Friday night I met up for the first time with a group of Chicago-area bloggers. I know–you’re like: what, you’ve had a weblog for a week? Actually, though, I joined back in the fall after stumbling across a link to their discussion group. Over the past couple years I’ve had so many people call the main journal of Poundy.com a “blog” that I got a little tired of explaining the sticky you-know-it-when-you-see it differences between technology and purpose and figured that the definitions were getting blurry anyway, so why not join the group? So I did, and finally, when they had a dinner at a restaurant not far from my place, I went to meet them. I’m glad I did.
Meeting with a group of bloggers is an awful lot like talking with Canadians. Which is to say you realize a lot about what you’re doing by seeing just a slightly different approach. What surpised me the most somehow is how many of them really are Chicago bloggers and write about and photograph the city, which I’ve really come to appreciate after spending so much time being vague about where I live and downplaying all things “local” in lieu of a sort of an Internet Anywhere. (Yes! I’m in Chicago! You probably knew that! That’s okay! Go on and continue to not stalk me!)
Anyway, it was cool. And it made me think that sometime in the coming weeks I really need to update my links.