Blogging Community

So, I’m new to this blogging thing, but really enjoying it. Well, technically, I guess I started a blog with my husband (my boyfriend at the time) back in 2004 to journal our restaurant experiences in Pasadena (we called it . . . PasaDiner. Yes, how clever.). But we never really wrote much and ended up abandoning it altogether when we moved out to Ventura County. (Although I did add a couple of my entries from that blog to this one, so you can check them out here if you like.)

While, I’ve been new to blog writing, I’m not new to blog reading. Over the past couple of years, I’ve stumbled across quite a few good ones, some of which I’m totally addicted to reading on a daily basis now (see the list in my sidebar to the right). One of those is a blog I encouraged an author of mine to create back when I was an acquisitions editor for a textbook publisher. (Without me there to prod him, however, I do fear that his blog may go the way of my PasaDiner blog . . . .)

Blogs come in so many flavors – personal, professional, topic-specific – but there does seem to be at least one unifying element to each and every one of them – they are created for sharing and connecting with other people. I haven’t quite figured out what I want my blog to be yet, but I do hope it connects with people. I imagine that group of people will be comprised primarily of my friends and family, but, if that generates some organic growth, I say the more the merrier! In the meantime, I’m also looking into getting involved with some blog communities. For instance, recently, I discovered BlogHer, an online blogging community for women who blog.

For my female reader friends who also blog, here’s info from BlogHer’s “about” page:

“Founded in February 2005 as a labor of love by three bloggers, BlogHer's mission is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. Today, BlogHer provides the number-one community for and guide to blogs by women, via annual conferences, a Web network, and an advertising network of more than 1,400 qualified, contextually targeted blog affiliates. BlogHer Inc. is majority-owned by three co-founders and has backing from Venrock.”

I won't likely make it this year, but, for anyone interested, they’re also having their annual conference in downtown San Francisco July 18-20:

The Westin St. Francis Hotel
Union Square
335 Powell Street
San Francisco, CA
(415) 397-7000

They offer opportunities to carpool and different, reasonable pricing packages, including student pricing.