Evangalising Australian blogging and Web 2.0: the Perth Blog Meetup

• Tweet

• Tweet

Having finally got through a backlog of work I wanted to post about my trip to Perth the Wednesday night just gone, and the great people I met at the Perth Blog Meetup.

Worst thing, I didn’t take notes so I’m going to forget some names, but if I have missed you, apologies in advance.

A meetup that was suppose to go from 7-9pm finished a bit before midnight. I could have talked to this group for twice as long again.

I wont give a full run down of everything that was discussed, but I’ll make a couple of points.

Australian Blogging and Web 2.0 is really amazing. Even amongst the odd 12 people in attendance (the number varied throughout the night, with the last guest arriving at 11pm) there was a group of people doing some amazing things. And I know these guys (and gals) are only a very small sample of what’s currently going on in the Australian blogging and Web 2.0 communities.

As big Kev use to say: I’m excited. And more now than ever I want to do more towards (time permitting) being a part of the greater community and helping provide ways and means of promoting Australian bloggers and projects.

Of course I’ve got one semi-secret project that will work towards this (it’s secret in that I’ve posted what I’m doing, but I’ve never publicly really tied together the subject matter previously, but it’s not hard to guess, and certainly most there on Wednesday know what it is). It’s not earth shattering, front page of the news paper sort of thing, but it will hopefully become part of the bigger jigsaw puzzle.

But now onto people.

I had the pleasure of meeting face to face for the first time Richard Giles, a fellow member of 2web.com.au, who also co-hosts the G’Day World podcast with Cam Reilly. He’s as approachable and personable in person as he presents himself on the podcasts. He also has an uber-secret Web 2.0 project in development that he won’t share with anyone.

Bret Treasure. Interesting chap, broader scope of focus, totally into blogging, big on social networking. Also runs perthblogs.org which hosts the Perth Blog Awards. I pointed out it should be the WA blog awards, he indicated (fairly) but there isn’t a lot of bloggers in WA outside of Perth. There are 2 in my neck of the woods (including me), and someone mentioned a vineyard owner in Margaret River, and someone else in Karratha. That would bring the total to 4 🙂 (note, if you are outside of Perth and blogging PLEASE let me know).

Jon Yau of Australianblogs.com.au, who continually told me that Australianblogs.com.au was a poor mans de.licio.us, and who I had great pleasure in pointing out to in return, was really the market leader in Australia for this sort of thing whether he liked it or not, because he’s the only one doing it. With Anthony J Hick’s old Australian Weblogs site dead and burried Jon has the potential of going down as being the father of the Australian collective blogging community, certainly at least as one of its early facilitators and participants. Great bloke, lived in Sydney for 8 years then moved back to Perth, so the opposite of me, but I never sort of got around to returning home to Sydney….damn she who must be obeyed doesn’t like Sydney 🙂

Bronwen Clune, who I’ve voted the mystery participant of the evening, because she sort of appeared later during the meeting, then disappeared again, who is working on a semi-secret Social Networking site. I didn’t catch a lot of Bronwens background, apologies Bronwen, but Google would indicated there was a fully fledged journalist in our mists.

Nic White, who was a little quiet at first, but we got going later on into the meetup. A student journalist who had that zeal students have (sorry Nic, hope I don’t sound condecending in saying that). Can and will go onto bigger things.

Last (and I know I’ve forgotten the names of a few people), and in terms of turning up as well, Clay Cook, CEO of Minti, a Web 2.0 parent site that’s recently started up. I knew of Clay by the site he’s most well known for, ineedhits.com, a phenomenally successful site that’s gained international exposure, which he setup and runs with his wife. He spent about an hour with us, but I’d have happily made it a lot longer. Clay got funding for Minti out of Western Australia, to the tune of several million….yep, out of WA. As many in the business in Australia will tell you, getting funding in Australia full stop is hard, in WA, a state which is totally focused on mining, minerals, and the processing there in, it’s quite remarkable. Note to the 2web crew, we need to get Clay on for a Podcast!

So that’s the wrap. If it wasn’t for Allanah’s Trainline I’d make the trip up more often, but I wont lie in saying the travelling part was nothing short of a nightmare, particularly on the way back. I’d think if I took a video camera and recorded the trip along the Kwinana Freeway it would be close to getting on Australia’s Funniest Home Videos…or maybe we could turn it into an online guessing game for the speed limit. I swear in sections the speed limited changed from 100 to 60 to 100 to 80 to 60 then to 80 all in the space of a couple of hundred metres! And then theres the failure of the Government to make a start on the Perth-Bunbury Highway (aka the Kwinana Freeway Extension, Peel Deviation). There must be 20 odd sets of lights on the Highway through Mandurah…complete nightmare.

So maybe every 3 months or so, it was great fun and I’m looking forward to doing it again, although next time we’ll make a podcast out of it as well. My thanks in particular who thought it was worth turning up to just meet me. I quite humbled, and I hope I didn’t let you guys down. Next time I’ll look more like the country boy I make out to be, and stop bleaching the hair blond to play the part 🙂