of Second Avenue?"  Hepcat said.

"Actually, I really like the graphic on the baseball cap," I said.

"Let’s just say if it was a Rorschach test I’d probably say roadkill." Hepcat said.

Hepcat didn’t much like the reporter who spoke near the end of what was a very convivial event — a nice TV meets the Web kind of vibe — and said this: "We have a lot of standards and we’re not going to put unsubstantiated stuff up there."

That reporter was definitely playing the "journalistic standards card." He seemed a little alarmed by the whole thing. Not nearly as gung ho as the organizers.

The head of the news division was there and he seemed like a nice guy. Where was Sue Simmons and Ernie Anastas? Too busy getting ready for the 11:00 news?

Speaking of the 11:00 news it was fun to see ourselves on television. And fun to see Sree and the other reporters we met. The Conan O’Brian studio was a cool place for the event. It is MUCH smaller than I expected. They told us a bunch of times that it used to be Dave Letterman’s studio back in the day.

The people at NBC are really impressed with the fact that they work at NBC. The fact that the audience had little interest in local TV news was very surprising to them. As one blogger said, "I’m not that interested in fires and murders. So I don’t watch."

It was a typical blog crowd: white, equal number of men and women, average age: mid-thirties, snarky, smart, eccentric, off beat, outspoken. The whiteness of the crowd wasn’t really addressed. Interestingly, lack of diversity was a big issue at the Brooklyn Blogfest last spring. We were hoping to set up a forum to address that…

Sitting in Conan’s studio, I was proud that we bloggers have become such a force. I never dreamed I’d be sitting at NBC hearing that my hyper-local and personal approach to news and information was the wave of the future. I never dreamed that a mainstream media outlet like WNBC would want a piece of my action. It’s kind of exciting the way that blogging has plucked so many of us out of obscurity. It’s exciting to be considered a pioneer.