The Future of Blogging: A means to an end

I went to a London Bloggers Meetup last night. It was at the Fishburn Hedges offices on Kingsway, and was to have speeches about "The Future of Blogging".

It was the first meetup I've been to since August last year. It was a lively and busy affair, a fair few familiar faces but great crowds of new people I guess. It was good to catch up with Aref-Adib and Anthony Fresh Plastic.

I had an interesting conversation with a chap from The Narrow Leaf olive oil. It made in a village in northern Greece, the unique microclimate give the oil a distinctive taste, and depending on when in the season the olives are harvested you get a grassy or fruity taste, it a cool thing to know.

The various presentations on the Future of Blogging were interesting, but I think I was the wrong target for them. There was one phrase that I heard which kind of struck a jarring chord "Blogs are a means to an end".

Months ago I decided to reduce my immorality by getting a load of morals wholesale from classic philosophers, I've been reading up on Stoicism from Epictetus, Seneca, and Kant's Metaphysic of Morals. Whilst Kant's Categorical Imperitive is a fine way of life, I was intrigued by his account that men are ends to themselves rather than a means to an end. To get my head round this I guess a man's profession can be a means to an end, but the man himself is an end.

So back on blogging, I disagree that blogs are a means to an end, wordpress and blogger are a means, but a blog is an end unto itself. That's not a universal thing, marketing blogs or corporate blogs or travel blogs can be means, but for me and to a fair proportion of bloggers, blogs are ends unto themselves.

I don't blog because I'm trying to sell a product, or promote something, I blog because of an insatiable need to write and chart and graph and share interesting things.

Its what I find difficult when people ask me what I blog about. I used to have a few specific blogs that each dealt with a specific niche, live music, politicking, pigeons, sketches of nekkit wimmin, but now I just have one blog where the last two posts were about Glasgow City Council, and then before that were a load of posts about BT phone boxes which had been turn into libraries, and before that there were infographics about phone hacking and London rioters. Yeah, that's exactly what I blog about.*

My attention wandered from the presentations, so I engaged with bloggers, each with their own angles and interesting things to talk about.

So I'm wondering would it be awesome to have a London Bloggers Meetup where the format is more like an Ignite event where bloggers talk about their own thing for five minutes with presentation slides going on behind them changing every 20 seconds. It wouldn't necessarily sell anything, but it would be fun, interesting and engaging.

My attention was brought bacng back to the speakers when a lady said something along the lines of how she hoped that as more people took up blogging, they would learn how to blog better and the general quality of output would improve. That strikes me as a logic fail, a human nature fail and a gross violation of Sturgeon's Law, "Ninety percent of everything is crud" with more bloggers there would be a lot more good stuff, but even more crud out there to wade through. Speaking as a crudmonger myself, I know this to be true.

Anyhoo, as usual here's a chart showing how much engagement I had with people at the London Blogger's Meetup this time.

About the same as usual, I guess its my comfort zone.

*Actually, now I think about it, I've got a handful of blogs on the go right now, on blogger, posterous and wordpress. I might copy and paste all the posts into one new blog and backdate them to when I first posted them. That might cock up google's page ranking thing, but on reflection, if google can't keep up with me, that's google's weakness, what do I care? The blog is an end not a means.

London Bloggers Meetup: Summer Spectacular

It was that time of the month again when I rouse myself to go to the London Bloggers Meetup, it gets me out of the house and meet new people.

This month's theme was travel, the event was sponsored by Europcar and BMIBaby and featured a talk by a travel blogger called Heather. It was a very informative talk for travel bloggers and people interested in starting a travel blog, also there were a few important points that apply to bloggers with broader subject matter, like how is you want your friends and family to read the blog you write about yourself, what you did on holiday, that sort of thing, but if you want to appeal to a larger audience you have to write about things that anyone can do.

It was interesting stuff, I saw lots of people taking notes.

BMIBaby and Europcar had provide prizes for a competition, once again I didn't win, but this time it was cos I didn't enter. Instead it was won by a fellow called Bernie.

Gor, its been years and years I've been going to these meetups, and I think in that time I've run about ten different blogs. Most of them I've given up on, and right now, its kind of awkward when people ask me about my blog, cos I have three that are currently updated:-

• This one which is quite safe for work and has the most un-snappy url ever xrisglmv14.blogspot.com - Mostly I blog about plants in my back garden and BT phoneboxes that have been converted into libraries
• My secret blog full of posts that people can argue with over on posterous illandancient.posterous.com - like rioters in London and leftwing and rightwing newspapers
• And my anti-PR company blog PishPoorPR.tumblr.com - where I mostly complain about things, like people pooping in the doorways of Sainsburys

Anyhoo, I think I racked a good spread of bloggers and meetup attendees I chatted to this month:-

• Murphy - has a website thats something to do with publishing books on Kindle, sounds kind of neat, straightforward and easy, although I admit I'm struggling to locate it online
• Kate(?) Swedish travel Blogger - she quickly retreated to find a place at the bar where service was a bit quicker
• Anthony Fresh Plastic - Blogs about gadgets, twitter and internet stuff, not industrial plastic extruders which I feel is a subject lacking in the London blogging scene
• Joseph Real Monstrosities - I love the expression on people's faces when he tells them he has an animal blog. I like the idea of animal blogs, that its a perfectly valid niche blog, as valid as travel-blogging, and whilst this evening's talk is about travel blogging, it could just as likely be about animal blogging. How to make money from your animal blog, what works and what doesn't. The meetup could be sponsored by London Zoo and the National Geographic
• Mehrdad - Blogs about art and interesting photographs
• Heather - was rather concerned about the Virginia earthquake
• Selena - Well, I was briefly introduced but we didn't chat or anything like.
• Steve social media for Europcar or something - Pointed out that a lady stood nearby was the boss of Europcar
• Tamara from Europcar - My car hire anecdote, the other week I was on holiday in the highlands of Scotland, Scotland is great for driving in compared to London, no traffic, no motorways, just long easy drives, me and my ladyfriend had hired a car, not sure who it was from, and we had a great time. We'd picked the car up from a representative at Inverness train station and were to drop it off at Inverness airport. I've never been to Inverness Airport before, and although we'd arrived a bit early to catch our flight, there was a bit of anxiety, we wanted to be at the departure gate on time, not faffing about in the carpark, and it wasn't clear where to leave the car. There's about three car parks, one of them had clearly marked bays for Hertz and Avis rental cars, but nothing clear for the car we'd hired. So, after frantically driving round the car parks a few times we phoned up the customer careline, who answered very quickly, and was a little bit helpful, explaining where to drop off the car, where to put the keys and where to put the car park ticket. But that bit of anxiety could have neatly been avoided if in the car hire document pack there was just a little business card sized set of instructions, maybe with a little map, just something with a bit of certainty. Even now I fear that some unpaid parking ticket from Inverness airport will arrive in the post.
• Shash the entrepreneurial consultant - We had an in-depth discussion about how high-end audio equipment can improve sound quality, by not degrading the recorded audio information as much as low-end audio equipment
• Tom Flashboy - Media type person/journalist/timelord, occasional hat-wearer
• Radiokate - Knows about space shuttles and Walthamstow respite centre
• Inspector Winter - Police chap who tweets during the riots and got a lot of newspaper coverage, seemed like an okay chap

Also, people who I saw who I've like chatted to before, or vaguely recognise off of the internet, nodded at but didn't necessarily make eye-contact with

• Shimelle - she teaches the fine art of scrapbook making
• Andy Bargery - he organises these blogger meetups, a sort of benevolent dictator
• Doreen Abandoned in London - photos of things abandoned on the streets of London
• pinata lady - sells custom made pinatas
• A Lady in London - blogs about being a Californian lady in London

Me, I love graphs and stuff, so here's a little chart of how many people I speak to and see at all the London Bloggers Meetups I've been to over the past couple of years and the total number of people at each one.

So this one was one of the larger meetups, with about 85 people there. I did okay talking to 13 people, not quite the heady heights of the seventeen folk I met in November 2009, but not too shabby, still percentage-wise it was a bit poor, this one time I knew almost 30% of the folk in the room, but now barely 20%, must try harder. Who are the people on the other side of the room?

Is it some kind of observer's bias that when I look on Tweeter at the #LBM hashtag I barely recognise anyone, or am I just downplaying the folk I do recognise?

Bloggers, Google+ Circles, Socialism and Kropotkin

Last night I finished reading Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, a book I chose to read purely so I could throw late-nineteenth century communist-libertarianism into discussions and blog posts. Last night I also attended a London Bloggers meetup, fifty or so people gathered in a central London pub basement to network, discuss social media, google+ and almost win a new Dell laptop.

London meetup bloggers
I'm not that good at networking events, last night I racked up chatting to eleven people and nodding or otherwise acknowledging the existance of six other people.

• Aref Adib - blogs about London and photos of it
• Andy bargery - the marketing blagger
• Sophie Une Timide au Londres - blogs about being a French lady in London
• A Lady in London - blogs about being a Californian lady in London
• The Creative Penn - writing and self-publishing
• Blog till you drop - internet culture from London and beyond
• Cristiano Betta - technology and life
• Rax - raxraxrax Rax
• Miss Geeky - reviews of cool stuff
• Shimelle - hardcorn scrapbooking
• Godwyns - justice for gay africans
• Real monstrosities - weird and wonderful animals
• Amit Sodha - the ultimate guide to living consciously
• Movie Moron - Movie news and humour
• Card bored box - custom party pinatas
• Pradeep Kumar Singh - Empowering blogger users

One topic of discussion was Google+, google's recently launched competitor to Facebook. Its fertile new territory where right now, lush prairies with early adoptors and cool people grazing freely. Its going to take a while to find old-school friends on there and months before your parents will be signing up.

Its probably the future, just like Facebook was once when we were all still on MySpace, and FriendsReunited and Friendster before that.

One rather neat thing Google+ has going for it right now is that I can access it at work, rather than it being blocked like other social networks are. Like back when BeBo was the only social network site that local council workers could access.

In a similar way, Google+ isn't blocked in Iran like Facebook is. There are a lot of Iranian folk on those lush prairies.

Keeping friends in tupperware
Google+ uses the concept of circles rather than a friendslists, and borrows the same sort of broadcasting/following thing as twitter. You start off with default empty circles which you can populate with 'friends' 'family' 'acquaintances' 'following', you can also have people in more than one circle. And then when you post status update like things you can decide which circles of people can see them. Then on the other side people only see they updates that you're put up if they've selected you to be in their circles. Also people can't see which of your circles you've put them in, only that they are in a circle.

Its still hard for me to get my head around, but essentially, you only broadcast things to people and groups you select, and they only receive it if they're listening.

When I first starting populating my circles it was using the default titles 'friends' 'family' 'acquaintances' 'following'. It just didn't feel satisfying, one size didn't fits all, so I tried sorting friends and acquaintances into different circles, 'music people' and 'internet people'. I tried having a circles for 'ex-girlfriends', 'potentials' and 'bargepole'.

That kind of worked, but looking at who was side by side in the each circle was just, unrealistic. Circles can be anything, so I tried again with more granularity 'London music people', 'Glasgow scenester of the noughties', 'London bloggers'. This felt better, cos it was a closer map of reality, circles were more like people who'd be stood together in the pub.

You could just recreate your facebook experience, with a bit of faffing about you can export your entire Facebook friendslist to Google+ and just have them all one default 'friends' circle.

Do you want you social network to accurately map reality, or some fiction putting round pegs in square holes?

Invoking Kropotkin
I didn't even realise it was a weakness of Facebook that you only had one friendslist, and although you could tinker with privacy settings for individual people, blocking those you don't like, it was still just one broadcast channel.

Same with Twitter I guess, its just one broadcast channel, all your followers get your updates.

But with Google+ circles its almost like every status update requires mutual consent, so you don't have random strangers (or the ghost of socialism) monitoring your every comment, unless you want that. So there's less risk of getting spammed every time you mention iPad or Kropotkin.