While we’re extremely flattered when bloggers like the sexy Dutch Cowgirls write about us, it’s also pretty amazing when the traditional media picks up our story. ANP, Holland’s largest news wire, thought the first international blog conference in the Netherlands was worth mentioning and sent it out to its thousands of subscribers last night.

The effect? Frontpage of the Amsterdam paper Het Parool and stories in other major Dutch newspapers like AD, Metro, and Trouw. We also got picked up in almost every province of Holland, considering the fact that De Stentor, Haarlems Dagblad, Leidsch Dagblad, Noordhollands Dagblad, Dagblad van het Noorden, Tubantia, and De Limburger also wrote a few words about us.

The people who’ve read one of these pieces are lucky, since they’re right in time for our Speakers Dinner competition. Buy a BLOG08 ticket before Thursday and have a chance to win an invitation to the Speakers Dinner! Click here.

We will not be updating our speakers list anymore. The reason behind this is because we have a full agenda, yes, we are out of slots. We really enjoyed finding the right people together who will hit the BLOG08 stage at October the 24th. Needless to say, we are very proud of the listed speakers who will hit the stage. We stopped updating the speakers list but that does not mean we are sad, we are not. We are more than happy to have so many influential bloggers coming to Amsterdam for you.

Enough chit-chat, we have news for you if you haven’t bought a ticket yet. If you are buying a ticket in the next few days (till 00:00 Wednesday) you will get a chance to come to our speakers dinner the night before BLOG08 kicks-off. It’s your chance to have food, drinks, good talks and, above all, meet all of the speakers. Boris will host this, and, just like on The Next Web Salon - we will do the cooking.

When we ran into Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur at the Picnic conference last week, we couldn’t let him get away without asking him about BLOG08 and his blogging career. This is what he had to say. His advice? Focus on microblogging and vloggin. Roger that Loic!

(camera by Sacha Post)

With Scott Rafer, we’ve added a true Silicon Valley blog entrepreneur to our list of speakers. He has been helping Internet publishers and users take advantage of the latest technologies and trends since 1995.

As CEO of Lookery, Rafer is creating an ad network that supports the growth of social applications, including blogs. Earlier, he was CEO of MyBlogLog, which was acquired by Yahoo! in early 2007. You probably know MyBlogLog from the widgets depicting the avatars of the latest blog visitors.

Now that Rafer will speak at our gig, BLOG08 has become even more interesting for corporate bloggers. Without a doubt, Rafer will address monetization problems and opportunities. Together with Hugh MacLeod’s talk about blog marketing, you’ll have the full package to get going with your corporate blog.

Our Journalism versus/ heart Blogging panel is complete now we’ve added professor dr. Piet Bakker to the list of four. During a Dutch interview with Marketingfacts, we called it a “clash of the titans” - which it will probably be.

Piet Bakker is professor at the Hogeschool Utrecht and associate professor at the University of Amsterdam. He introduced me, Ernst-Jan, to Communications science at the University of Amsterdam in 2004, was my teacher during my first bachelor seminar in 2006, and sent me to New York in 2007, so I’m glad and honored to have him at BLOG08. He has been blogging about free daily newspapers since August 2004, so he knows his material.

Together with Clo Willaerts (Sanoma), Tim Overdiek (NOS), and Paul Bradshaw (Onlinejournalismblog.com), Bakker will discuss the future of journalism and the influence of blogs. Do you have an urgent question to ask these experts? Drop me a line at ernst-jan@blog08.nl.

Last Thursday night the boys from Love O.D. came to our office to sync their outfits as they are the ‘house-band’ of BLOG08. For some, it was the first time to wear a tie. But when they were all dressed up, something magical happened at our office. Supported by beer and music, the Love O.D. guys started dancing and singing the rest of the night. It was a blast.

At Picnic, we talked to Gabe Mac and his appearance at BLOG08. This will be an event you do not want to miss. His show involves live-vlogging, a mystery guest and many more things yet to be announced. We have also received some very interesting blog-posts that will be published in the book Blurb will print for us. If you haven’t send in that one rockin’ blog post; make sure you let us know which post you would like to see printed in the book.

We’ve added another great name to the Journalism Versus/ Heart Blogging panel. If you’re into journalism and blogs, he doesn’t need an introduction. Just a wild guess: most of you aren’t, so here’s his bio.

Paul Bradshaw is the man behind the Online Journalism Blog, one of the world’s most popular journalism blogs, as well as various other blogs he keeps forgetting about. In between blog posts he works as a Senior Lecturer in Online Journalism, Magazines and New Media at Birmingham City University in the UK, and as a new media consultant for publishers. During the panel, he’ll be accompanied by Tim Overdiek and Clo Willaerts.

He wants us to let you know that he doesn’t bite, so feel free to walk up to him for a good chat about journalism and blogs after the panel. Disclaimer: don’t blame us if he DOES bite.

When we asked ten influential Dutch bloggers what they wanted to see at our conference, they all mentioned interactivity. Of course, how can you organize a blog conference without allowing the audience to participate? You can’t match that with the whole philosophy behind blogging. So that’s why we came up with three ideas to turn BLOG08 into an interactive event. There’s one we’d like to highlight, as we think it’s history in the making (humble guys, aren’t we?).

Let’s write a book together!

Yeah, you’ve read that right. We want to write a book together. Here’s how. We’re looking for inspiring stories about people’s best blog posts. Do you have a certain post of which you’re really proud? Send us a line with a link to the post and the story behind it before October 10th. [Read more]

Some months ago, Ernst-Jan and I talked with serial internet entrepreneur Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten about this blogging conference we were planning. Fifteen minutes later we were talking about how cool the event would have to be. Twenty minutes later we agreed to organize BLOG08 together. Now, about four months later, we asked Boris to speak about blogging. Not because he is co-organizer of BLOG08, not because he wears white suits, and not because we like him.

We do actually, but we want him on the stage due to his infamous appearance at the Greek Blogger Camp last summer. His keynote about bloggers and God was the talk of the day. If you have ever seen Boris speak, and you probably have, than you know what a great speaker he is. Oh, and if you haven’t, than there is another good reason to go to BLOG08.