The Chapel Hill Bloggers Meetup is growing — 17 of us gathered on the cold patio of Caffe Driade this evening to talk about blogging. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one shivering. Others at the meetup: Tom Ciszek and his friend Richard, Bernard Glassman, ae, Ruby Sinreich, Tim King, Corey Reece, Justin Watt, Roy Kim, Karen Mishra, Chuck Watson, Brian Russell, Max Longley, WillR (the commenter), Jackson Fox and Michael O’Connell. We started with round-the-table introductions. Roy told us he’s got 12,000 active members at his tabulas.com journal community, a project he started as a junior at UNC-CH. Chuck is a lawyer and former academic from Durham and is interested in blogging; he’s offered to help get the executive conference room in the NC Mutual Life building for a Durham bloggers meetup. Corey‘s still looking for a job, though Chuck thought he had an opportunity from him. Bernard claimed to be the only one of us to have a .gov blog. “I blog too much and I read too many blogs,” said Jackson, who has found himself reading bloggers who filter the best of other blogs (the classic second stage of weblog development — see my blogging101). New blogger Karen said she started her blog to share her reflections on being a middle-aged grad student, “rather than just doing rants.” Tim announced he’d received his very first comment spam this week. [Commiserative applause] Tom introduced himself as a grad student about to embark on doctoral research into social linking; he’s currently part of the Microsoft-funded SILS research into annotation. If my notes are correct, that led to Bernard and Chuck quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines” and Ruby and Brian explaining that blogging credibility comes from transparency and exposure (the shivers got to me about now, so if anyone can amplify this point, please do so in the comments). I mentioned my recent move to branding myself as mistersugar. See my about page for an explanation of the name and my pig logo. Do you have an about page? Why not? At this point, I asked for anyone to talk about their favorite post, or one they were most proud of. Tom related how he’d used his Blackberry to post a couple of messages from the rally at the Pit last night. (Tom left early to go to cheerleading practice, doing his part to urge the Tar Heels to victory this Saturday. “Beat dook,” he says on his blog.) Ruby mentioned how the Oregon chapter of Planned Parenthood used blogging (at her direction, part of her day job when she’s not orchestrating Orange Politics) to blog in real time from a statehouse rally. “Blogging can amplify and document events,” she said. Ruby’s most proud of her post on political colors, which she “wrote too carefully.” That led to a discussion about blog posts that, written deliberately, fail to generate much discussion. Which didn’t bother Justin, who was proud of his post about fixing his laptop lcd screen, which still doesn’t have any comments, though he can tell from his visitor logs that people are coming to the post through search engine links. Karen is proud of her post about ‘loving the one you trust’, something she wrote with her husband years ago as part of a regular e-mail newsletter; now it’s on the second of her two new blogs (see her comment from last week’s notes). More discussion then about how much thought you should put into a blog post, and the seeming correlation that too much thought leaves too little room for others to add their comments. WillR: Would Ted Kuczynski have turned out differently if he’d published his thoughts on a blog? Talk turned to reading blogs with viewpoints not your own, as well as getting trapped in an echo chamber of blogs like your own. Consensus seemed to be it’s important to listen to other voices, at least once in while. Ruby (painfully) mentioned HippyHillNews. Michael suggested that a future meetup discussion start with the question “What motivates you to blog?” Tim said his favorite post is one about the tsunami and humans being a force of nature. Jackson said his favorite post was one of only four sentences that connected four separate topics (link, please, Jackson). COMMERCIAL BREAK: Pick one of your favorite posts that you’d like more people to read. Submit it for the second edition of the Tar Heel Tavern. Last topic of the chat was audioblogging and podcasting — something we’ll get Brian to demonstrate at one of the next meetups — as well as a discussion of the future of streaming audio. Those of you there tonight, what did I miss? We’ll meet at the same time but at a new location next Wednesday. Stay tuned for details of the new setting. And look for an announcement of a Durham Bloggers Meetup, coming soon.

The first of the Raleigh-area bloggers meetups was last night, with six of us gathered to talk blogging: Andy Wismar, Grace, Josh Staiger, Dave Johnson, David Warlick and Anton Zuiker. Like the first of the Chapel Hill meetups, this was more a get-to-know-each-other chat than a deep discussion of blogging content or current issues – much to the dismay of Grace, who’d driven from her workplace in Sanford (read her 3/1 posting, with an eye to her brief mention that her blog is an alter ego). From my notes, this is what we discussed: Grace mentioned her friend’s stem cell site. David asked Dave about his experience supporting blogs at Sun, “How does blogging help people do their jobs?” Dave said he’s been thinking a lot about this, and suggested a blog is a good tool for work logs and a replacement for knowledge management systems. That led to Dave and Josh and Andy introducing the rest of us to the concept of whuffie. David explained his work and blogging in education, telling us he’s created a blog tool for teachers to use in their classrooms. He’s already supporting 259 teachers in 25 states and a handful of other countries. Grace mentioned an article she’d read recently that asks whether kids should blog or not (I’ll link to it when I find it). She warned about children being targeted through their blogs. David mentioned cyberbullying (my link, not his). Grace complained we were talking too much about blogging tools and not enough about content. Note to Grace and others: see the Tar Heel Tavern for lots of links to local bloggers, and read content to your heart’s content. David gave a testament to the self-publishing services of Lulu, which he used to make his out-of-print book available to a teacher who wanted 20 copies for her students. The group decided next week’s Raleigh/Cary Bloggers Meetup will be Tuesday, March 8th at 6:30 p.m. at Cafe Cyclo (map).

Over at Blogads, Henry and his team have implemented an idea he mentioned at the Triangle bloggercon, a “tool [that] allows a blogger to create a mininetwork that pulls together their peer blogs in one convenient package for advertisers.” And Waxy.org reports Yahoo! is about to give bloggers contextual ads just like Google’s Adsense.