Austin Blog Meetup

Went to the Austin Blog MeetUp tonight. It was good to meet fellow bloggers; Kathryn, Adam Rice, Prentiss Riddle, David Nunez.
There were several interesting conversational threads….
* On blogging and personal disclosure. We talked about Mark Pilgrim’s
moving blog-published story of addiction and recovery, which got him
fired from one job and hired at the next, and about Kathryn’s experience
with friends who reacted very badly to blog entries causing a conflict
that hasn’t yet been resolved.
As for my thoughts on the topic: I am not much of an exhibitionist. Part
of this is wimpiness; I don’t want to write things that I wouldn’t want
potential employers to read. Part of it is concern for you, the reader;
my private fears, worries and doubts are compelling to me, but I don’t
imagine they would be interesting to anyone I don’t know in real life.
Part of it is a desire for security: it feels safer to share personal
stories, in person, with people I know well and trust.
* On maintaining social norms in online community. There seems to be a
continuum starting with small discussion groups where people use their
own names, in which people maintain face-to-face social norms; to larger
mailing lists, where people sometimes flame, but social norms can keep
misbehavior in check; to large forums that use automated tools to help
implement social norms (SlashDot moderation); to large, anonomyous
forums which devolve into incoherent hostility (Usenet, Yahoo messages).
* On blogging and community. We talked about using comments and log
reports to get a sense of feedback from blogging, and brainstormed a
couple ideas to increase blog-related community. It would be wildly cool
to be able to aggregate blog comments into a distributed threaded
discussion. I was thinking about how to implement this last weekend; and
found that that the MoveableType crew is working on it. It should be
some combination of talkback and RSS syndication/aggregation. That way,
people who happened to be reading the same book at the same time could
share a conversation. Prentiss suggested a sort of LivePerson IM for
blogs; where a reader could click a “talk to the blogger” button and
chat. That would need to be implemented with IM-style controls:
invitations to indicate to readers when the blogger was available, and
“keep out” features to repel antisocial visitors, so that a “hey baby
wanna” visitor would go away instantly and permanently.
* On Moveable Type and CSS. Adam kindly explained some subtleties of
about using CSS elegantly to support the structure of your information.
I spent last weekend learning basic CSS, and plan to spend some time
this weekend playing with MoveableType, the better to categorize the
blog for people who are interested in some topics much more than others.
* On MeetUp. The revenue model for MeetUp is to make referral fees from
the venues where people meet; so MeetUp suggests a ballot of places to
meet, and visitors vote. This time round, MeetUp suggested a Starbucks,
a bowling alley, and a video arcade. Not as bad a ballot as “Saddam
Hussein”, or “slow, painful death from torture”, but still not great.
Two venues wholly unsuitable for the group, and a chain coffeeshop in a
city with plenty of fine independents. Hopefully, MeetUp will accept
suggestions for independent businesses.
Despite the flaws in the venue selection, it was a good and useful
service; helped people find each other based on a common interest, and
automated some of the labor-intensive aspects of organizing a meeting,
like sending out reminders, with location, address and phone number.
What with the dot.com bust, people downplay the internet; but there are
plenty of ways still that the internet provides helpful new tools for
people to connect and the interenet.
And a couple of reflections on the meeting.
* You know you’ve been in Austin too long when the weather is perfectly
pleasant (mid-60s), yet you go out underdressed.
* MeetUps need colored table tents to attract people who don’t know each
other. Prentiss and Kathryn, and Adam and I met separately, and we
didn’t meet each other until David Nunez showed up, whom I recognized
from EFF Austin.
* I know better than to have caffeine at 9pm. It was cold outside, and they
were out of decaf, so I ordered a chai latte for the warmth, and it’s 2am now.