BEAST Bloggers Camp tomorrow!

by V Smoothe | July 17, 2009 | 7 comments

First, thank you so much to everyone who voted for me in this year’s Best of the East Bay East Bay Express readers poll. I am deeply flattered to win the “Best Blogger” award for the second year in a row. It warms my heart.

Now onto business. Did you guys catch my announcement last week about the BEAST blogger camp on Saturday? I hope it didn’t get lost in all the fuss about the airport connector and controversy over the new Safeway. This is going to be a stellar event!

If you have a blog, tomorrow’s camp will be a great opportunity to discuss common problems and get advice from other bloggers about how they have managed to address them. If you’ve thought about starting a blog, but weren’t quite sure how to go about it, attending tomorrow is an excellent chance to get all your questions answered by people who have a lot of experience.

We’re doing this event as a BarCamp, a format I have absolutely no experience with, but hear wonderful things about from my co-hosts (who are really the driving force behind the event and have been doing a lot of work to prepare) Kara Andrade of Spot.Us and Anca Mosoiu of Tech Liminal, two totally awesome new media and technology pioneers, who bring tons of experience to the table and are just overflowing with cool ideas.

The way it works is that we have no pre-set schedule of presentations – instead, the camp will be guided by what the participants want to learn about. At 9 AM (following coffee and pastries and chatting), anyone willing to lead a session on a specific topic will volunteer their idea, and other attendees will list issues they want to see covered, and then we’ll see if any other the other attendees have expertise in that subject and are willing to lead a session on it, and then the group as a whole will select from the proposed sessions and create a schedule.

We’ve already lined up bloggers willing to lead some very cool sessions – growing site traffic through social media like twitter and social bookmarking, social and viral blog monetization, photography for your blog, site design to make your blog look less like a blog, blog posting and content delivery with cell phones. I’ve offered to do one on beatblogging.

So please come down tomorrow and check out the event – in addition to the tips and guidance you’ll get from the workshops, it’s also a great opportunity to connect and network with other bloggers.

Saturday, July 18th at Tech Liminal at 268 14th Street in downtown Oakland. Coffee and snacks at 8 AM, schedule creation starts promptly at 9.

We are asking for $20 to help cover the cost of space and refreshments and such, but the cost is on a sliding scale, so please do not stay away do to cost, just pay what you can afford.

7 Responses to “BEAST Bloggers Camp tomorrow!”

1
Dave B. Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
This sounds awesome. Unfortunately, I’ll be out of town this weekend. Would love to meet you all and discuss WordPress plugins and template editing etc.!
2
TheBoss Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I might show up, in disguise.
3
Montclair Oak Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
This should be a great BarCamp. Is it possible to arrive late? I have a few Montclair community-minded commitments in the morning.
4
Daniel Schulman (das88) Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I’ve been to about half a dozen barcamp-type events, and I’ve enjoyed all of them. It really is an excellent format.

I don’t really like blogging, but I do seem to end up working on a bunch of them. Perhaps, BEAST Camp will inspire me to post more regularly. I just need to figure out how to get out of bed that early after the Fire Arts Festival.
5
Coolhand Luke Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Man, this sounds great! Wish I was back in town in time. Do these happen very frequently?
6
Anca Mosoiu Says:
July 19th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Thanks to everyone who made it out to the BEAST Bloggers Camp.
7
Sussu Says:
July 19th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Sadly, I had to miss this one… hopefully there will be more in the future!

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