I drove from Tualatin to Portland tonight to attend a monthly meeting called a MeetUp. What is a MeetUp?
Well, this company at www.meetup.com knew that people should get off their computers and actually meet with other people, face to face with similar interests, so they created www.meetup.com
I joined MeetUp.com and in my profile noted that I liked web development. Within a day or two MeetUp.com told me about a local group in Portland that had monthly meetings about WordPress, a popular blogging and Content Management System. I attended my first meeting and was hooked.
Tonight, we had a guest speaker named Melissa Lion, a novelist and blogger who reviewed the elements of an interesting blog (full presentation):
- Have a story or plot with something new in it
- Use a setting to create a sense of place
- Introduce a character with an idosyncracy
- Set a pace with exposition for fast, and dialog for slow
- Read your word out loud, great bloggers read a lot
Melissa started blogging when she was pregnant and bed-ridden in San Francisco, and now works at a marketing agency in Portland writing ghost blogs for muliple clients in industries as diverse as high-tech and game development.
Her elements on what makes for an interesting blog really struck a chord with me, in spite of my background as an Electrical Engineer with no time for soft stuff like liberal arts and writing theory. Over the years in the high-tech world I’ve witnessed how the most successful people I knew where superb communicators either in verbal presentation, writing or both. Now I can agree that the pen is mightier than the sword.
Hopefully some of the advice in this blog will spur you on to share your life and work experiences in your own blog to provide leadership and compelling content to readers with similar interests.
Ourr WordPress meetup is at www.meetup.com/pdx-wp and you are invited to attend or at least see what our monthly topics are all about. On August 18 many of our members are hosting the Portland WordCamp.
