Lots of people are asking me if I am going to next week’s Blog World Expo. No, cause I have a six-week-old baby at home. Plus, I hang around a lot of these speakers all the time anyway. That said, I’m actually pretty surprised by the quality of speakers that this new conference has been able to put together. I’m actually sad I won’t be there, even though I’m not really THAT sad.

But what really looks interesting? The Chinese Bloggercon. BlognationChina is there.

Rebecca McKinnon is too. John Kennedy is live blogging and doing an awesome job. I feel like I’m sitting in the hall. I know it’s lunch time right now on Saturday.

That stuff is all in English, but the official blog is in Chinese.

Next year I want to do a BloggerCon here at the same time and build a video bridge so we could talk about the same issues. Heck, let’s do it. Why don’t you all show up on my Kyte.tv channel. It’s open to ANYONE who wants to post some video.

Some topics that I wish were being discussed internationally:

1. How do we get great Chinese blogs translated to English (and vice versa)?
2. Who is the “Michael Arrington” of China?
3. What’s happening in the Chinese blogosphere that’s different than the English one?

From John Kennedy’s blog I already learned that there’s a Chinese knockoff of Twitter already and I already found some cool new blogs. Really great stuff.

UPDATE: There’s some photos of the BloggerCon on Flickr. Oh, and check out the Chinese Facebook knock off.

[kyte.tv appKey=MarbachViewerEmbedded&uri=channels/6118/68310&embedId=10009643]

I just spent an hour decompressing with Marc Canter about all the Open Social and Facebook stuff along with a TON of coverage of how the Social Media space is shaking out (I call it the Social Media Starfish).

He runs Broadband Mechanics, which makes social networks for a variety of businesses around the world including the Times of India and the Sacramento Kings basketball team. He doesn’t call them social networks, by the way, preferring to call them “DLAs” or “Digital Lifestyle Aggregators.”

Anyway, everytime I have a chat with him I learn a ton. Here’s an hour’s worth of Marc, in three pieces.

Part I, where we discuss Facebook and Open Social.
Part II, where we discuss Open Social’s impact on his business.
Part III, where we just continue the theme.

I’ll try to pull out the key things he taught me, but wanted to get these up ASAP.

Thanks so much to Darren Barefoot for making a much nicer version of the Social Media Starfish and saying nice things about my explanation behind it.

In other social media news, Jeremiah Owyang explains Open Social for your executives. Jeremiah is really becoming the leading expert on social media. I saw him at the Nokia event yesterday and he’s certainly seeing everything that’s moving on the starfish.