This past Saturday, hundreds of bloggers from up and down the east coast gathered in Baltimore for a sold-out conference dedicated to blogging called WordCamp MidAtlantic. The conference was organized by DC’s own WordPress expert (and recent speaker at NextGenWeb’s Social Media for Staffers) Aaron Brazell, with help from East Coast Blogging’s Jimmy Gardner. Although the name WordCamp stems from the popular blogging platform WordPress, the conference did touch on many other online blogging tools and even featured a keynote from Anil Dash, the Chief Evangelist from Six Apart.

Dash’s keynote not drew attention for the substance of his message on why we blog (answer: connecting online around ideas that we find meaningful). From Dash’s keynote, to a video interview with Shashi Bellakonda of Network Solutions, to national Web 2.0 news destination TechCrunch in less than hour, the conference was social media in action.

Watch Dash’s keynote below, recorded by Joe Corbett of ISTEConnects.

WordCamps happen in communities around the world all the time, so check out WordCamp Central to find one near you. Don’t see one? There’s also a guide to organizing one yourself!