Month: October 2001

Column done. Thank God.

I’m thinking this little site might be outgrowing its Blogspot roots. I’ve got bigger plans and, of course, little ability to do anything about them. But I would at least like to link to another page and give myself room to write longer essay pieces. For example, I just read an essay by Derek Powazek (whose work I respect a lot) who mentioned what he desired of weblogs, “I always wanted to see people make things. Big, beautiful, daring things. Not yet another pointer to yet another Salon article.”

I wondered if I was doing that, merely giving a shallow tour of my existence and where I surf on the web. Maybe because I came to blogging through the paralell yet segregate world of online journaling, I always envisioned a blog of as a challange to myself to live a dynamic life, not a list of cool stuff I’ve dug up on the web. There are other blogs out there that do that better than I ever could. And the truth is, I don’t live online and don’t want to. I communicate here, exchange ideas, create a little, even make friends. But my life happens in the real world. The record of it happens here.

I guess I’m ok with that now. I’m just thinking about it a lot today.

Robert Scobble of Userland put together the first Bay Area Webloggers meeting this evening and blogged the whole thing. It may look like a dry gathering from here but that was about the size of it, really. Everyone was very well intentioned but really wanted to be there to meet and socialize and futz about protocol later. When that got started, so did the fun.

Matt Haughey (who generously gave me a ride home) pointed out that there needs to be strong leaders for any collaborative project to actually, uh, work. Agreed but I’m not volunteering myself (Matt wasn’t asking me to. I’m just sayin’). I’m too new to the world of personal publishing to have anything to add. I’m here to learn.

My friend Kristin did an excellent job of organizing us all for dinner. I had a great train ride down from SF with Evan Williams, Sondra Nelson from C|Net and two very smart fellows down named Jeff and Anthony. At the event, I reconnected with Kevin Fox whom I hadn’t seen in many a moon and met several bloggers I had read but not really met. Since I had few expectations, none were let down. A blast.

Oy God. A flame war has errupted on the Bay Area Webloggers Bay Area Bloggers newsletter. It only took 24 hours. I hope we can quell this one fast and realize that this is supposed to be about community, collaboration and an exchange of ideas, not a bigger-dick match over who knows more about the software industry.

I’ve just signed up for the Bay Area Webloggers newsletter and receive several postings a day about content syndication, self-hosting, and whether Newsisfree.com is a crock. It’s thrilling to feel part of a community, even with the little ghetto-ass blog I got going here. But I’ll be the first to admit I don’t understand much of the conversation at all. That’s why I’m hoping to get a lot of questions answered this Tuesday down in Mountain View where the group is meeting for coffee and klatch. I’ve spoken to Evan Williams, the man behind Blogger about a convoy of us from San Francisco meeting at the train station and heading down en masse. He liked the idea.