Vatican Blogmeet

"Mrs. V. goes to Vatican City"

ROME- Yesterday Desperate Irish Housewife attended the big Bloggers' Meeting at the Vatican, where she discovered- to her great relief- that she was not the only blogger who was still amazed to have been invited. Other bloggers, too, had daily checked their email for the message from the organizers saying that her invitation had been a big mistake. But no such message came, and there they all were.

The first thing DIH did was locate and introduce herself to the venerable Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia. The first thing the Anchoress did was offer DIH a breath mint. (BTW, smooth move, Liz.) DIH gratefully accepted.

The second thing DIH did was discover her iPad was screwed up and she could not blog, but only Tweet. So tweet, tweet tweet she went.

They handed out headphones so that all could understand the different languages the presenters spoke. DIH of course clung to hers for dear life, but she noticed quite a few people scorned the headphones and understood all the languages on their own. This was another reminder to Desperate that she still has not mastered any of the languages she has studied off and on, and is not happy about it. (I swear, I WILL break out that Rosetta Stone set the minute I get home.)

Chief among the multi-linguists was a young Dutch priest who gave a sparkling talk about how he started his blog: by writing about Star Wars. It got thousands of hits the first week. Hm, he said to himself. Maybe writing stuff people are actually interested in is the way to go. Later he launched a podcast series on how to succeed at Farmville. This got even more hits, and was IMHO a brilliant idea.

I wonder if this means DIH should start playing Farmville...

The centerpiece of the event was the unveiling of the new Vatican website, still under development but "coming soon," they promised. This will be the most comprehensive, one-stop-shopping website the folks at St peters have ever produced, and it sounded pretty exciting.

Add to the "Why I Love Being Catholic" files: at the break between panels, they gave us pastries and prosecco.

I'm telling you. IS THIS A GREAT RELIGION, OR WHAT????

Comments

  1. Hi Susan:

    I'm a PhD student at Ohio University studying how the Church uses new media and I'm very interested in the Vatican Bloggers Meeting. I'm in the process of contacting all of the bloggers selected for the May meeting; I found your blog via the Pontifical Council for Social Communication's post. I'd love to correspond with you about your experiences as a blogger in today's digital society!

    Thanks so much! May God bless you!
    Mary Catherine
    mk291908@ohio.edu

    ReplyDelete

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