austinbloggers Geek Out by Chip

Chip presented the austinbloggers.org website during Justin Hall's Geek Out during SxSW in front of several of the blog-world A-listers (including the Trotts, the Movable Type & Trackback people - Trackback is a technology which drove the development austinbloggers.org site).

He did a great job and people asked some really impressive questions (how are we publicizing this? How are we making sure there is a representative sampling of Austinites? How are we defining categories (organically, of course! Doesn't make sense to impose unnatural categories. Mena Trott turned her head, smiled, and nodded at Chip's answer)? How are we dealing with so much noise (We're not worried, yet... eventually we'll have membership and holding/staging areas for new, untested posters, but for now, overwhelming amounts of content is a problem we'd like to have.

Chip also made the point that we're, right now, reducing as many barriers to entry as possible (even non-Movable Type users are able to post to our site... no membership necessary, etc)

Here's a picture... in the audience, you see Anil, Mena, and a sliver of Ben.