This weekend I was in Utah as part of the inaugural advisory board meeting for Brand About Town. Along with the other four advisors: Christine Koh, Julie Marsh, Kelly Wickham and Amie Adams, I enjoyed my first trip to the desert. Stillness, conversation that lasted late into the cactussy night, a conversation with Julie Powell - author of Julie and Julia (now a Sony film by Nora Ephron). Champagne, fiber-filled meals, my first Thai Massage (whole 'nother story).

The weekend was simultaneously relaxing and energizing. I have found myself recently in many such circles. When asked "what's the next Twitter/Facebook/big thing" I often respond: it's offline. It's weekends in the desert with fellow entrepreneurs. It's parties with no status updates allowed. It's dancing in bright red boots across the karaoke stage. This weekend was conspicuously gadget-free. We weren't checking our email and comments every few minutes. It lent a cohesion to the weekend that I find missing at conferences I'm attending. I think really showing up signals a willingness to be vulnerable for one another that constantly updating our mobile devices prohibits.

At one point during the weekend I did drop into the Twitter world just to listen. I saw a status update from a conference that said something along these lines: don't use your personal blog to monetize. Use it as leverage! My mind shot way back to July, 2003. The date of my first blog entry. On LiveJournal. (A journal. That's, you know...living.) Innocent blog post that it was. Here it is, in its glorious fullness:

Thanks to Brian and Scott

Jul. 10th, 2003 at 11:27 PM

For my first posting, I'd like to thank the fellas down at Caffe Driade for leading me to this site. Without their help, who knows what trouble I might be getting into right now! For three bucks you can get the best iced vanilla latte in town, and some hot computer tips to boot.

Flash forward six years. I still write about the places and people and products I love (and for the record I still consider Caffe Driade in Chapel Hill one of the most magical places on Earth). I still do my damndest to pay it forward. The thought of leveraging my blog then - as now - doesn't cross my mind. I know I could flip the advertising switch but have no desire to do so. Perhaps innocence persists?

I see the medium change, but my heart remains with the principles developed in my early blogging days. I didn't even know I was developing principles at the time. This weekend, talking with fellow principled bloggers, I recognize the importance of doing so. Yes, some of us were, perhaps, the ones sitting at the front of the class getting spitballs thrown at us, scribbling in our non-live journals and dying to graduate so we could get out of that place. But I know. If I were just starting out in this medium again, I'd do it all the same.

There we were, listening to Julie Powell tell her story Saturday night. Chocolate covered strawberries and fruit tarts and champagne in our hands. Julie spoke of a "bar of intimacy" that she sets with her readers. She spoke of how hard it is to know the "champagne-popping moment" in life. She spoke of the "accidental willingness to be unguarded."

You know that accidental willingness to be unguarded.

You want to know about the social web? I invite you to hit the pause button on using terms like "return on investment" and "leverage." When you do that, the new regulations the FTC will be enforcing come December to monitor bloggers (and make sure they disclose whether or not they were paid to post) won't wake you up in the night in a cold sweat. (For the record, just in case it's retroactively effective, I paid cash for that delicious iced latte.)

I posted something last week that I immediately unpublished. It was late in the evening and I usually turn off the laptop at ten. If it still resonates in the morning, I'll republish it, I told myself. But something stopped me as I reread in the morning. The truth. The truth is too raw, I thought.

We curate our online presence. We decide what stays, what goes. And let's be honest. We keep the best stuff and (at least mentally) delete the worst. As our own publicists, if we have any self-respect we untag ourselves in that blinking, mouthfull of food shot our "friend" tagged us in on Facebook. The double-edged sword is obvious. If we cover our blogs with advertisements, self-aggrandizing posts about how rad/pretty/witty we are and giveaways for the Greatest Thing Ever how are we telling our stories? And if we only tell our stories, excluding the potentially inflammatory bits and fluffing everything up, we're still on our guards.

I want to give it to you raw. And I know you want to do the same. Which is why I think small, intimate gatherings like the one this weekend will be the "next big thing."

I don't mind powering down and walking the line between strength and vulnerability with you. Will you meet me there?