M is for Myg

Better late than never, here are the notes from our business meeting on 7/22/07.

Many thanks to Tiana Meriman for hosting. She even got the big fucking table out for us so we could be all business like - and we were!

Anyway, on to the meat of the meeting.

The Insatiable Zoe Conolly, the Grand Poobette of our SL Bloggers group, appointed me to chair the meeting, probably for my obvious gift of bossiness and verbosity. Good choice, Zoe! I am laughing out loud as I type that, trust me.

Get the gory details by hitting more. To the agenda items then, and their conclusive resolution:

1. Blogger party hosts. So far we have the following hosting schedule:

August: JellyBean Madison and Hawksrock Gunawan
September: Alex and Myg in Topgol (wear your anti-lag suits)
October: Vint Falken
November: Tiana Meriman
December: Zoe Conolly (tentative! depends on her land buying)

We discussed the need to create a way for people to sign up and volunteer for these things, which led to this discussion of using the wiki vs. google, etc. But before we get there…

JellyBean asked about voting for the August theme. Veyron Supercharge graciously posted the poll here. With only ten votes in, so far super heroes is in the lead with 40% of the vote. Get to voting people!

Many thanks went out to Dinee for a truly fabulous pirate party in July.

2. SL Bloggers Wiki vs. Google vs. Ning.com

It was suggested that we use a Google Calendar to track events such as the Blogger parties and meetings. This led to a discussion re: using the wiki vs. setting up a Google Group to communicate about these activities outside of SL. It was also suggested that we try Ning.com another site for social networking. This discussion revealed that some of us are a little bit lost using the wiki (er, me for one). So it was decided that we’d compare the google tools with the wiki and see how it went. I believe the issue with Ning.com was that there’s no integrated calendar, though if the Google tools don’t seem to be what we want, we may want to test drive Ning as well as it seems like a great tool as far as social networks on the web go.

Zoe agreed to hook us up the google action and we gave her emails so we could get invited and test drive. Then we’ll see what happens from there.

3. Business Meeting Chairpeople

Zoe appointed me to chair the last business meeting. It was discussed/agreed that it’s good for Zoe to have back up, and that a day or so prior to the meeting Zoe will appoint somebody to chair. It was also clarified that not everybody will want to be in the role of Militant Agenda Pusher, and that it’s perfectly okay to politefully decline the role of meeting chair.

Zoe also said something about me being the official Vice Chair, to which I agreed not knowing fully what that means. But hell, if Zoe asks it I’ll do it, because Zoe gets things done and I like doing things for people like that.

Moving right along.

4. Group IM and Notice rules

Group IM and Notices are ONLY for SL Blogger group-related announcements. Do NOT use the group IM to chat or announce anything not group related. If you’re not sure of it, then IM Zoe Conolly first and ask her to give the information to the group.

Okay? Okay. Good.

5. Requests for bloggers to cover events

Zoe sometimes receives requests for coverage for Second Life events by bloggers, and sometimes she’d like to pass this information on to the group. She’ll do this through our group notices and/or through the google group once it’s set up.

6. Promoting SL Blogger group events with our blogs

Ah, the limits of text chat. Never were they so pronounced as in this very discussion.

Zoe made the suggestion that when there are group-related events, such as our logo contest, that group members post about it to help spread the word. In response to this suggestion the following questions came up:

• “What about events that aren’t open to bloggers?”
• “Doesn’t that leave a narrow margin for scoops, and…doesn’t that narrow the margin for criticism?” Along with, “Group promoting is not on my good journalism list.”
• “Wait, what are we promoting?”

So I’ll try to sum up the discussion and the answers here as best as I can and encourage anybody reading this to add to it in the comments section here.

Basically, most of us in the SL Bloggers group have personal blogs where we write whatever the fuck we want, such as this one here. And some of us who were present at the meeting have a more formal or traditional or perhaps journalistic approach to blogging and the content is more news-like rather than personal. The key here is we’re all different. So if posting about a group-related thing doesn’t fit in with your content, by all means do not post about it.

The idea behind this request was simple. If we all help each other by writing about the things we’re trying to do, we’ll all get more exposure, and that is good. We try to help one another, not compete with one another (as in trying to get a scoop).

But since we’re all different, and different is good, it is of course understood that some people won’t want to post about certain events, either prior or after they occur, and that’s just fine. “All voluntary of course” became the cut and paste phrase of the meeting from there on.

And Hawksrock made the important point that for gods sake, if you’re going to actually cover an event, please be honest about it–we’re not trying to have some insincere spammy promotey thing here. If something sucks, just say it sucks.

7. SL Bloggers Group Logo Contest

This was the event in question that Zoe asked us to cover. Basically, she is hosting a contest for someone to come up with a logo for the group, and when she posts it on her blog she’d like us to link to it. Those of us, of course, who don’t have issues with linking to it. “All voluntary of course.”

It was suggested by Mori Simon, new comer to the group, that we notify the SL Insider, SLNN, MM, etc. of the contest.

Prize will be 5000 L! Stay tuned for announcement, as M is for Myg will definitely be linking to it.

8. Monetization

I had offered to host a sub-group for those of us interested in monetization of our blogs, which means selling ads or doing affiliate sales or something to help your blog generate some income. The idea here was that some of us are interested in this while others are not, and that I for one know very little about the topic. So if we come together, we can talk about strategies for doing this learn more about it.

I will come up with a date I can host a gathering for this purpose and get the info to Zoe. That said, it has been taking me awhile so if somebody else wants to grab the reins on this and call a meeting, by all means go ahead!

9. SL Blogger Convention

Zoe is planning a convention in SL for SL Bloggers the last weekend of February 2008. She needs help planning this and is asking for it over at her blog.

Interesting comments and questions were raised regarding the format of this event, speakers, panels, etc. and would it take the “unconference” model of the original Bloggercons (of which many of us had not heard).  All these issues were interesting and they should all get worked over by the group as we get closer. This item on the agenda was really to address recruiting folks to help answer them and put together the thing.

10. Open discussion

For god’s sake it’s taking me longer to write about the meeting than it did to chair the meeting, and it’s brunch time now so I’ll pick this up in another post or an addendum.  There were a lot of good issues raised that weren’t on the agenda and I’ve got some commentary about this meeting and what was raised therein. So I’m out for coffee and eggs and will blow hard about it later.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Bloggers, Second Life.