I’m on a quest to meet and greet bloggers all over the world! When you finally meet someone face to face, the relationship bonds stronger than any trackback, comment, or picture can do. Nothing beats face to face meetups, where you hear their voice, listen to inflections, and get a feel from body language of someone’s real persona.
Last night was no exception, it was great to meet the several Tampa bloggers last night, nearly half of them were professional (mainly full time) bloggers that benefiting from working in a fantastic city, not slaving away in Silicon Valley! I’m starting to meet more and more professional bloggers, that either work for blog networks, or have found their own niche and have been making money from adsense, banner ad sales, or sponsored marketing.
As I visit more and more cities for business, time permitting, I kick off blogger dinners, more often than not, the bloggers in any local city rarely meet up, (despite them interacting online) and often comment; “why does it take someone from out of town, to kick start us to meet”. I’m not sure of the answer, but it’s a great feeling knowing that folks connect, communicate and bond way after the dinner –tis a community thang.
It was interesting to talk to the real estate bloggers, some were realtors and others were helping realtors with marketing, they found their efforts to be profitable, giving a leg up from other realtors in a very competitive market.
Josh, (@SIGEPJEDI)who just bought TampaBloggers.com (after I encouraged him to do a fun project) David Riseley who runs PCMech (@davidriseley) Robert Nelson (@robertnelson) Robert Payne (@rpayne) Tony Katz (@tonykatz) who is moving out to L.A. Tara who writes Marketing Artfully (@TARAdactyl) Sarah Perez, (@sarahintampa) who actually writes for RWW, yet has never met her teammates Real estate blogger Cyndee Haydon (@cyndeehaydon), notice how she integrates video for customer testimonials, smart. If I missed anyone, please let me know.
I mistakingly had John Novak @LVRealEstat on the list, he wasn’t there, but we wish he was.
Lastly, I was fortunate not to spot any “Dweeting” at the dinner (Drunk Tweeting), a truly responsible group.
Update: Video captures calamari with Dave, and it was deemed successful.
Jeremiah,
Thanks for coming to town and getting us hooked up! It was great to sit and talk with a group of people who actually understand what you say. We got a grin from the fact that most of our spouses have no clue (and no interest) in our scintillating blogger talk…Tara
Thanks for getting this going – it was really nice to meet everyone!!
Good to see you in Tampa. Maybe I’ll catch you on the left coast!
Things like this are still very amazing to me. Thank you for sharing.