So, £50 lighter of cash and maybe a little bit tired this morning, I went off to the Liberal Conspiracy "Blog Nation" event last night held by the Guardian in London. After walking the wrong way from the tube station and walking in the wrong building to ask an exasperated receptionist where I'm meant to go I eventually arrived late. But was it worth it?

The short answer is probably, but as this article title suggests there was a fair amount of frustration to take from the event as well. It was a roughly three hour discussion/seminar that split it's time about 2/3rds to 1/3rd on the left in the blogosphere followed by feminism in the left of the blogosphere, and both discussions had their fair share of enlightening moments as well as meandering ones.

For the first discussion I walked in slightly late and so missed some of Tim Ireland's talk. He was engaging and laid a good ground work. Unfortunately where the debate should have perhaps taken some more structure instead the other panelists did little more than educate us about where their specific corner of the web has sprung from and why they believe it is important. Labour Home for it's "back to basics" style of "town hall meetings online", F-Word for providing a platform for feminists, and Georgina (for the Guardian) talking about the transition of print journalism to online and the use of blogs, bloggers and platforms such as CiF

But, as I alluded to above, this really didn't go anywhere. Too many cooks spoil the broth and unfortunately I forgot that the blogosphere is full of opinionated people with their own vision of what the perfect solution to the worlds ills are. "We should be sinking Labour" said some, others said "what can we do to try and save them". "How can we get power bloggers like Iain Dale" said a few, while others asked "why do we need big name bloggers at all?", and the question of "do we need resources to be as powerful as Guido?" was met with opposite answers by certain sections.

When Dan came in a bit later he added some much needed relevance to the debate, talking about his Iraqi interpreter campaign. It was the only mention really of how to co-ordinate big campaigns through blogging and carrying it to the offline world, in a meeting where unfortunately we didn't have any time to discuss the 42 day issue and where that campaign may go.

The idea that we were going to come out of the meeting with any kind of idea or direction for how the left can move forward on effecting politics was shot down by a constant back and forth by people in the audience making directionless statements or bickering amongst themselves, at one point Laurie Penny for some reason saw it fit to ask why it is that no-one on the panel had mentioned a single feminist blogger. They hadn't (to my knowledge) mentioned a jewish, muslim, homosexual or disabled blogger either, but that's obviously beside the point.

When the debate was forced to shut down, to give the feminist debate enough time, it felt like it hadn't progressed much, but there was a message there that could be lost, and that is that to be influential you need to have credibility and trust. Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes have this, earned or not, they are brands in their own right in the blogosphere. We probably don't need super bloggers like them, but we do need credible "brands" or platforms such as Liberal Conspiracy, Labour Home...and more importantly they need to start working together. They aren't going to agree on everything, but they need to find common ground and work on those areas to benefit the liberal-left as a greater cause.

Of course I found such a statement highly ironic, especially as it was nodded along furiously to by Tim while only earlier he had (and I apologise if I've misinterpreted this) made it clear that finding common ground with David Davis was unacceptable. It seems as though common ground is fine amongst friends, but not enemies, and I feel this is a barrier that needs to be broken down if we want to take every opportunity we can.

The second part of the debate, on feminism, turned out to be more interesting than I thought it would be. Quite a few in the room left, perhaps worried about the conflict that tends to arise over feminism, or perhaps through a distrust or dislike of feminist methods. I certainly would have put myself in the latter category but wanted to hear the discussion out.

I'm glad I did because it became clear that feminists are as divided and diverse as those fighting for civil liberties can be, or for homosexual rights, or whatever. It just so happens the most bulshy and disagreeable feminists are the ones that you tend to see more of and remember.

This isn't to say the debate didn't have its own air of pointlessness. At first the question seemed to be what can feminists do to stop being ignored, but this soon developed in to what can we do to stop them being abused. I think it's an amazing feat to both be ignored and abused at the same time but even more complicated became the idea that feminists wanted more credit, and to be leaders of feminist issues...but while men were there to support the arguments in a debate where everyone is equal. It seemed that many different voices were speaking about their own peeves and they all wanted to pull in different directions.

It was eye opening, I certainly perhaps realised feminism was happening in some circles without me even realising it, but this is more down to an equality of debate that those feminists employ and with little sanctimonious rhetoric and table thumping. But feminists need to get together and actually find out what the most important thing for them is before we can help. Is it being ignored? In that case we can all help highlight them. Is it us "men" taking too much of the limelight? Then perhaps we can do more to step back at appropriate times. But if it's also that men aren't supportive enough then we start to get in to contradiction, as well as if the main problem is too much abuse. Like with the first debate a lack of direction on the big issue or two to tackle watered down the subject.

I'm glad I got to meet several people, it was interesting to see different groups clinging together for comfort in the audience, but if we're to answer the questions this event was meant to set out then it is perhaps down to some people to take the lead and say this is what we need to concentrate on strategically before anything else and take it from there