Saturday, January 19, 2008
January Weblogger's Meetup Report
(I have to make an official report, so I'll have to refrain from adding too much personal comment.)The January Meetup had a sparse attendance: Chris (Actually, he was the third to arrive, but I'm putting him first because he's has the alphabetical advantage.), Clark (He was the first arrival, technically, but he also had dinner at Ralph's, which gives him a slight advantage.), and John. (I didn't have dinner, I just had a beer) (Karen, our organizer was playing hooky. She had a chance to go to Macworld, so she blew us off. Hey, if I was involved in all this technology stuff like she is, I'd do that, too. Actually, I'd do that even if I was just using computers and software I dug out of the company dumpster, like I am. Of, course, I don't have any vacation time, so I'd have to forgo getting paid, assuming that my boss would let me go. And then, of course, I'd have to get down to San Francisco--but I might have enough frequent flyer miles to swing that.)(Karen had asked me to cover as "organizer", which I agreed to, despite the fact she called me Phil. She wanted to make sure someone gave the illusion of organization, because there were a lot of newcomers RSVP'd for the event. I could have told her that no one who RSVPs for these meetups actually show up, but I didn't. I was afraid that if I said something these people would actually show up and make a liar out of me. Anyway, I agreed to fill in and tried to organize. I brought stickers and markers, so we could make name tags and even brought my laptop so I could have people sign in electronically.) (Paper and pen would have been so lame and even more retro than my iBook.) (Clark was intrigued by my old clamshell iBook--he wondered if it would be possible to slip the guts of one of the current MacBooks into a the clamshell casing. That would probably irritate the heck out of Steve Jobs.) Jack, our scheduled speaker, had a last minute change of plans, so he wasn't able to make the scheduled presentation on adding RSS feeds to your blog. (Which is a shame, because Clark still needs to do that to his blog. He mentioned that he's going to do a big redesign on his site.) (I wouldn't minded hearing about how to add the RSS feed either, even though I'm using Blogger and they do all those things for you.) But despite that disappointment, we had an enjoyable chat (No, really. My worst nightmare would have been that the responsibility of conversing would have fallen upon me and the group would have reduced to staring out the window and uttering short statements about every fifteen minutes or so. However, Chris and Clark spared me from that fate.), discussing Chris's marketing ventures (Can you believe it? He's actually making money on the web! Of course, he has to write about golf, so it's not free money...), Clark's logo designs (Typical design woes--the customer is a lot better at communicating what they don't want rather than what they do.) and John's outdated blogroll.(I had no idea that Daphna had started blogging again and that she had dropped the "Sex Kitten in Training" title.) (We actually discussed more that those three things, but if you want an exhaustive record of the meetup you'll just have to come yourself and take your own notes.) (Let's see, anything else? Um, I suppose I could report on our respective beverages: Diet Coke or some other Coca-Cola product for Clark, Red Bull or some other energy drink for Chris (he said it was nasty), and a Red Hook ale for myself. (My first Red Hook since 2005!)) All in all we lingered for an hour and a half and then went our separate ways. (I actually only had to wait about a minute for the #36 bus! An excellent end to the evening, especially in January.) Or to paraphrase Clark, we stopped surfing the 'net at Ralph's so we could go home and surf the 'net there. Actually, I took a walk with my wife, which is one reason I didn't write up this report until Saturday.
Labels: life, meetup, sociallife
