2005.06.12
Secret Agenda Revealed
Today at noon KRON hosted me and a bunch of other bloggers at their offices. I had thought there was a hidden agenda and, perhaps, I was correct. It wasn’t KRON, however, that had the hidden agenda. It was the other bloggers who had their own hidden agendas. Everyone I talked to (which wasn’t that many) came for a myriad of reasons. Some in the “power set” were there to meet their peers. Others came just because they were curious about this event. I fall, more or less in this group. I had my own agenda, though, and that was to meet face to face with other Blosxom users.
I was hoping to meet Uncle Roger and Allen Hutchison. I didn’t find Allen, but after watching out for beards I did finally meet up with Roger. It was good meeting him in person! I am surprised and impressed that his blog is a very good description of the man.
It’s actually good that I ran into him because I wasn’t really in the mood to be social today. I didn’t know that until I got there, but it is true. Besides it was disconcerting to watch a few of the others strutting about and being important. I was worried that this event would be a question/answer or forum event and that the “little bloggers” (which would include me) would be more or less ignored in favor of the extroverted and loud “big bloggers”.
Thankfully that was not the case but, just like high school, everyone separated into their cliques and it didn’t seem to me that there was a lot of cross discussion. I know this was a networking situation but it seemed that the only people going from person to person was Michael Rowehl from Bitsplitter and two of our hosts, Brian Shields and Stanley (whose last name I missed), from KRON.
Despite my seemingly negative view it really was a good event and I’m extremely impressed KRON, a member of the traditional media, held it and is this blatantly interested in newer forms of media like blogging. They asked for some suggestions on how KRON can start tapping into the new media out there. Here are a few ideas for you…
One suggestion for next time might be to have some activities. Break people up into random groupings and have each group discuss something topical amongst themselves. Also, I don’t know if it was available, but advertise and make available an internet connection so people can blog this event live. Create a secret agenda. I promise you, we will all appreciate it!
Something you could do to get KRON active in the blogger community would be to have various tools -lines of code, really- that they could add to their sites to announce the local weather. I hear you have a famous seven day weather report… Here’s your chance to really get it out there! These widgets for blogs could cover other things, too, like headline news, traffic or sports scores. Up to you.
Another thing might be to consider advertising on blogs. I’m not keen to use advertising on this site, but I run other sites where it would help defray costs and give them more of a local feeling.
Finally, make your site friendly for bloggers to link to. Many main stream media sites have obscure and painful URLs for news that we’d like to talk about, but that don’t have permalinks and/or aren’t even at a permanent location on your site. If we can find the news we want easily on your site (and this probably means RSS) and easily link to it then we will drive traffic to your site simply by linking to you.
If you really wanted to be daring, start a blog at KRON covering things topical to San Francisco and the Bay Area. Invite guest bloggers from all walks of life to blog for a week or so. Guests could either blog on the main page or create a special guest blogging section on the side. Make it high profile on your traditional media (mention it on your news, have a link on your main page, get the newspapers to cover it, etc) and drive people to it. Plus we can then link to things there.
Hello to Adrienne Handler at Noshateria and Ben Nelson at Exgaucho; it was good talking to you both!
Now I’m off to find boots in the Haight. Time to replace my old ones. :)
4 Comments Categorized: geek san francisco tv
You can follow responses with a RSS 2.0 feed or via email using the checkbox below. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
4 Responses to “Secret Agenda Revealed”
- Gracie says (June 16th, 2005 at 21:31:38 )
Boy, do I feel dumb.
All this time I thought that “Uncle Roger” was actually your Uncle Roger. Don’t mind me…I have to go catch the short bus to the happy place now…- dugh says (June 17th, 2005 at 08:59:00 )
Don’t feel that badly
I even mentioned to him that it was kind of strange refering to him even online as “Uncle” Roger. After all, it is a familial term and I might be distantly related, but v-e-r-y distantly related.Of course you could still get on the short bus; we could always use the company!
- dugh says (June 18th, 2005 at 07:08:35 )
UPDATE
Exgaucho has a nice entry about his impressions with tons more insight than I could manage… Take a moment and read his site, too!- douglas.nerad » Despite My Best Intentions says (October 1st, 2006 at 18:48:59 )
[...] On Saturday after the blogger conference at KRON I had every intention of heading out with Ann and finding a pair of boots to replace my aging Redwings. Actually, not so much to replace them as to augment them since they are still in amazingly fine shape despite years of abuse. [...]
