Atlanta Media Bloggers

Meeting Update

It has recently dawned on me that since we meet the third Thursday of each month, our meetings fall right into the holidays for the next couple months. Therefore, let's regroup again in Jan!

HOWEVER, We need to continue moving full steam ahead with the conference.

Anyone interested in being involved with a committee for taking care of our discussion leaders, let's meet on Tuesday Nov 7 at 8:00 PM

Anyone interested in being involved in Marketing and PR for the Conference, let's meet  on Thursday, Nov 9 at 8:00 PM

Location is open for discussion, but let's try to find somewhere kinda quiet, centrally located (I'm in Alpharetta) with ample parking.

Let's have a virtual meeting this month!

Hey y'all!

Yeah, it's been cooooollld out, and rainy enough to curl your hair. And yeah, a whole bunch of us have conflicts up the wazoo, preventing us from making a goodly quorum for our monthly mind meld.

And yeeeaaah, SOME of us got to go on a cool road trip, and they need to be telling the rest of us who didn't go some wacky stories, amazing anecdotes, and tortured theories about Web 2.0 and unConferences (what the hell is an unConference, anyway? I'm asking this on behalf of the peanut gallery. There are no stupid questions around here).

The topic for our meeting, if we had been able to hold it, was going to be Online Communities, and the intangible something that makes them hold together, that gives them power, that structures cyberspace perhaps more strongly than in some of our real lives.

What is it? One friend once told me that online communities were fake, no more real than the people who gather at around the piano in the lounge at an airport bar. He said there's nothing that really ties the people together, no strong ties, no obligations. People come, and they go.

And some of us actually like communities that have that kind of freedom, the freedom from guilt and obligation, the knowledge that the people who are present are there because they want to be, not because anyone is making them. That was one of the beautiful things I discovered in my online ethnography of the very strong communities of the Xenaverse, the fandom groups centered around the TV show "Xena: Warrior Princess."

I think of it like gravity, the so-called "strength of weak ties." Of all the forces in physics (electromagnetic, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force), gravity appears to be the weakest, the easiest to overcome (don't believe me? Jump!). But gravity is like a prevailing wind. You can stand against it, but it ends up shaping everything (even the shape of the cellulite in our legs!). Gravity holds entire solar systems in orbit, and more. I think the weakest force field can actually be the strongest.

Businesses look at the blogosphere and social media as an opportunity, but often they see it as a top-down opportunity for them, rather than a chance to harness real bottom-up grassroots force.

But is that a real force? Or is it like herding cats?

Or maybe the mindset is all wrong. Maybe its wrong to even think that cats should be herded in the first place.

Soooo, what are we doing here? Do you want to be here? Are you obligated to be here? Do you get something of value out of being here? Is this a cool community to be a part of?

If so, I hope some more of you will chime in in this space. It's been a while since I sent out invitations on how to use this site, but I am happy to resend any invitations that got lost or misplaced. Just zap me a note.

If you have a blog or blogs, a good blog promotion strategy is to get hooked in with an existing community, so that people start reading your blog, and folks comment back and forth on each others' blogs, and we can spread some link love around.

I SURE WOULD LIKE TO BE SPREADING SOME MORE LINK LOVE AROUND!

So if you've got a blog, post up a little introduction to it here on this site, with your link. Tell us why we should peek in, check your blog out. Maybe you're feeling shy, just getting your blog legs. We'll hold your hand. That's what link love is all about.

We're Atlanta Media Bloggers. We're into blogs. We have blogs. OK, all together now:

Send us your links, your huddled URLs longing to breathe free...

Ahhh. Isn't that better?

Let the virtual meeting commence.

All in flavor? Up hosed?

respectfully submitted,

Chris Boese

Mark Your Calendars for the September Meeting

September 21, 7:00-9:00 PM - Leonard Witt, Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication at Kennesaw State University will lead the discussion on:

Reinventing Journalism * A Do It Yourself Guide For Independents or for Mainstream Media.
See his paper at First Monday:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_6/witt/index.html

Also, WE WILL BE MEETING AT A NEW LOCATION!!!!

Big thank you to Armchair Media for offering their space.

Directions are here.

New day for Atlanta Media Bloggers Group

Great meeting on Thursday! Big thank you to Dan Greenfield from Earthlink for leading the discussion.

Personally, there were some eye opening ideas for me of why corporations are still hestitant to consider blogging and what obstacles they are facing and need to work out. I actually was able to integrate some of what we discussed at client meetings the next day!

We took a loose vote and decided that the third Thursday of each month works best for everyone. So go ahead and mark your calendars for Sept 21 at 7:00. Also please email me if you would like to be on the evite reminder list - sherryheyl[@]gmail.com

We may also have a new location for the meetings so stay tuned.

Meeting Notes 8/17/2006

Show notes to the Atlanta Media Blogger's Group Meeting at "Da Loop" in Atlanta.

Roll call:

Dan Greenfield Corp Communications for Earthlink
http://bernaisesource.blog.com

Leslie Nealson AEA
Alan Urech Stoney River Capital Partners
Kevin Howarth
Chris Boese www.serendipit-e.com/blog
Andrew Lunde what.isviable.org
Jim Straud http://www.jimstroud.com/
Sherry Heil http://www.mindblogging.typepad.com/
Marshall Shumaker Game & Business
CJ Poolah social entertainment
Mark Bee
Grayson Daughters http://spaceygreview.blogspot.com
Peter Fasano

Things mentioned:

http://www.kenradio.com/

Tim Moenk http://aoide.net/

Naked Converastions Scoble http://redcouch.typepad.com/

BlogHer Speaks with Arianna Huffington

http://blog.listenshare.com/

sitepals.com