{"id":44,"date":"2002-10-17T01:52:34","date_gmt":"2002-10-17T06:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=44"},"modified":"2002-10-17T01:52:34","modified_gmt":"2002-10-17T06:52:34","slug":"austin-blog-meetup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"Austin Blog Meetup"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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 … Continue reading “Austin Blog Meetup”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prDRq-I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}