November 11 — Something To Blog About: Sharing Stories and Building Communities on the Web
Current communication trends are leaning less toward shared face-to-face interaction and more toward public discourse in virtual, online communities. Blogging is just one of many technological trends that shape the way we share information, stories, and opinions.
When: Sunday, November 11, 2007 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Where: IUPUI 755 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202
Margaret Mason, author of No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, will encourage participants to think about how they can contribute productively to this free public forum with their own words and experiences. A writer and entrepreneur living in San Francisco, Mighty Girl is Mason’s personal blog. Her shopping blog, Mighty Goods, was named number one shopping site by both Business Week and Forbes, and last year was named one of TIME Magazine’s 50 Coolest Websites:
Mighty Goods: Here blogger Margaret Mason of San Francisco cheerfully identifies cool things to buy and provides links to the websites that sell them — like the sheep mobile from Sparkability.net and the Hammerhead shark wallpaper-by-numbers from 2Jane. Her prose is tight and upbeat — the tagline is, appropriately, “Hooray for stuff!” While ads do appear in the margins (hey, a blogger needs to make a living too, or at least cover her expenses) Mason does not accept paid placements or postings (though she gets a share of some click-throughs — items sold at Amazon.com items for example — but this arrangement affects only a small percentage of posts, and, Mason says, does not influence her writing). Best feature: the grid-view option, which displays just the photo images from posts in a particular category, for quicker scanning. For more cool stuff to buy, check out Uncrate, a shopping blog for guys, and its sister blog, Outblush. Worried about the environment? TreeHugger blogs for consumers like you.
A reception and book-signing will follow. Admission is free. Presented by the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library and IUPUI School of Library and Information Science.
Questions? Call 317-275-4085 or e-mail ehankley@imcpl.org
Know before you go … Read some interesting articles about the blogging revolution so you’ll know what Margaret Mason is talking about. On politics: BlogJam: The Political Animal. On th eimapct of blogs on literary and academic culture: Mass Culture 2.0, and Intellectual kleptomania (a review of the book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy). On the commercialization of blogging: “This blogging business nowadays.” On the effects of blogging on our language: “Blogging adds to the language? Don’t talk shit” [I’m just quoting the article’s title, Mom!]
Even better, visit some of the many local blogs that are enriching our real-world lives: Feed Me/Drink Me, Welcome to the World in Indiana!; On the Cusp, taking down words, My Old Kentucky Home … the list can go on, explore your local blog-iverse!
If this event about the relation between virtual reality and the “meat space” in which we live sounds interesting, check out some of the events that celebrate the place-ness of lives: Brian Payne talking about “Culture, Connectivity, and Quality of Life” October 24, Frederica Mathewes-Green talking about “Pop Culture, Orthodoxy, and Joyful Living” November 3, and the revealing of the quirky pleasures hidden in our neighhoods with “Hidden in Plain Sight: Discovering Community Treasures” November 10.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:36 am
[…] November 11 — Something To Blog About: Sharing Stories and Building Communities on the Web Current communication trends are leaning less toward shared face-to-face interaction and more toward public discourse in virtual, online communities. Blogging is just one of many technological trends that shape the way we share information, stories, and opinions. check it out […]