Bloggers Meet-up & a Little Red Boat (clap clap)
November 8, 2007 – Libby Davy – Print
Frances Aldrich (with Anna “Little Red Boat” and Bobbie Johnson uncharacteristically dull in the background). Thanks to Jane Dallaway for organising the evening and for the photo!
We live and work in an amazing city called Brighton. It’s becoming know as the San Francisco of England. But not. There are loads of bloggers and social media bods on every corner. Second Life just opened their second life here too (the first is in SF).
The Brighton (hard core) Bloggers got together recently as part of the Digital Media Festival, and asked us to come along. We ended up just kind of telling our story and inviting others to. It was a really nice way to find out more about why people blog. As I think Bobbie or Dean Harvey said, “It’s a bit like an AA meeting”. A witty mob are the old bloggers mate. Reminds me of when Peter Morris said a website is like ” a hungry elephant in the backroom demanding to be fed”… or like Michael Leunig’s cartoon (man clenching guts feverishly “Doctor, Doctor, help… I’ve got a book inside me, take it out).
Blogs take the pressure off, but maybe it never goes away.. that gnawing feeling writers have. Better out than in I say, earthily, like a good burp. Hence the new category, the shameful admission.. “The Book”…
There I was telling students blog posts are “meant” to be short and only include one key point. Well I’m not here to regurgitate Naked Conversations. I’m here to stay on my own authentic blogging journey and reserve the right to rabbit on and meander down the page from time to time, so there! When we did the goal setting exercise in the Tuesday night group, I joined in. Part of what I wrote in the free writing exercise, letting it all spill out, was that I want to do some more reflective, longer pieces here. Not just putting up resources for everyone. But blogging for me! Staying on the path. Making deeper sense of it all.
Back to the AA meeting. My favourite new blog discovery of the night (obviously I have been living in my socks drawer)… was Anna at Little Red Boat. Along with Maxi our cat-person, Gra, HHDL and Michael Leunig, I think she might be one of my gurus… well, blogging gurus as least. In a perfect world Anna, I would be dropping a copy of Michael Leunig’s best to your door this Christmas - like Maxi leaves mice at the foot of Bea’s bunk bed stairs. An offering. But I know myself well enough to know it… unlikely. But if you love what you see, let me know and I am oh so happy to share some of his books with you.
Lastly, a big warm thanks to the stunning Frances Aldrich (from our Uni of Sussex academics group) for getting out the door. You look like you were enjoying yourself and made some engaging contributions…. Anything you would like to add?
If you get the clap clap reference (hint: The Belle Stars) then you will really know how old I am.
Thanks for the mention, Libby, but I’d like to make a small correction. In Naked Conversations, as I recall, we emphasized that short blogs were more popular and that bloggers who posted brief articles and then posted often, would score well in rankings. We certainly did not intend to say what blogs were MEANT to be. They are meant to be whatever the author chooses them to be. scoble and I tried hard to tell stories about why blogging was a good thing for business. We had lots of lists. But we are two incurable rule breakers and did not mean to set them for others.
It was really interesting to meet members of the Brighton Bloggers group and learn about their diverse motives for blogging. Thanks for a good evening!
As someone with a background in cognitive psychology and an interest in memory I was particularly interested in hearing about the way some of those present use their blogs as an extension of their own memories. Of course people have been keeping journals as a reminder to themselves of what they have seen, done and said for hundreds of years, but digital technology makes a journal so much more searchable and useful for this purpose. But to me there was something intriguing and rather unsettling about comments I heard along the lines of “Keeping a blog means I can Google what I thought or did.”. It’s not only that people had opted to share their blog’s content with anyone who might find it helpful (very generous spirited!) but to me there’s something disquieting about the idea of using a computer-based search tool to explore the previous contents of one’s own mind. Not that being intrigued, unsettled and disquieted is bad… So, thank you to the Brighton Bloggers for that!
And just a thought: would the Reverend Robert Shields have blogged if he could?
Oh my lord… that is reflection and documentation gone completely mad! I see a film script coming on…
[...] Be you. That’s all I want to say right now. And as Shel Israel dropped into say on a previous post: “In Naked Conversations, as I recall, we emphasized that short blogs were more popular and [...]
Incredible. The Reverend Robert Shields…I wonder if it will get released? Limited Edition comes with free nose hair on page 169,341,765.
That would truly make a great script. I bet someone’s already bought the rights to the entire diary though. If they haven’t, I’ll chip in for it. I can afford about £17.
I hadn’t thought of the cognitive reason behind my personal blog very much, but I would agree it’s definitely a memory aid. Sometimes logging in to Blogger is quicker than finding my notebook, especially at work.
Also, being a more considered spurt for it’s public nature, the process of writing a blog post out (however quickly) can also aid in the development of the thought in a way completely different to that of a private journal. Libby told me that. You were right Libby.
Awesome.
~biff~
Shooting the mental breeze…
When I blog, am I saying “I am proud of my thoughts”?