Wow!
What a great Meetup we had tonight! It's no longer possible to keep accurate "minutes" about all the stuff we talked about, but I have to quickly mention the a cool, fun idea from a newcomer, url=http://tiltedwisdom.com/Aden/url. (incidentally, she did a good first-timer recap of her experience: url=http://tiltedwisdom.com/200304-index.html#11link/url. Her reaction reminded me of url=http://www.davidnunez.com/blog/archives/000767.html#000767my own reaction/url to the Journalers meetup and I definitely feel her pain, but am most certainly glad she felt good about the whole experience overall).
So this is her idea:
Next Monday is the first Official Austin BlogSwap. We all put cards with our URLs into a hat and then picked out another persons' blog. The idea is that on Monday, we'll all post a "guest entry" to that person's blog that somehow "fits" with the style or voice of the other writer. (Tim made a funny about how picking our own means we can do a parody of ourselves, but wait...that's what we do anyway).
The brilliant thing about this idea is that it forces us to really try to get to know someone's blog personality (in many cases... forces us to read a brand, new blog of a stranger). Furthermore, when I want to see how everyone else is handling the assignment, I'll have to read all the blogs to catch the references and inside jokes..
So I got url=http://www.waterlilies.org/weblog/Rachel/url. I don't know Rachel at all, so at first I was really worried that this is going to be an impossible challenge. However, after spending 20 minutes just browsing her last few weeks of posts, I think there's plenty of fodder there... It's just kind of difficult knowing where to start.
It'll be a great writing exercise (vs. the great technical exercises that tend to come out of our group).
Incidentally, I'm terrified that url=http://www.timbrat.net/Tim/url drew my name. He's hillarious, an awesome writer, and very... uhmmm.. pointed with criticism.
I wouldn't expect less than him letting me have it, and I'm looking forward to some light-hearted David-effacing humor. :) (Don't hold back, Tim... PLEASE don't hold back.)
