Last night I was at the third Birmingham Bloggers meet. If you don’t already know what it’s all about let the Facebook group do the talking.

This is the second time that I’ve been and it definitely seems more structured and formal, but I quite liked that. It meant that we had an agenda and, at the very least had an opening line when introducing ourselves to other bloggers! I wont go onto listing all of the names and blogs of everyone who attended. Just watch this handy video taken by Andrew Dubber

(check out my bit 49mins into the vid. Man, I need a haircut…)I’d like to draw up on what I said in the vid on here as well. I’m from an area of Birmingham called Winson Green. I wouldn’t exactly call that area tech savvy, so I’m very interested in seeing what a coworking space, and the people running it, can offer a communtity who are almost completely unknowledgable when it comes to technology. As well as my personal illustration work I’m a community artist and do workshops with different community groups, so I’m naturally interested in extending projects outside of niche groups into the wider community somehow.To exapnd on something that Charlotte Carey said, I’d like to get more specialist groups using and embracing technology. Based on visual appearance alone I think I was one of two Black people there, and there was probably four women there. This isn’t a fault of the blogging community at all, but what I’d like to see coworking spaces do is actively seek out these minority groups, which include ethnic minorities and women and the disabled, and introduce them to the benefits of web technologies.

The overall formal side of the meeting was great! As I was saying to Jon, I’d like to have fortnightly meetups. Although I think the arrangement should be that on one session should be based around a discussion forum and the other, like the one last night, more of a social gathering, which will perhaps still have an agenda. Whaddaya think?

I spoke to Jon Bounds and some others afterwards about how I don’t really see all that many artists using blogs. Aside from Ana Milgram and Lara Jade I haven’t stumbled across any Birmingham-based artists embracing a blog format and exploring the potential of it for their portfolio website. Since last night I’ve had a lot of cool arty ideas that incorporate and rely heavily on t’interwebber and social networking, which I’ll indulge you all with later in the week.

Can’t wait to read what everyone else thought of the meet!

That’s probably way more than 500 words. Good enough for ya Pete?