Pisa, Florence and All Around the World

What a great Monday!

After an amazing Sunday in my NASCAR sportswriter hat — blogging about the Daytona 500 for Fast Machines — I awoke to make sure that the first Carnival of Cities blog carnival (featuring one of my most popular posts, Pisa and Florence with kids) had posted OK over on Home Turf Media, a worldwide network of city-based blogs.

I started working with Jon at Home Turf Media a few weeks back after Liz Strauss at Successful Blog put a bug in his ear about me. He’s in Edmonton, Canada and I’m in Austin, Texas, but miles are no matter to those with ‘net connections. What fun it has been to pull together my first carnival, called All Around the World. Go take a look at these offerings:

IntrovertGirl in literary Toronto, Jen Miner with the best brunches in New York City, Andrea Dickson interviews seamstress sui generis/designer Amy Doan, aka Shrinkle, Local Girl takes her young daughter to Ko Olina Beach, Brad is tracking the progress of a North Bank condo, Kathy Maister offers a mouth-watering tour of the Copley Square Farmer’s Market, Carole talks about how San Diego football coach Schottenheimer was fired and Alli writes about Chattanooga’s Walnut Street Bridge.

But wait, there’s more! (Sorry, no Ginsu knives.)

David photoblogged Australia Day at Brisbane’s Southbank, Rajesh P.I. says India’s city of Kochi needs a Pied Piper, Wes has some great pictures of the famed Story Bridge, Liz Lewis tells us the top 8 things to do when visiting Christchurch, the Traveling Mum climbs the pagoda in Nanning, China, CJCM is alarmed that Malaysian bloggers were sued for defamation, Andrew Bartlett, a Democrat Senator from Queensland, shares some poignant thoughts about Oriel Park, Ruth recommends the Rib Room and Bar at the Landmark Bangkok and David follows local antiwar political activists who talk about “how Pakistan tortured my brother.”

Sure, there is one from Europe besides my Pisa/Florence post: Jon Tillman tells us the interesting history of London’s “Beckton Alps”.

After enjoying the whirlwind worldwide tour, I then found that my freelance writing business was featured by Joe on his site, Working at Home on the Internet. Thanks, Joe!! If you have a home-based business that depends a lot on the Internet, check out Joe’s site. He runs a great blog carnival, too.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, those SOBs are at it again — Successful and Outstanding Bloggers, that is. The SOBCon 07 conference for bloggers was just announced yesterday. It’s in Chicago May 11-12 2007 and I’ve just got to go!

(And if I was just a little swifter with HTML I could figure out how to make the doggone button below a live link, like it’s supposed to be. Grrrr.) Update — thanks to Joe’s comment below, I’m somewhat more swift — it’s live. Sheesh, that only took an hour….)

SOBCon has an exciting roster of speakers and teachers like Liz and Phil from Make It Great; sparkplugs who specialize in building strong relationships and networks across the blogging community.

Anyone who has ever enjoyed the Liz Strauss free-for-all Tuesday Open Mic Nights will be thrilled to know that this conference features, in Liz’s words, “actual microphones!”

Even though I’m also planning to attend a stupendous BlogHer conference in July 2007, that one’s going to be a little more “sprawling,” and I want to go to SOBCon 07 for a different type of focus and attendee list.

Whew, I’m linked out. Time to put on yet another hat — Mom with sick kid who is home from school. Happy surfing….