2. I have also subscribed to more blogs as a result of the meeting and subsequent reports. It also means I have a question for you on another post.

3. Blogging and place: Dave Hickey said ca. 1995, in paraphrase: ‘if you are working in your (architecture) studio and listening to Jane’s Addiction on your walkman, and the design you are creating shows no evidence of what you were listening to, you are contributing to the division of labour’. Transfer that idea to blogging and place. If you are a writer living in a place and your work shows no evidence of that, then….

The point about divisions of labour has to do with artifice, where the constraints we impose upon ourselves skew our sense of self and our ways of being in the world. The architect and the writer make choices about what to include and exclude, and the end product is a statement about those inclusions and exclusions. They reflect on the author, and on the community of users/readers.

The feelings seem to be fairly similar across many of the comments people have made on their blogs about the meet. Maybe it was just because it was the first one and thatGuardian article was fresh in people’s minds that the subject dominated so.

I’d like to spend the next meeting just getting to know people better.

Just wanted to add two penneth - I also had issues around the whole blogging in order to promote Birmingham I think it is missing the point. I liked your point above about the local context - for example my blog is about developing entrepreneruship in the creative industries - this is related to my research. But frequently it will have a local (usually WM sometimes Bham) context, story or perspective. I go to more events and conferences locally and I blog about them. However my blog (as I said that night) is not about marketing aything. I am not a travel writer. But like Stef et al., I would like the place I live to be great and for other people to recognise that. So if inadvertantly my blog helps that well then that is ok. However the minute it becomes contrived or superficially upbeat about Bham well then it wont work (IMHO). I think us being able to be critical is just as useful and that there is interesting activity, research and ideas coming out of here adds to the overall sense of Bham as a place.

Waffle over

Charlotte

In other words, the way in which that guy writes about WoW is what makes him a Birmingham Blogger, not his subject matter which could be a million miles away from where he (and let’s face it, it is a he ) is actually blogging from.

I must have sounded much more sombre than I intended! I was just rather jealous that these guys are so proud of where they come from. I don’t think I realised that the Birmingham in Birmingham Bloggers was more importan than the blogging!

…

My own impressions were more nebulous - after Nick and Jon each repeated comments to the effect that there was no agenda, no particular purpose. Of course, Nick backtracked on that when he suggested that bloggers could bring down the (nonexistent) elected mayor of Birmingham. But that just means he’s operating in the realm of fantasy about Birmingham. You could too; it’s up to you.

It was nice hearing your ideas last night, and thanks for putting together the search engine!