Area bloggers meet in Floyd

Bloggers and future bloggers gathered in the Cafe Del Sol in Floyd yesterday and networked enthusiastically for several hours. We had the usual suspects, listed later in this article, and several new visitors.

We got a first-hand view of how blogs make the world smaller from early arrival Ben Day, a visitor from Florida. Ben is a blog reader who has been following some of the local blogs and he decided to visit the open forum on blogging when he learned he would be in Floyd this week.

New Floyd resident Tom King and old Floyd residents Bernie Coveney and Abe Goorsky also dropped in to join in the discussion. Bernie got to see first-hand how being mentioned in a weblog creates a sense of familiarity for people who didn't know him.

We discussed how we deal with writing things that we would not necessarily share with friends in the past. Most of the bloggers say they write very openly about most subjects.

Blogs break down barriers of time and distance. People who read your weblog often know as much about as your family does. If you are sensible about what you write, that can be a very good thing, as it gives you a large group of people who follow your activities with interest.

You can ask this audience for advice and for information. Their feedback often helps you to improve what you present in your weblog.

Another of the topics discussed was how leaving comments on someone else's weblog will build traffic for your own blog..

We also discussed various methods for notifying people when we have updated our weblogs. Some of the bloggers use a hosting service that sends emails to subscribers when a new post is available. It seems to me that this has some advantages over RSS feeds which have to be read in a special reader.

The bloggers who attended have websites well worth visiting. Take time to visit Blue Ridge Muse , Loose Leaf Notes  , Going Up Cripple Creek , Greenberry House  , and Jamie's World

We will be holding another blogger's forum/scrum/get-together on Thursday May 11. That's the second Thursday in May. Mark your calendars and join us at 11:00 am for a couple of hours of networking and general discussion.