KOMO TV's Northwest Blogger Meet-Up

After what was probably the most enjoyable and comfortable interview I've been on in a long time (but I won't say more yet because I don't want to jinx it), I headed across Lake Washington to the KOMO TV studios at Fisher Plaza, where northwest bloggers had been invited to chow down and chat it up. Unfortunately, Susan, my blogging neighbor wasn't able to make it at the last minute, but it turns out that Elisabeth was, so she met me in Seattle and she and I made the rounds and met quite a few people.


Unfortunately, nametags weren't considered until well into the event, so unless I went to each person (and there were at least 150 of them -- likely more) asking their blogging names, there was no way to know who was who and no way to look for favorite local bloggers. Damn, because I really wanted to meet a few, like Nerd's Eye View and Seattle Daily Photo! (Were either of you there?!)

Still, we managed to talk to quite a few people, among them a few Seattle Times reporters, some corporate bloggers (most attendees seemed to be business bloggers; I think I was one of the few individual, personal bloggers) and... yessiree, Elisabeth and I met our local celebrity newscasters, Kathy Goertzen and Eric Johnson, who had just finished the evening news broadcast.

After we decided not to embarrass ourselves by announcing who, specifically, we were looking for, we decided to go ahead and embarrass ourselves by sneaking off and take a look around the studios. That's when the fun began, as you can see! (And actually, not much sneaking was required, as bloggers were invited to explore the studio; we just happened to explore it while the rest of the bloggers were posing for a group photo, unbeknownst to us...)

Elisabeth even gave a weather forecast against the green screen. (Peter looked at the photo and said, "Algae count is up!")

I think it's cool that the local media (KOMO, Seattle Times, etc) is recognizing the powerful influence of blogging and the impact that a group of diverse voices can have on our cultural (and business) landscape. I don't think my own blog has any real impact on anything other than the handful of faithful individual readers who visit here (thanks guys!), but I'm cool with that.

My goal isn't to promote a business, reap lots of financial gain by placing ads (not gonna do it!) or win awards. (Though I'm the first to admit that winning awards feels very nice!) I blog because I can't not write and have always kept a journal; this is just a very public, very electronic journal.