Jason Calacanis is the keynote at today's session of Blog Business Summit.  The event is also being covered by Diane Ensey at AlistReview. So here are my detailed notes, just after telling Diane that I was going to try to provide a synopsis of the proceedings.

On a personal note, Jason was kind enough to spend a few minutes with me at the end of his talk and give some advice and encouragement to me and Know More Media. He said that Business to business was where he wanted to first go with Weblogsinc, but the consumer side took off and they had to follow it.

I was attracted to blogs because of the authenticity back in 2002-2003.  It was a dark period, September 11th, corporate scandal, etc.  Online publishing became free and a lot of technological people were laid off and had lots of angst and it created a perfect storm.

Rafat Ali was making $60-$70 k and I thought this guy who had worked for me was now making twice as much working from home blogging. 

Another went to boing-boing and it took off.  I was holding my people back and they really excelled on their own.

The command and control model was not doing well.  If I had just let them loose, these extremely talented people would do far more than they could do for me.

Could a blog work?  One wouldn’t work, but 500 would.  Back in 2003,  the fact that we were going to commercialize blogs, I was the anti-Christ.

Took Nick Denton of Gawker to lunch in SoHo.  Nick said, “There is no money in this.  You don’t want to do it.”  It seemed like a pretty good business to me so I thought Nick was being sly.

The day I launched, Nick wrote about how this Dot-com bubble boy was going destroy the blogosphere.  I decided that I really wanted to stick it too him.  So I decided to take his most talented people.

I offered more money and equity to Elizabeth who was the number 1 blogger at the number one network, but she wanted to be a magazine journalist. I was told that the real talent was Peter Rojas.  Nick Denton had promised him equity but wouldn’t give it to him.  So I offered it to him, gave him a free reign. 

The next critical moment was Judith Meskill becoming the editorial director.  She brought people on board, trained them, and taught them the process.

Advertisers were calling us and we needed Shawn Gold to do this consultative sale.  He came on board with a $300,000 sponsorship and sold out our inventory within a few weeks for the rest of the year for a few of our blogs.

We set up a blog for my friend Mark Cuban and Mark came in with a few hundred thousand as we started need to more capital.  Easiest money I ever raised and Mark is the greatest investor you could ever had.

Wound up meeting up with the AOL people through some connection at Time.

Nick Denton always claiming that he would never sell, but I kept running into people that had been talking to him about selling Gawker.

We had great salespeople, great traffic, and great software.  What do we need?  Nothing.  If I sell to AOL, you will want to edit all my authors.  The common DNA of these bloggers is that they are misfits, outsiders.  The fact that Scoble became the most savvy communicator for Microsoft, tells you something about blogging.

AOL promised us that they would never edit our bloggers and they never did.

Now to the dark side of the Blogosphere.  People with good products just do their thing and do normal

How to be an Alister: Go to techmeme, chose the top story of the day, write about it and refer to the top 10 people who wrote about it and do it every day for a month.  Go to a few conferences – you are now an a-list blogger.

The blogosphere is the greatest meritocracy ever existed in media.  If you are not at the top, it is not because there is something broken, it is because you suck.

If your blog is broken – link out more, put intelligent comments on other peoples blogs, and post more.

Pay per post is evil.  It pisses me off.  We created this authentic beautiful place and they come to main street and piss all over the street. 

I don’t have a problem if they are transparent.  The whole premise of the interet is trust and authenticity.  This is lying and deception

None of our bloggers ever receive spiffs, junkets, or ever talk to advertisers.  This is separation of Church and State.  We have a very big wall.

The guys are pay per post are enablers and are like drug mules, allowing and enabling deceptive posting.

Tim Draper, I want to talk directly to you.  Tim Draper, why would you put $3 million into covert marketing (PayPerPost)?  Tim Draper, do you like to be deceived?  What are you thinking?

I think podcasting will be big.  I was wrong 2 years ago.  About 20% of what I write is wrong, so skip every 5th post.  Podcasting is going to be big so I am podcasting and the donation goes to a school that helps kids.  Podtech said that they would do it and donated $100k for me to do 50 episodes this next year. 

YouTube threaded the needle between the content holders in a way that Napster never did in terms of copy right violation.  I congratulate them.  I think audio and video both will be big.  I want to mix it up.  Times you want to listen, times you want to read, and times you want to watch.

Why did you sell Weblogsinc?

When to sell the company is a personal decision based upon where the shareholders are at in their lives.  I already didn’t sell Silicon Alley Reporter for $20 million and didn’t get any exit.  This gave us a chance to capitalize on our work.  You can get rich by selling too early.

What about if you are transparent about receiving things or getting paid?

Definitely – Make the first line “I am getting paid to write this post and if you want to know more about it, click here”.  I do not allow our authors to take junkets for a review of product.  If you are going to make a media publishing company, you can’t ever ever ever allow the perception that you are not completely authentic and ethical.  Do not ever allow anyone to ever get inside the blog post.

Here is additional coverage of the Jason's keynote:

Jason Calacanis Just Announced Something - Scoble

Communities and Transparency - AlistReview

Anneccdotes from Jason Calacanis - The Tucows Blog

 Jason Calacanis at BBS - The Ugly American