Why?
Groups of Birmingham Bloggers have been meeting in a kinda formal/informal way for a few months now. Mostly orgainised around the Facebook group, which has worked — up to a point.
Facebook is sort of broken at the moment (for this sort of thing, for this group) because:
- Lots of us are not using FB so much anymore, as we spend so much time on twitter. Twitter’s great for ad-hoc meetings, but not good for organising event events.
- We can’t make anymore people group admins — which is nice for the de-centrist non-hierarchical way we want to be.
I (me, Jon) resisted a website for the group because I thought that it wasn’t as democratic as using FB, but talking to Andy Mabbett and Stef Lewandowski (amongst others) at the meet-up in the Prince last night I realised I was being a bit odd. So, any Brum (or nearby) Blogger is welcome to admin rights to this site. dm me on twitter/email with email address for your very own account.
So why Paradise Circus? Well, since the very beginning of meeting up we’ve not been happy with the “Birmingham Bloggers” term. Some thought that it excluded other with not-so-much blogging social media activities (podcasters, heavy flickr users, tweeters, and so on), Birmingham is a little odd as a term too as most people don’t blog about brum (and there are a few wider WM attendees), and Danny Smith hated the word blogger.
Yeah, but why Paradise Circus? It’s nice, it sounds like a lovely and lively mess of things happening, it radiates democratic love, it’s uptopian, it’s a lovely big road island, it’s a Lilac Time album. And if/when the council (with architectural vandalism aforethought) knock the current building (pictured left) down we might be able to flog the URL to new corporate owners…
Site is totally unfinished, comments, suggestions (page with free wifi map on?), help, more posts… well, join up and get going.
