This past weekend, the annual Blogs with Balls conference was held in Toronto to great success. From the tweets I followed, the two day session featuring plenty of panels was quite the caucus to attend. I was supposed to go and be on a panel, however, real life got into the way. I have been kicking myself ever since I found out I could not be in Toronto. A lot of people from past conferences were in attendance and many first-timers also had the opportunity to go.
And the speaker list was like a who’s who in blogging and sports media. Andrew Bucholtz at Awful Announcing has a very good recap of the first day’s panels.
If you were like me and was unable to attend, I’ll provide a couple of videos from the second day of Blogs with Balls 5.
First is the Puck That!: State of the Hockey Media panel featuring Justin Bourne of The Score in Toronto, Greg Wyshynski of Yahoo’s Puck Daddy, Elliotte Friedman of CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada, Dave Lozo of NHL.com, Barry Petchesky from Deadspin and Mike Halford and Jason Brough from NBC’s Pro Hockey Talk. As a fan of the NHL, I would have loved listening to this panel. Plus, Wyshynski is a funny guy.
The last video is the panel in which I was supposed to participate, but could not. This as the Diversity in Sports Media panel that was moderated by Jemele Hill of ESPN. Panelists were Cyd Zeigler of Outsports.com, Graham Watson of the Dr. Saturday blog on Yahoo (and like many, I had no idea she was a woman), former ESPN exec Keith Clinkscales now of Shadow Mediaworks, Michael Tillery of The Starting Five and Tyler Tumminia of the Goldklang Group. After watching this panel, everyone is so smart, I think I would have brought the quality down so perhaps it was best I wasn’t there.
For more videos from Blogs with Balls 5, you can head here to watch.
