Beer and Blog Portland

Here we are at the end of another year. While it’s hard to fathom the first Beer and Blog of 2009 is this Friday, I am very excited about it, for purely selfish reasons. I’m now part of the Beer and Blog team!

As any devoted attendee knows, Justin Kistner IS Beer and Blog. It’s his baby. His altruistic vision of a relaxing atmosphere where friends teach each other what they know about blogging (over beers, of course) is plainly irresistible in this community spirit-loving town. Now that Beer and Blog Corvallis is launched, and other cities that want a chapter are lining up, it’s pretty obvious to me that Justin has created something special and useful.

So, when Justin asked me if I’d join the Beer and Blog team as an author and event coordinator for the Portland branch a few weeks ago, it was a no-brainer: Um, YES!

The past year has brought many new Beer and Blog fans, myself included. I made it to the Green Dragon for the first time last May. There were 10-15 men, and no women, but I felt at ease sitting there with strangers, working on my aging Dell laptop. (It helped that I recognized some of them from their 73 x 73 pixel Twitter avatars.) And, once I began to talk with these strangers about blogging platforms, social media tools, and reputation management – incidentally, topics I didn’t really have anyone in real life to talk about – I was officially hooked on Beer and Blog.

Recently Justin and I talked about what the first part of 2009 should look like for Beer and Blog, and Oh! It’s an impressive list: better use of the WordPress MU for the chapter blogs; development of docs to assist new Beer and Blog chapters in getting up and running quickly; and Beer and Blog badges for members to use on their sites, as well as members-only perks. There are also plans to make Beer and Blog swag available in late February. Yay! (By the way, Justin has a really fabulous idea for swag, but it’s Top Secret and I’ve promised to keep silent. However, feel free to try to bribe me. I’m partial to baked goods and cash.)

We also planned the first month’s fun, informative events. Here’s the schedule, subject to tweaking:

• 1/2 Welcome to 2009
• 1/9 Workshop: What you learned at Beer and Blog in 2008 (topic)
• 1/16 Beer and Blog’s 1 year Anniversary Party
• 1/23 Mini Job Fair (topic)

I sure hope you’ll continue to join your Beer and Blog friends on Friday nights. If you haven’t attended yet, please join us. We’d love to talk blogs and drink beer with you!

RSVP on upcoming.org