I met up with Becky McCray and Zane Safrit before Becky took the stage for the panel on business planning. I first met Becky a couple of years ago at the National Conference for Business & Professional Women.  She even interviewed me from by booth at the tradeshow.  Her blog is called Small Biz Survival and it’s just as the tagline says, a great small town small business resource.

Zane was working the booth for the International Blogging & New Media Association.  Now I can be counted a member, as I just signed up today!  You can find Zane over at his blog where he writes about business, the economy and lots of other interesting stuff.

Even at a business conference unrelated to non profit sector, I’ll find people who are involved with causes on a variety of levels.  Several people that I met are directly involved with foundations or companies that serve charitable causes.

I met Tom Betts at the opening keynote who works for The Common, a site that connects people with needs with people who have particular talents.  On first glance it impressed me as a somewhat different take on Volunteer Match or Idealist which have similar services.

At one of the sessions I talked with Whitney of Music for Relief, which was founded by the band Linkin Park in response to the 2005 South Asia tsunami.  Band member Mike Shinoda gave us a lot of insights about how/why he blogs as part of the Sunday keynote panel.

From rappers to ‘godbloggers’ this conference was nothing if not diverse.  Marcus Goodyear was there as part of the GodBlogCon.  He’s senior Editor of High Calling Blogs, “a network of personal websites focused specifically on the intersection of faith and work.”  It’s sponsored by the H.E. Butt Foundation (related to the HEB Grocery Stores).  There were also seminars for people interested in blogging about the military, sports and real estate.  There may have been a political one too.  As I said, diverse!  Actually I believe this to be one of Blog World’s strengths.  I imagine next year they will have seminars for other industries or areas of focus.  Perhaps Cause Blogging?