You can observe a lot just by watching - Yogi Berra
Perspective is a funny thing. My perception of an event or technology may be different from yours. A lot depends on my view of life. Addy Santo posted recently about Seattle being the blogging Mecca and he’s made me reevaluate the city I call home. Let me tell you the story of Wednesday night.
Here in the Puget Sound region we have lots of tech groups including several catering to the blogger community. The two blogger events that I’m aware of are the Seattle Blogger meet-up and the Eastside Blogger meet-up. In case you are not familiar with Seattle terminology ‘eastside’ mean east of Lake Washington and that means cities like Bellevue, Kirkland and of course Redmond.
Addy blogged earlier this week that he was in Redmond for the week and interested in finding out about geek dinners, user group meeting or other geek gatherings to attend. I emailed him to tell him that there was a Geek Dinner scheduled for Wednesday night and told him how get to the dinner site. Well, it turned out that the Geek Dinner was not happening because everyone would rather be at the Seattle Blogger meeting. Oops. I emailed Addy again, explained the screw-up and invited him to ride to Seattle with me.
The Seattle blogger meeting was great. The room was crowded and warm. Everywhere I looked someone was sharing technology, showing new devices or cool applications. One section, at a table near the windows, was the tablet arena - with all the tablet-heads (including tablet evangelist Scoble) comparing their tablet-toys. Over in the lounge area was the cell phone cabal. Mingled amongst all the laptops were the gamers. The game device of the evening apparently was the new Nintendo DS.
Family Affair
One aspect of the Seattle blogger meeting that is refreshingly different is the open support and invitation for families and children to participate. I don’t know how this came to be since I have not been to many of the meetings. I suspect this is due to the event organizer Anita Rowland. If so, I applaud her for making the event so distinctive. Anita brought her grandson for the evening. He spent a good deal of time pushing his truck around the floor, oblivious to the tech talk that happening five feet above his playground.
Jon showed up with his camera, his pregnant wife, his two year old son Jaden and his five year old daughter Jayleen. The kids happily devouring pizza while their daddy wandered the room taking pictures and meeting bloggers from all walks of life.
There was an adorable eight month old baby girl sitting calmly on the table, surrounded by laptops and tablet PCs — her father enjoying conversations with his geek friends. Ten minutes later I see her riding around the room in the arms of a woman blogger. Another ten minutes and the little girl has moved to one of the booths, sitting on the lap of a woman discussing Japanese DVD’s and anime art.
Location, Location Location
Another factor that differentiates the Seattle blogger meeting is the meeting site. Ralph’s Grocery, in downtown Seattle, is a decidedly different venue from most tech events you may have been to. You know the ones that are held in hotel meeting rooms or corporate conference rooms? Ralph’s is combination deli, corner grocery, internet cafe and coffee house. The seating area in the cafe is constrained, with booths along the one wall, a stuffed chair lounge in the center and tables scattered around the potted tree island in the middle of the room . With 30 to 40 people attending it was crowded. But crowded in a good way. Attendees were constantly bumping into each other, trying to get past a knot of people surrounding a laptop or squeezing around a group animatedly discussing. At first I was a little annoyed, constantly have to move out of the way of people heading to the deli or to grab a drink. But then I noticed that the more people moved about the room the more conversations were starting. The same dynamic that you find at a successful dinner party at your friends house. The meeting was about the people there that evening and their life and passions, not the speaker in front of the room sharing his/her expertise.
Blogger Mecca
Seattle is geek central. That’s Addy’s point. My point it that it’s easy for me to overlook that — to take it for granted. Everywhere I go here in Seattle I’m surrounded by geeks. I teach professional developers - talk about a geek fest. My friends and family work for software companies. I started the Visual Basic Developer Association (which morphed into the .Net Developers Association a couple of years ago) and I am still actively working with them. Heck, the NetDA sponsors 52 meeting a year for… yes, software geeks.
When you are surrounded every day with something it become part of your background ‘noise’. You ignore it. Learn to filter it out. The TV in the next room, the dog barking next door melt into the background. Thanks Addy for letting me see my home town in a new light.
Comments
re: 12/21/2004 4:33 PM Anita Rowland
Thanks for the good words!
We don’t always have such a tech emphasis, though I’m always trying to get MS bloggers to mix with non-MS bloggers. The meetup has evolved during the 2.5 years it’s been happening — I’ve only been the "organizer" since September (meetup.com made some changes then) but have been attending since the first one (as has Mikey of Then You Discover).
http://www.anitarowland.com/gmarchives/00000418.html
http://www.anitarowland.com/gmarchives/00000419.html
re: 12/22/2004 10:27 AM Hilary Moon Murphy (from Meetup’s Message Boards)
Walt —
Anita linked to your post from the Meetup Message Boards (http://www.meetup.com/boards/view/viewthread?thread=1132516) and I just want to tell you how much I enjoyed reading it!
Thank you for sharing this!
Hmm
re: 12/23/2004 9:14 PM jon
it was great to meet you!
i really enjoy the setup of many people…after i get warmed up, it’s easy for me to bump around the room. 
however, it would be nice to perhaps have at least a few minutes for a focused topic–15 to 20 for a presentation, then "more of the same" for the rest of the evening…
j.