The famous American blogger is going to give a lecture during the event Foro Internet Meeting Point 2009, this coming June in Asturias (northern Spain).

Mark Frauenfelder is one of the most influential people on the Web. North American writer and illustrator, he cofounded boingboing.net, a referential for bloggers, even the media of all over the world. Creative and curious, he hugged the Internet as soon as it grew up in the United States, in 1993, when Spanish Universities hardly know what it was. His passion for the Internet hasn’t stopped since then.

You worked as an engineer of disk drives but you changed jobs and decided to launch a zine
- Yes, my first job was as an engineer. I designed disk drives in the 1980s. I started Boing Boing as a print zine in 1988 because I was interested in cyberpunk science fiction, independent comic books, and the things people were doing with inexpensive computers. In 1993, Wired, another magazine I was working at the time, got into the Internet and Boing Boing did the same two years later.

The Internet was still borning up in that year
- It was an exciting time, because the Web was just getting started and we knew that something big was about to happen, but I don’t think any of us imagined how big the communications revolution would be.

Does Boingboing.net follow the same philosophy as ‘its father’, the zine –cool and wacky stuff-?

- I think so. My interests change and evolve over time, of course, but I think I’ll always remain fascinated by the things that individuals and small groups of people create with a limited budget. I am obsessed with obsessives.

Do the bloggers of Boing Boing have the freedom to write about whatever they want? Don’t they ever coincide in the items?

- Yes. Once in a while we will post duplicate items, but the first post gets to stay up, and the duplicate gets deleted.

Boing Boing has a simple but effective design. How much importance do you give to the design aspect of a web page?

- I want Boing Boing to be easy to read, so I want the design to be as invisible as possible. We try to keep it simple.

Do the readers write to you to comment or to suggest any subject? Is a blog without comments a blog? I ask to you this because I think you decided not to let them in 2003 but, four years later, you changed your mind.

- I don’t think it’s necessary to have comments to fit the definition of a blog. We have them on Boing Boing because I think they really add to the experience for our readers and for us. I enjoy reading the comments. We didn’t have comments for a few years because we didn’t have a moderator to keep the discussions from turning into hateful flame-wars. But we eventually hired moderators to monitor the posts and now it’s a lot better.

Are the pieces of adds necessary to maintain a web?

- Its one way to do it. The editors and authors spend many hours every day working on Boing Boing and we need to get paid to do it. We have other expenses related to running the site as well. There are other ways to make money besides advertising, of course, and we are starting to explore those. We will be selling cool merchandise that we have designed, for example.

Boing Boing is considered as one of the most influential web pages in the world. Has it been a challenge from the beginning?

- It’s not really been a challenge. All I really do is follow my own interests and hope that other people are interested in the same kinds of things I am.

What do you feel when you see so many blogs or even media reproduce snippets of information written by you?

- I really don’t mind. I post a lot of things that I read in papers and magazines, or see on TV or the Web. I try to credit my sources, of course.

What is the most satisfactory aspect of doing Boing Boing?

- The thing I like about Boing Boing is how it opens up new worlds to me. I posted something about a cigar box guitar, and a bunch of people who make guitars old of sticks and cigar boxes wrote to me with information about them (such as cigarboxnation.com) and now I am immersed in that world. I’ve built one cigar box guitar and have started making my second.

Do you know or visit any Spanish web pages? Microsiervos, for example? (It is said that is the Spanish Boing Boing).

- I’m sorry to say I don’t know of it, but I just checked it out using Google’s translation service. I like it! In fact I just posted something to Boing Boing that I read on Microsiervos, about a pole-climbing robot.

In your last book ‘Rule the Web’, you teach the main rules to deal with Internet usage and you have gathered several pieces of advice from dozens of bloggers. Can you share the ones you think are the most important with us?

- You have to write what you are truly enthusiastic and passionate about. If you stick to that, you will have readers. If you try to build an audience by guessing what they want, you’re likely to fail.

Finally, what are you going to talk about in the Internet Meeting Point? Is it going to be a speech for all type of audiences?

I’m going to talk about the do-it-yourself movement and how the Internet is making it possible for people to make wonderful things that would have been impossible just a few years ago.
Published on May the 18th 2009.