Why Blog, Anyhow?

What's this thing called blogging and why would I bother? A panel of three very different bloggers - an artist, a librarian, and a business owner - each at a different stage in blogging experience, with very different motivations discuss how they came to blog and what they learned along the way.

Presenters: Lynna Goldhar-Smith, Els Kushner, Anthony Nicalo (Moderator: Rahel Anne Bailie)

Lynna Goldhar-Smith
http://lynna-g.livejournal.com/

Lynna Goldhar Smith is multi-disciplinary artist who has performed extensively as an actor and musician, and has co-created over a dozen theatre productions that have toured North America, England, and Europe. She believes passionately that creativity, imagination and self expression are gifts we all possess. She has created her No Fear Art School to share her passion with the creatively reluctant. She began blogging as a self-discipline technique. She is combining her experience in the social service idustry with her talents as an artist, and completing studies in Expressive Arts Therapy so she can bring her unique perspective to the mental health field.

Els Kushner
http://parentsblog.scholastic.com/librarian_mom/

Els Kushner is a librarian, spouse, parent, and text addict who lives in Burnaby. She blogs both personally and professionally, and writes the "Librarian Mom" blog for Scholastic.com.

Anthony Nicalo
http://www.farmsteadwines.com
http://www.twitter.com/farmstead

A chef by trade, Anthony Nicalo has spent his lifetime examining the connection between food and its farmed roots. His grandfather was the first in his family to work outside of the family farm. Nonetheless, Papa Bill had his own garden of nearly an acre, and Anthony helped plant seeds as soon as he could walk up and down the rows of vegetables. Gardening with Papa Bill and peeling beets for Grandma Judy's borscht set the stage for his fascination with food and nature. While eating and drinking wine with the Fenocchio family in Italy, Anthony found his calling: bringing the farm to the table. Anthony founded Farmstead Wines in 2007, and carefully chooses rare, handcrafted wines from small sustainable farms for its selections.

Farmstead Wines reconnects wine to agriculture, representing and marketing vinaroon wines in North America, making extensive use of social media to connect people directly to the farmers. In 2009, Anthony launched the not-for-profit organization, FarmFed, further harnessing the power of blogging and modern technologies to bring support for sustainability, transparency and traceability in our food system into the mainstream.