When:  Thursday, 09/18/08, 7pm until 9pm Where:  The Abbey Bar (upstairs at ABC Harrisburg) What:  A meetup of the blogHarrisburg contributors + Central PA Twitter users The third Thursday of every month, us bloggers and Twitter users (Twitterers?  Tweeps?  Twits?) get together on the second floor of Appalachian Brewing Company on Cameron Street to get together and share in good company, food, and whatever seasonal beer (or chocolate milk, for the under-21 crowd) ABC happens to be cranking out.  We’re a very friendly bunch, and our group grows in size every month.  The tweetup is open to anyone from Central PA with a Twitter account as well as all of the contributing bloggers featured on blogHarrisburg.  Hope to see you there!

Has it really been a month since our last Tweetup? You should know the drill by now- This coming Thursday- August 21- the Harrisburg Bloggers/Twitterers/Social Networking gurus decend on the deck at The Abbey Bar at Appalachian Brewing Company in Harrisburg from 7 til (at least) 9PM and discuss everything from blogging to responsible media to local [...]

This is your friendly neighborhood blogHarrisburg Tweetup reminder for August 2008:   We’re getting together this Thursday, 8/21/08, at our usual digs at The Abbey Bar (upstairs at Applachian Brewing Company in Harrisburg).  We get started around 7pm and wrap up around 9, though ABC is open as late as you care to stay.  As always, these meetups are open to the entire blogHarrisburg crew, as well as anyone from / around Central PA with a Twitter account.  If the weather holds — and it looks like it will — we’ll be outside on the deck for what will probably be the last summer-weather meetup of the year. You don’t have to otherwise know anybody in the group to drop by.  Fresh faces are always welcome — new people show up every month!  In fact, judging by the progressive growth of the past few months, August should be pretty friggin’ huge. This month we’ll be doing some unofficial roundtable chatting about advertising and revenue generation for blogs.  I don’t consider myself an expert on the matter, but since my site pulls in about 3x its hosting costs from AdSense, I figure I’m at least qualified enough to handle the basics.  And anyone with experience to share is welcome to contribute.  I’ll try to have a simple takeaway prepared with enough information to get new bloggers up and running with ads. So mark your calendars, tweet your friends (self-appointed “Tweetup cheerleader” @Kathleen_LD, I’m looking at you here), and drop by for an evening of food, drink, and social merriment!  Feel free to post any questions or feedback in the comments.

Like that? It’s that time again. My last multi-city, multi-day road trip was taken on an Amtrack train from Harrisburg to Newark to Providence and back again. This next little jaunt will take me from Harrisburg to Norfolk, VA back up to DC and back home to Harrisburg on a little Hold Steady excursion. So at the end of [...]

Remember what life was like before Social Networking? Yeah, me neither. Actually I’m writing this post to let you all know that effective immediately, I will be resigning from Spotobe to concentrate on my social networking full time. Well, no, actually I won’t, but still, sometimes it feels like keeping up with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, LinkedIn, Flickr and whatever is going to be coming out tomorrow takes an unhealthy amount of time. That’s beside the point though. As you may know, Spotobe is already on Twitter and has been posting photos on Flickr for a while. Now we’ve added Facebook and MySpace pages, both of which could be a resource to the Spotobe community. Please check us out on both and become our fan or friend, respectively. I think both MySpace and Facebook could help Spotobeings see who else is using the site, which in and of itself is kind of cool. Beyond that though, both pages have some other benefits. On the Facebook page, I would really love to see Spotobe fans begin taking pictures when they go out and posting them in the “fan pictures” section. One of our loyal readers was kind enough to post some pictures from the Billy Joel concert a few weeks back, and that’s awesome. We want Spotobe to be as open as possible, and anything you are willing to share with our community only adds to the experience as a whole.  If you are feeling super generous, you could also click on the “share this” option, and stick a link in your profile. As for the MySpace page, it’s pretty freakin’ nifty looking, isn’t it? On there, you can send us messages and see a lot of the bands whose gigs we list every week. Both pages are still works in progress, and if there is any application that you think would be useful on either, let us know, either in the comments section here or on one of the pages. Now get out there and have yourself a weekend.

CORRECTION: The date was previously incorrectly listed as 8/14.  The correct date is 8/21. When: 7-9pm Thursday 08/21/08 Where: On the deck of The Abbey Bar (upstairs at Applachian Brewing Company Harrisburg) Who’s Invited: Anyone from Central PA with a blog* or Twitter account First off, thanks to everyone who showed up at July’s meetup!  It was great hanging out with the regulars once again, and getting to meet a whole slew of new faces was inspiring to say the least.  It’s really quite impressive to see this big of a community forming in what is arguably a medium-sized city in a very rural state.  Judging by the steady growth of the past meetups, August’s promises to be even bigger. This meetup’s business end will focus on advertising; specifically, how you can make money from your site.  This will be an open, roundtable discussion and not a formal presentation.  Anyone with experience in the area is welcome and encouraged to drop by and share. As everyone knows, we do this on the third Thursday of every month.  The meetup is open to everyone from Central PA — not just Harrisburg — who has a blog, podcast, or any other form of self-published content, as well as anyone from the area with a Twitter account.  Whether you’re pulling 10k unique visitors per day or just contemplating launching your first blog, whether you’ve amassed a six-digit follower count on Twitter or just signed up for your account today, you’re cordially invited to attend. Our meetups are about 60% social event and 40% business.  Typically, most of the shop talk happens towards the beginning of the event.  Typical business topics include promotion, advertising, site design, hosting, and industry trends.  Don’t expect full-fledged Keynote presentations or lengthy lectures — we’re a very casual group that has very casual meetups.  Group participation and roundtable discussions are the norm! Socially, the meetups are a great way to get to know your fellow local bloggers & Twitterers.  A profile picture is one thing, but spending a warm summer evening out on the deck discussing everything from regional politics to the local music scene over some of ABC’s specialty brews (or craft sodas, if that’s more your speed) is loads more fun! * - Incidentally, by “blog” I mean “pretty much any site with original content that is self-published online”.  So if you’ve got an independent news service, photo community, podcast, or anything else in that ballgame, you’re included.  Come join us.

Wow.  Last night’s meetup at The Abbey Bar was easily the best-attended yet!  I don’t have an official headcount, but there were easily two dozen people in attendance.  Off the top of my head, the night saw @EdGrohl, @Dani_Pa, @KathleenLD, @mattyfo, @shawnfarner, @rorowe, Daniel Victor, Jersey Mike, Josh Karns, Bill Bostic, Sara Bozich, Roxbury News, Scott Giambalvo, and even the editor of the Central PA Gazelle stopped by (I never would’ve guessed who is behind that!).  I know I missed some people here — rest assured your omissions are due to my poor memory and not some nefarious status quo — so please comment if you were in attendance!   We started these meetups unofficially about a year ago.  Our first meetup ever was at Roxbury News’ Third Street office.  Back then it was just the blogHarrisburg contributors and the discussion was a lot more focused on how we could help develop the local blogging / social communities.  Starting with our third meetup, we decided to open things up to anyone locally who had a blog, and our fourth meetup was also open to our Twitter brothers & sisters.  For the fifth meetup (am I counting right?), which was last night, it was clear that word was really getting out. Thanks to everyone who came out and joined in the festivities! If you didn’t make it this time, remember that we’re in the same place (The Abbey Bar, upstairs at Appalachian Brewing Company) from 7-9pm on the third Thursday of every month.  Things are very relaxed, and everyone in Central PA with a blog (or podcast, or anything similar) or Twitter account is welcome. @EdGrohl posted some pictures of the event.  Anyone else?