Category: Our Web, Ourselves.

I really need to learn learning how this Dreamweaver thing works. It’s depressing to read so many well designed blogs each day and think of how similar mine looks to so many others. I know it’s supposed to be about the content. I’m just having envy.

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.

I’m trying to be cool about this but the other day, I saved Blogger. Well not really but it sounds neat, doesn’t it? My favorite pleasures are small.

Story goes like this: My friends Kristin and Dinah invited me to dinner with several of their friends, many of whom were webloggers I knew pretty well, some not as well, some I hadn’t seen in ages, and a few I really wanted to meet. We hooked up at the Sticking Rose in my hood in North Beach where hilarious conversation spiced up the pathetically flat food. I sat next to Evan Williams who invented this whole thing called Blogger. Few minutes into dinner, he got a page indicating something was awry with the Blogger servers. I had already mentioned that I lived up the street when he said he had gotten a similar warning earlier in the evening. I let him use my laptop and perched on a stool while things got fixed. He worked fast.

So I’m saying I saved Blogger because it sounds cool, even thought I just let Evan do his thing. But he laughed when I started bragging indescriminately and it’s his program anyway so I’m sticking with it.

I have an uncanny knack for returning to someone’s site after a long time away, and finding out they’ve undergone a major life change. I had just sent a few emails to Andre Torrez, who created the super cool FilePile and found out he’s quitting writing his personal site, Torrez.org. Last night I dropped by Links.net, the Model T of personal web sites, and found out that its creator, Justin Hall, was moving to Tokyo. I had spotted him around San Francisco a few times, once holding court on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, and had always been too shy to say anything. Now I suppose I could do the I-know–people–you-know, thing but it’s too late.

*sigh*

So this is bloging. I’ve been warned but I go anyway.

Mark who runs Riot Hero introduced me to blogging when I met him at South by Southwest 2000. After meeting about 85 other webloggers through running Central Booking,
I’ve given in to peer pressure.

Look out below!