Since I'm from Akron, I'm supposed to be envious of Cleveland, right? Generally, not so much. But I do envy the blogger community to the North. Though they have generously taken in this mouthy upstart from Acorn, I pine for something a little closer to home.
To that end, I've revised the sidebar again -- this time with an attempted comprehensive Akron blogroll. Fourteen active blogs right now ain't bad. I restricted myself to blogs that have at least a couple of months' worth of posts and have posted within the last month (except for my friend John at Crosscurrent, and he's On Notice.) Recently minted School Board prodigy James Hardy has promised to keep his blog active, but I'm waiting to see how active it is before adding it.
At some time I may add an "It Must Not Suck" qualifier, but happily that is unnecessary at this point.
As far as I can tell, many of these folks don't know about each other. While I won't pretend to have the ability or inclination to create a community-building blog like BFD, I nonetheless want to nurture the online community however we can. To that end, I've started an Akron Webloggers Yahoo group and will try to organize a meetup sometime soon. If you are one of the authors to the right, send me an email off the profile page and I will send you an invite.
If anyone has suggestions about building the blogger community, start a conversation in Comments. In the meantime, click the links to the right and check out who else is blogging in town.
RIP, JOHN OLESKY
5 months ago
3 comments:
Not to be difficult, but the reason I refer to blog stuff as NORTHEAST OHIO, is because I wanted to minimize the distinction between Cleveland and Akron.
The Cleveland Blogger Meetup Group was called that by the person who started it, not me.
I think it's a disservice to have separate groups...
George:
A fair comment, particularly with regard to my tongue-in-cheek lede. I certainly won't look at an Akron-centric meetup as in any way competing with the NEO meetup in Cleveland. One reason I decided to forego MeetUp (aside from cost) is that they assign the date and I didn't want to schedule over the Cleveland date.
On the other hand, if for no other reason than logistics, it makes sense to build a NEO Bloggers-South community. Right now we mostly don't know each other and just go about our thing. We will be able to get together in Akron much more frequently than we will be able to get up to Cleveland, though I will try to do both.
In any event, I apologize if I offended you. I'm not leaving the NEO MeetUp. In fact, I plan on pestering you for advice as we try to pull this thing together.
-Pho
I see nothing wrong with having a separate Blogosphere distinct from our neighbors to the north. If I'm curious about a restaurant, I'll consult Rubberbuzz to learn what Joe's found here in town rather than make a special trip out of county. I'm interested in the local news, yet our TV broadcasts from the north scarcely acknowledge our existence down here in the sticks (which you cover nicely, Pho!). Its relatively easy to find out what's going on in the rest of the world; its not as easy learning about what's around the corner on the next block.
Akron has a distinct culture and personality that's different from Cleveland and I'd love to see more local connections (in addition to those up north).
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