Community-Minded
Last night, someone (Sara, the Bargain Queen) finally got around to organizing a Meet-up for Sydney webloggers, the first in quite some time that I’m aware of. There were probably about a dozen of us around the table, although interestingly, not all bloggers, and three of whom work in public relations, one in particular, visiting Sydney to watch his son compete in the Youth Olympics, making up, along with a Sydneysider on a home visit and myself, a New York contingent.

(It’s funny, but I have trouble sometimes distinguishing American accents, on television or in person, from Australian, other than very broad or very strong regional accents, something I attribute to having become accustomed to the overall Australian “voice” while [or “whilst” as is the common usage here] having a U.S. accent myself. It took me a moment or two to realize he was from back in the States. I think he’ll regret only spending a week here, as well as his having succumbed to the tourist syndrome of failing to apply adequate amounts of sunblock.)

What was more interesting than such coincidences was that so many of those attending don’t maintain a personal blog, such as this one, but are more focussed on professional blogs or actual websites, as distinct from blogs in the content. the Bargain Queen, for example, follows a traditional blogging format, but its content is devoted to generating revenues, presumably through advertising and affiliate sales and referrals. If it does well, it could do very well indeed, and if it does just o.k., it could still generate a fairly substantial, if purely supplementary income. It also provides a clearing house of shopping and fashion-related links some of which even I find of interest. After all, I’m going to have to re-cover the cat’s favorite sofa sooner rather than later, for example.

So, Trevor Cook has a blog, but its focus is on blogging’s contribution to public relations, often from a back-handed method, pointing out the breadth and depth of blogs as media, but, like Peter Himler, keeping a distinct web presence from the office website, while On Voice Over uses the blog format more in the way Sara does, although with a focus on creative design, particularly with the internet in view. The other PRblogger, Steven Noble, runs Elbow Grease within the context of the firm, although the content reads in the more usually experienced blog “voice.”

Meanwhile, Luke Matcalfe’s Rapid Intelligence is producing some amazing content: Nation Master and State Master, for example, which provide statistical and comparative data on a wealth of topics (is Texas really the biggest oil-consuming state in the U.S., or does that include processing as consumption?). Fact Bites and Qwika provide alternatives to other internet search engines.

I didn’t talk to everyone, but I’d go again just to see who turns up, and what internet trends they represent. Even if I did feel a bit like a 1980’s “home-pager.”