BlogTogether

I’m in Asheville for the week for a work meeting, and I’m looking for Asheville bloggers to meet up with. In my search, I found this tidbit with hints of an Asheville bloggercon later this year. Let’s hope it happens — this is a great city and it’d be great to get bloggers to gather in this part of the state.

I’ve moved the Chapel Hill Blog Teach-in to Sat, June 11, 2005 (the previous date was over Memorial Day weekend, not the best time to get people to sit in a computer lab on a Saturday afternoon). Same time, same place: 12 noon to 2 p.m. in room 307 of the UNC-CH Health Sciences Library. Get the teachin_poster.pdf and plaster it around town and campus, please. Please volunteer to help a new blogger that day. Sign up over at the wiki page for the teach-in.

Jason Trommetter writes to invite bloggers to participate in Tar Heel Voice, which looks to be an attempt at online community and citizen journalism. Check it out, and report back, please.

Josh being a blogger and an IBM employee, he’s got some thoughts on the new policy at Big Blue. Another IBM blogger, Michael O’Connell, tells me he’s heading to Lubbock, Texas, soon. I’ll miss him; Michael and I have been talking blogs, journalism and more since we met each other at the start of our graduate studies.

In attendance: Martin Johnson, Roy, Corey, ae, WillR and Anton. WillR got us talking about commenting on blogs, and he mentioned, again, his efforts to create a tool for tracking the comments he leaves across the blogosphere. He wants to know when someone responds to one of his comments, whether immediately or months later. That led to discussion about conversations, and the various ways bloggers use their comments feature: choosing only certain blog posts to get comments, limiting comments to a certain time period, displaying recent comments on the blog home page and other ways. Somehow, WillR and I got into a mini debate about expression versus dialogue — me arguing that blogs developed first as a tool of personal expression and then as a means of online convesation, while WillR came at this from his role as only a commenter on blogs. When I suggested that his desire for blogs be labeled to make it easier to follow more and more of them was akin to stereotyping, he thought I called him a bigot. I apologized for the unintended slight, and once we got that cleared up, we agreed on the “problem of proliferation,” as he describes the challenge of keeping up with numerous prolific bloggers. I’m looking forward to the solution he comes up with. We talked briefly about social networking software. This could be the main topic of a future bloggers meetup. Maybe Paul Jones will join us, as I know he’s interested in such online communities. Martin asked about ways to get professors to be guest bloggers on SouthNow. ae and I agreed that the best way is to not even mention the word blog but to ask a professor to share his or her expertise and insight in three or four posts about a select and selective issue or topic. Roy talked about his hardware woes at Tabulas and how he just needs time (and I suspect, a little money) to upgrade his blogging service with its built-in authenticity features. What did I miss? Please help me fill in the holes.

Ed Cone announces Diversity and Creativity on the Web, aka, Converge, a conference in Greensboro October 7th and 8th, to cover “podcasting/vidblogging/weblogging, plus politics, faith, business, and some other stuff we’re still figuring out.” UPDATE: Offical website is here.

Notice this blog has a new URL: http://blogtogether.org. Please change your bookmarks. (I’ll be migrating the wiki later today.)

Tuesday, 5/17/2005 Meet Josh and the other Raleigh-area bloggers at 6:30 p.m. at Cafe Cyclo in Raleigh’s Cameron Village. Wednesday, 5/18/2005 The weekly meetup of the Chapel Hill bloggers at 6 p.m. at Tyler’s Tap Room in Carrboro.

In attendace: Adam, Bernard, ae, Ruby, Brian, Anton and Corey. It being May 11th, Corey was celebrating his wedding anniversary; Christina joined us later after her lab work with C. elegans. Bernard shared his good news: he’s decided to go back to school, and expects to be studying in JOMC and SILS this fall. Somehow, we got to talking about parents and adult computer literacy. Bernard suggested to Brian, who’s trying to coax his mother to using her computer, that the best way to teach adults is to start with vocabulary. Brian replied that instructors need to relearn how they talk about technology; he recommended Doc Searls’s two-part article, Getting Flat. I talked about communication tools for families, and related how, at a recent family reunion (during a tense powwow), my family mentioned how important our family website is for keeping the siblings informed. Bernard related how he bought his father an early facsimile machine, and they kept in touch with volumunious fax transmissions. Brian brought up Paul’s post about the Chapel Hill city website coming makeover, and he encouraged the bloggers in the area to raise the level of civic discussion about whether the city should so quickly be outsourcing such a vital online task. (Orange Politics has since taken up the conversation.) That led to chat about local media coverage of blogs. I suggested I’d propose to the Independent that they have a column about local blog postings, similar to its zine column. (Fiona, I’ll be in touch soon.) Turns out the N&O has a new online column about local blogs. (via Paul) Ruby said she needs more contributors and guest bloggers at Orange Politics. Contact her if you want to write for that site. Ruby also related her recent runin with the dimwits at MSNBC, who ridiculed Ruby and Brian’s unique wedding site. Brian told of the logo contest for podcastercon.org – get your entries in today.

Over at Orange Politics, Ruby and Brian are raising some valid objections to the Town of Chapel Hill’s website makeover. Get in on the discussion: why should Chapel Hill rethink its makeover?

Bora is celebrating his birthday today. Head over to Science And Politics to wish him a merry one.

I dropped the ball again on organizing a Triangle-wide meetup, but please join me tonight at Tyler’s in Carrboro at 6 for drinks and chatting about blogging.

Innovation from our blogging friends: brianandruby.org.

As you might imagine from my silence on the matter, I’ve not been able to put together plans for the regional Triangle Bloggers Meetup, which I’d had on the calendar for tomorrow. So, let’s postpone this to Wed, May 11th. If you have suggestions on a meeting place — Raleigh this time? — please reply to this message. For this week, I think that the Raleigh/Cary Bloggers Meetup is still on for the regular Tuesday at 6:30 at Café Cyclo meetup. I’ll be out of town after Tuesday, but I hope the Chapel Hill bloggers will get together, same time, same place (Wed, 6 p.m., Tyler’s), unless someone steps up to organize an alternative meeting. And, the rtpBloggers are scheduled to meet for lunch this week; at the moment, looks as if they’ll meet Friday at 11:30 at Crazy Fire on Leesville Rd. If you haven’t volunteered yet for the Chapel Hill Blog Teach-in on Sat, May 28, please do so now. Visit the teach-in wiki page.