Made a rare public sortie a few hours ago for a meetup of London bloggers, podcasters, and developers; a good opportunity to connect and soak up the conversation of people who are way ahead of me. It also gave me a good excuse to work a little harder on organizing and presenting my web presence. Hopefully I can keep the momentum moving forward…
That’s what I wrote almost one year ago after my first Meetup at Molly Blooms. I remember there was some moderate excitement about attendance being “the most we’ve ever had!” — with maybe 12 people, at least 4 of whom were friends-of-friends who didn’t give a damn about social media (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
I have to admit I was a little scared walking in that first time. Yeah. I wasn’t really sure if I belonged there, didn’t know what anyone was talking about (I was using Blogger then, had been for less than a year; I didn’t even read other blogs), and I had no idea how to explain what exactly it is that I do.
I’m still having trouble with the latter, but at least now I’ve generated enough content that instead of having to explain it I can just point to my site and say “I do this.”
And beyond all my expectations I actually feel like I’m getting somewhere. People know who I am and I know them back. We’re building a community. We’re generating mutual relevance and rapport. A scene is emerging.
Looking back, on one hand it’s been kind of frustrating how much patience was needed to build up anything close to consistent readership, but on the other hand it’s amazing how much I’ve learned and developed over the last year — even the progress that has happened in London over the past month is kind of incredible.
One thing that really struck me tonight was hearing someone say they don’t know how to set up the meta tags on their personal site. I distinctly remember saying the same thing a year ago (actually, what I said was that I had only just heard of them; I hadn’t even begun trying to set them up).
Which isn’t to suggest I’m necessarily a “more advanced” blogger. We’re all advanced, each in our own way. This is a very broad area, nobody can know everything.
“Sharing” isn’t just a platitude, it isn’t even a prescription: it’s simply how things work in social media. (E.g. instead of scoffing that someone hasn’t set up their meta tags — and come to think of it, I’m not even all that sure mine are set up correctly — I turned right around and started picking that person’s brain about something I’m completely ignorant of and they know a lot about.)
Despite all the intonations about the narcissism of social media, there’s really not much room for hubris here, or excessive pride. It requires considerable humility. It’s about trying things, stretching, learning — and more than a little failure. Through it all it’s about growing.
A year from now I’ll be quoting this post, saying, “look how much I’ve learned since I wrote this rubbish…”
It gets said a lot but it’s more true now than ever: you can’t succeed without failure. I see no reason why this scene can’t grow exponentially in the near future. Surely if I can learn so much so fast, a lot of other people can too.
Update: somehow I missed this great post from Kevin Van Lierop that I could almost be accused of stealing from (I need a second, smaller, more select group of ‘London’ feeds in my Reader). I’m overlapping him a lot here… Choice quote:
In the case of London and it’s Social Media Scene you need not have to define it as progressive at all, movements such as this define themselves
