First Preston Bloggers Meetup a success

Andy Dickinson gave his experiences of blogging at the event

The first Preston Bloggers Meetup took place at the New Continental on Wednesday 13th May.

Up against stiff competition from The Apprentice it was good to see about 25-30 people crammed in the Snug area to get some blogging advice.

Andy Dickinson, pro-blogger and lecturer in digital journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, gave a talk about how to go about setting up and running a successful blog. He drew on his background as a blogger, starting out in 2003, and how he built up a community and brand around himself and what he was writing about.

The evening then moved on to networking and socialising as novice bloggers sought tips from those more experienced in blogging ways and a small queue made its way to seek advice from @digidickinson.

The night has even sparked a few blog posts (and I suspect there will be a few Tumblr, WordPress and Blogger accounts being setup this evening!):

Gemma Cameron was blogging from her iPhone before the night had even finished, capturing the words of widsom that Andy Dickinson was passing on. Rick Seymour also captured what Andy offered as advice while Chris Skoyles focused more on what the event was about and the atmosphere at it.

There were even a few tweets during the event, although it was marred by some twitter down-time, but you can find #prestonbloggers related tweets.

You can also view images of the event via Flickr. If you’ve got any images, upload them to Flickr and tag them with ‘prestonbloggersmeetup’.

Now the big question, how often would people like these events to happen? And did you like the format? Are you inspired to improve your blog? Are you inspired to start one?

The first Preston Bloggers Meetup – May 13th

The official Preston Bloggers Meetup logo

After posting the other week about organising a bloggers meetup, we got a good response so we’re going ahead. Here’s the details:

The Preston Bloggers Meetup will be bringing together all the blogging talent in Preston, along with those interested in starting a blog, to find out more about blogging. You do not need to have your own blog to come along.

There will be a guest presentation from pro-blogger, Andy Dickinson, on how to start up and run a successful blog and the opportunity to ask his advice. Find out how it’s easy to setup and get going and add your voice to the blogsphere.

Preston has an ever-growing blog scene and this is the chance for those who blog to come together and meet other bloggers and also pass on tips to those who want to blog.

A few of the more experienced bloggers in the Preston community will be on hand to answer any queries people might have on how they can improve their blog, technical problems or just any issues they might be having. A kind of ‘bloggers surgery’ if you will.

The event will be held in the Snug at the New Continental in Broadgate on Wednesday 13th May 2009. We can only take 40 people, so make sure you register to reserve your place. It’s a 7.30 PM start, we don’t know what time we’ll finish.

If you can’t make it along, you can follow on twitter using the #prestonbloggers tag.

The event is being organised by Preston Blog and Preston Writing Network.

We hope you’ll join us to chill out with a beverage, possibly a laptop and learn/talk about social media.

The logo above is by the lovely Kerry Sholicar, she’s an ace graphic designer we know. She also did the Preston Tweetup logo. And we liked that, a lot.

Preston Bloggers Meetup anyone?

Anyone will be welcome, from experts to novices

Currently working with Preston Writing Network to organise Preston’s first ‘Bloggers Meet-up’. The aim is to have an event that anyone who blogs in Preston (and the surrounding area) can come to, meet other bloggers, or if you’re interested in setting up a blog you can come and find out more about it from established bloggers. You don’t have to blog about Preston to come along.

As you can see from the list on the right hand side of this blog Preston has a reasonably good blogging scene, there’s plenty of blogs out there and with tools such as Blogspot, Tumblr and WordPress it’s never been easier to set up your own blog.

The format for the evening would be chilled out, networking, with a short presentation by a pro-blogger about a particular topic – we’d probably kick off with something like ‘How to start up a successful blog’ and then a Q&A session. We might also have a ‘surgery session’ where more experienced bloggers have a laptop on hand to talk through issues that people might be having. Mid-May is looking likely for something to happen.

We’re looking at the New Continental pub’s Snug area as a venue, it comfortably takes 30+ people, has wireless access that managed to handle Preston Tweetup.

If you’re interested, or have any ideas about the event then drop a comment below or email prestonblogs@googlemail.com. We would of course have a Twitter hashtag, probably #prestonbloggers for anyone who couldn’t make it but wanted to know what was going on.