Seattle Bloggers: We’re Here to Stay
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I was congratulated by so many people tonight (most of whom I did NOT know or who did NOT know me). I really feel awkward taking ANY degree of credit for this event. KOMO should be very, very, very inclined to do this again and on a regular basis - it’s only going to grow and increase flow. I’m just happy to be one conduit.
If KOMO is the rallying point for bloggers to get together, become acquainted with one another, and ultimately stretch their relationships beyond special interest circles, then KOMO can and should accept that role - which could be willingly embraced by any other traditional media outlet that was just hoping to learn more about its most vocal community members and advocates (read: bloggers).
Funny thing is: just about everyone was asking about the agenda (even though there really wasn’t any), and curious to know how they were discovered in the first place. Made for great conversation starters, but also underscored my belief that serendipity is the spice of life. I’ve been dying to get out of the technology blogger echo chamber for quite some time, and felt exceedingly relieved to know few others in the room.
So, next time…
- Need to have a poll to set tentative dates within a specific week. You could never accommodate everybody’s schedule, but at least you can get a better idea as to which night works best for most people on any given week (or no preference, for some).
- You’ll keep your costs low and confusion at a minimum by keeping it in the same place, even if it happens to fall at different times of a week and/or month.
- Don’t turn this into anything more than a social event.
- I might actually tap into your WiFi, because my EVDO signal wasn’t very strong in the studio(s).
- It’s a radical concept, but what about some kind of semi-UNproduced “Meet The Bloggers” show where you have someone do mini-interviews with the bloggers who show up? Bring ‘em on stage, give ‘em a small bit of make-up, ask ‘em what they blog about, put their URL in the lower-thirds, then run the program either online (exclusively) or in some random 4AM time slot that would otherwise go to an advertisement for Girls Gone Wild Volume XXXIV. Heck, if you don’t wanna do it, I’ll set it up through my live stream next time and do it anyway. ;)
- What about a table near the entrance where people can drop off a small stack of business cards, just to take a look to see who else might be there - then they might network their way through the crowd looking for the name and connections to that person?
- I think we would be better off using Upcoming.org to organize attendence - it’s much more open-ended and prone to attracting even more interested bloggers.
The EVDO connection kept halving my live viewers, since Ustream doesn’t handle disconnections and reconnections very elegantly yet. Still, two people took live screen caps before I had a chance to ask. Gordon Medley took the first shot (with the group photo live), and Taylor Hornby snaped the second (with me at the anchor desk):
Then, someone else dumped a few of the group shots onto my desktop (thanks to the help of another local blogger). I didn’t catch either of their names, sadly - and I certainly couldn’t name everyone in the photo:
19 Comments
ROCKING THE BOAT
November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am
blogger meetup
Blogs | pegasusnews.com
November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am
blogger meet-up hosted by Chris Pirillo and sponsored by The Company’s ABC-affiliate TV station KOMO. There were easily 150+ local bloggers in attendance, which surprised me. Seattle is a much bloggier town than the DF-Dub. In a case of it being a smallish world, I spent an inordinate amount of time talking about
Folly's House of Mirth
November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am
jetcityorange.com, and listened to him give tips and suggestions on improving my site’s page rank in search engines. I didn’t get a chance to meet the guy who organized the event, but here’s his site too: chris.pirillo.com. All in all, it was a pretty interesting evening. Thanks, Chris and KOMO-TV!
The Chris Pirillo Show
November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am
[IMG] Chris Pirillo Microsoft Office for Mac 2008: Delayed Seattle Bloggers: We?re Here to Stay People Still Subscribe to MP3 (Audio) Podcasts?! Video Love I Love to Laugh What is Love Lyrics and Video What Does Gnomedex Mean? On Help and Linux Help Windows Vista Sound Problems Is Outsourcing My Pownce Identity Smart?
Left Of Center
November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am
Chris Pirillo » Seattle Bloggers: We’re Here to Stay Posted 2 hours ago
Metroblogging Seattle
November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am
the Stranger. [p-i] Amazon has a new grocery delivery service and I still haven’t been invited to try it out. [amazonfresh] Recapping the KOMO ‘blogger meetup thingy, with some suggestions for next time. [pirillo] [IMG]
Terry Heaton’s PoMo Blog
November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am
ve been involved in many of these, and this was by far the best organized and best attended one of the lot. Some of that’s attributable to the web hip community of Seattle (we invited 800 active bloggers), but I’ve got to tip my hat to Chris Pirillo
Writer Way
November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am
I’ve been known to roll my eyes when my husband describes a party as “relentless socializing,” but that phrase perfectly described last night’s high-energy doubleheader: A blogger confab organized by Chris Pirillo (Lockergnome) and hosted by KOMO, followed by a Biznik get-together at the intriguing McLeod Residence gallery in Belltown. (The evening went into extra innings: A late-night supper of “happy hour” tidbits at Flying Fish with a couple of fellow
Jackson
August 3rd, 2007
at 4:09am
Chris,
Are you familiar with what WKRN in Nashville has done over the past few years? The short of it is that they hosted blogger meetups, launched a blog focused solely on highlighting what local bloggers were saying, and features blog highlights in their local newscasts.
It has all kinda fallen apart in the past few months, but for a couple of years WKRN was doing great. As a result there is a really tight-knit community of bloggers in Nashville.
Slumberland
August 3rd, 2007
at 4:25am
Bloggers invade KOMO…
Photo by l0ckergn0me.
Last night KOMO-TV hosted a local blogger get-together at Fisher Plaza. I was a little suspicious — after all, they promised us food, alcohol, and swag, and why would KOMO want to do that for a bunch of misfit blogger…
Rob Dunlop
August 3rd, 2007
at 5:40am
Thank you Chris for being part of the event last night and serving as the semi-mc. I think the suggestions you raise above are terrific and Fisher is very much interested in continuing to host these events. It was a great opportunity to meet so many wonderful folks who are actively engaging the community in dialogue on such varied subjects.
I was regularly asked about KOMO’s “agenda” and I can assure you there is none. We are interested in joining the blogging community as bloggers ourselves and wished to get to know others who are doing the same.
As for Dave’s comments of a few days ago (excerpts on your site on July 30), we would expect and hope that all of you would continue blogging for or against media outlets like KOMO-TV as you have/will/might etc. We welcome the feedback and straight-talk.
Thanks again Chris!
Anita Rowland
August 3rd, 2007
at 6:14am
I wish I’d made it! but I wasn’t feeling quite up to it last night. Notes allowed on one of the flickr images would help ID people.
dan robinson
August 3rd, 2007
at 7:08am
Chris,
Great meetup! I carried the microphone upstairs for you. Do you have model information for it?
Cheers,
Dan
Sean Harding
August 3rd, 2007
at 8:31am
Sounds like fun! I wanted to go, but I ended up having no fewer than five conflicting things last night. Apparently it was a popular date. The event I ended up going to was our Intern Open House at Google in Kirkland, which was another way to meet a bunch of interesting and smart people :-)
Andrew Ferguson
August 3rd, 2007
at 10:10am
“Then, someone else dumped a few of the group shots onto my desktop (thanks to the help of another local blogger).”
The KOMO employee with the Canon 20D (I think it was a 20D) is the one who took the pictures. I happened to have a PCMCIA CF reader in my tablet and dumped them onto your desktop with my thumbdrive.
Thanks for a great meet up. I’d definitely do it again!
Joe Pruitt
August 3rd, 2007
at 10:54am
Chris, how do I go about getting involved with these meetups in the future?
-Joe
josh
August 3rd, 2007
at 5:02pm
Awkward or not, another thanks for being just “one conduit” for this event. I occasionally went to the blog meetup at Ralph’s a long time ago, but it seems like attendance at those has waned substantially; so it was great to be part of such a big crowd.
You wrote that you weren’t really the person to credit for this event — care to say anything more about how it came about and how your name was attached to it? And how it managed to be blissfully agenda-free?
SJ
August 4th, 2007
at 9:14pm
All I can say is that it was fun. It piqued my curiosity enough to stop hiding in my house, and that’s good.
Skook: KOMO Blogger Meet-up
June 17th, 2008
at 10:51am
[...] usual, I’m word deprived. Chris Pirillo, who apparently was a force in putting the event together, is not so handicapped.I did have fun, met some folks whose names I’ve forgotten, handed out some business cards and got [...]