Grand Strand Bloggers

A little while ago Dave posted a question concerning a convergence of all types of new media players in South Carolina. I was wondering if the few that are interested in making this happen would like to get together to discuss options for such an event. This is just a little impromptu meeting to try and get the ball rolling.

How does November the 29th at Liberty at Broadway At The Beach at 5:30 for happy hour sound with everybody? I know that all may not be able to attend from Charleston and surrounding areas and that is ok. I would like to a least start to look and laying out the ground work for such an event.

Please post comments and/or suggestions.

I’ve been to and returned from this year’s ConvergeSouth conference. As always, it was great to hang out in Greensboro with some fellow nerds. A lot of what I find as the value of that conference is that same thing as I like about our local meetups – just getting a little face time with people of similar interests and putting faces to names (and URLs.)

One outcome of the conference is that some of the fellow South Carolina bloggers are interested in hosting our own kind of conference in our area. These particular folks are from Charleston but have graciously admitted that it might make better sense to hold it in the Myrtle Beach area. Space is cheaper, the hotel rooms would be cheaper, etc. So here’s a question to the Grand Strand Blogger community – if we do this, are you in? Are you willing to come, to volunteer, to present, to raise money, to make signs, all the gazillion ticky little tasks that are involved in such an undertaking? We kind of identified April as a good time to hold a conference. It’s 6 months away from ConvergeSouth, it’s out of season and thus cheap and good probability of having nice weather when they might still be getting snow in Chicago and Pittsburgh.

The big questions really are:
Do we do this at all, yes or no?
If yes, do we start in 2008 (kind of soon for logistics) or 2009 (kind of late for excitement)?

There might very well be a reason to hold a meetup early-ish in November with an actual agenda and questions to be asked and answered around this. If we do go for April 2008, we really need to be cracking on that soon. So, look inside yourselves and find a true answer and respond here. Not being down is not a shame, and if that is your stance please don’t feel pressured into responding any other way. The worst case outcome is that a lot of people agree to go for the flow, we go for it and then only a few or one or no one is realistically able to do the work and the whole enterprise becomes a fiasco.

So, who is in?

The meetup yesterday was a lot of fun, at least for me. We had a good attendance, about ten or so people, which may not sound like a lot but seemed nice and significant to me. For the second meeting of this type in a town this size, I’m quite happy with it. Andre Pope was, of course, the man on the spot who posted photos of the event before I got back to my computer. Big thanks to Warren and Marcia of Myrtle Beach TV for picking up the tab. That was very kind of them and a nice gift to the crowd. They brought the camera with them and went around the table interviewing everyone so if we make the cut, we’ll be on TV in the coming weeks.

Thanks to everyone for coming and I hope we can keep the ball rolling in the coming months. I personally am going to Converge South next weekend and am sure I will return fired up about citizen media. Don’t forget, any Grand Strander that wants to post here can do so by creating an account and then emailing me to make you an author.

We have been discussing when to have the next meetup on this post but let’s go ahead and make it official. Liberty Taproom (the one at 76th and Kings Highway, NOT Broadway at the Beach), Saturday October 13th at 3 PM. Is everyone cool with that? Please leave a non-binding RSVP in the comments so we know how big a table to get, and please mention this on your own blogs and point here so we can get folks outside the core group interested and involved. Thanks!

Sometime in September or October it would be good to have another in person blogger meetup. For those who would like to come and/or have some suggestions on time and place, leave it in the commments. I always feel like the meetups should be near the beach as it tends to be central to most people and also fun but I’d be willing to meet about anywhere. Let’s get together, hang out and talk blogging and computers!