Richard Giles Blog

I’ve been wanting to post about the Perth Blog Nite since the event, but between work, spending time with my daughter, and renovating the house I’ve lacked the time.

The night was fantastic. An amazing turn out, great presentations, interesting questions and conversations, all well beyond my expectations. It was fun to stand and watch as people ate some of the snacks that Curtin University kindly supplied, and be amazed at what a great group and a little effort can generate. The event wouldn’t have happened without Bret, Gra, Karen, David, Matthew at Curtin’s Internet Studies, the speakers and the audience.

Importantly the presentations were just amazing. Every single one had me thinking.

Veronica’s presentation was just wonderful. I’m sure Bret knew what he was doing when he asked her to speak first. What’s more fitting than starting with someone who’s using a blog like a diary. After all, that’s the true roots of weblogging. Veronica pointed out that humans have used diaries since the year dot, but the difference today is that they are published before you’re dead, like Anne Frank’s diary. It can be someone’s legacy, a wonderful way of looking at it.

Bret showed us that Perth has a great opportunity to use weblogs to build a better state. In effect this is part of what prompted the nite. He had some great ideas on just how we could start the revolution. I wonder who’ll start it.

After myself, which you can read all about in my last post, Corporate Blogging, came Anthony with some fun half time cooking. Well, sushi slicing and preparing. Delicious, interspersed with some joviality and questions.

Tama had some great experiences with some classes he’d run. He explained that using blogs as a method for teaching, encouraged discussion amongst the students. He’s posted his presentation content on his blog at Blogging Universities.

Robert’s presentation was interesting, and although he seemed to suggest that blogging is good, he managed to suggest that there is nothing special about it. He works for a labor politician, which kind of explains his confusion. Just kidding Robert :).

Warren from I Need Hits stirred up a fair degree of consternation. He discussed adverts and how Bloggers today are making money from them. What really caused havoc was his discussion about comment spam. He doesn’t do it, but that didn’t seem to matter. Regardless, he knew what he was on about, so if you’re keen on search engine marketing, he’s worth looking up.

Lastly, the main act as he likes to put it, Chris, who has the best looking blog of the lot of us (as another pointed out) talked about beyond blogging, like moblogging, photoblogging, etc. He helped build Photon, which is a great Mac OS X photo blogging tool. So he knows where it’s all going.

After the event, a few of us went to Oriel Cafe for a beer and salad.

We’ve talked about another event, in maybe 6 months. I like freakychick’s idea “to talk about the other side of blogging, the ethical side, the impact it has on the human being and their psyche, on what it can do to a group of people”. Anyone got any ideas for some presentations. Any other ideas? Come along to the next Perth Weblogger Meetup and we can chat about it.

Many may thanks to everyone that came. I think we’ve started a great tradition and discussions about blogging in Perth.