About 20 people attended the Manchester Bloggers meetup that we organised as part of the BBC Manchester Blog project.
This photo from Paul Hurst really captures the mood – a lot fo time was spent huddled around laptops in groups to look at someone’s blog, pass around ideas and tips, showing how different publishing tools work, and handing pieces of kit around for people to have a look at.
Over on the BBC Manchester Blog itself Richard Fair has written up his own take on an evening that not only found him hanging out with bloggers, but ended with him on the radio at 10pm reviewing the previous night’s shows at the Manchester International Festival. Here’s his humorous account of the meetup:
"All huddled round various laptops like striking workers around braziers, we were somewhat conspicuous with only a couple of late comers asking if we were the bloggers. I’m not really sure who they thought we may have been sat there with more gadgets than Curry’s on the table.
It’s not the first meet-up we’ve had so it was nice to see so many new faces. “I like to put a face to a blog”, as Stephen Newton put it just before a myriad of camera flashes went off as bloggers took pictures of bloggers while other bloggers took pictures of bloggers taking pictures. And then they do that thing that people with digital cameras do. They come and show you the picture they just took.
“That’s you”. “Is it? Me? Gosh, I look just like I do in the mirror, only you managed to capture by bad side and my mouth looks like I’m hiding a gerbil in it. And this is going on Flickr? Oh, it’s already there. How fantastic is that”"
Julia took a lot of photos and has posted what must be the definitive round-up of the evening.
Vince has also posted some photos and a couple of posts about the evening.
Craig McGinty too was reliable as ever, posting this review of the meetup. PushOn, Spinneyhead and If You’re Sad and Like Beer were all there too.
In all, there must have been 20 or more bloggers at the meet-up which was a great turn out for a Monday night. Thanks to everyone who turned up for, well, turning up and being sociable.