Roanoke Blogging Group

Today, the area bloggers met up for the first time. At least some of us did. We hope to catch up to a lot more next time. Needless to say, it was a good time. The people who attended our first meeting, held at De Expresso, were Keith and his wife (Just another day in Roanoke), Elena (Ms. Elenaeous), Andrew (Technology Futures), ATL (Lotzothoughts), Pam (HallsofBlueRidge), and of course yours truly. It was an interesting group of people of all walks of life. The blogs represented were from across the board. The one who surprised me was Andrew (Technology Futures) who is from Blacksburg. He joined us, although I had not heard of him. I had seen his blog from the Roanoke.Com Blogroll (scroll to the bottom), but we hadn’t crossed paths.

After our initial introduction, we talked about all sorts of things. From restaurants to WiFi, from politics to past-times. The interesting thing is that not one of us was born in Roanoke, and only one of us was raised in Roanoke. All of us were born North of Virginia, and none of us live in the City Limits currently. However all of us hold downtown Roanoke near and dear to our hearts. Most of us are from bigger Cities, and know what possibilities lie ahead for Roanoke. We all feel we know what Roanoke is missing, and what opportunities have been taken and passed on in developing the downtown area.

It was definitely interesting meeting up with so many strong personalities at one time. Each of us has our purpose in blogging, some broader than others. Some of us run more than one blog. For instance, I have my family blog which I may not update as much as I should.

There are certainly some other bloggers from the area that I would love to meet. I will not name names, but they are in my Links on the right under Roanoke Area Blogs. Some of the area blogs are very intriguing.

To a point, if you were to take all of the Roanoke area blogs together, you will find better, more interesting, and more in depth thought than you might read in the paper or hear on the news. I am not saying that we could take the place of them, because they are the ones who report initially, and have the ability to do so. What I am saying is that many area bloggers can take a story and really showcase it. Take for instance a fire. The Roanoke Times or one of the News Channels may have someone on hand pretty quick, but I can give more of a story line with more pictures and explain certain details that a reporter may not be educated on. Of course I couldn’t report a lot of the pictures and details without feedback of my co-workers for which this site is named.

The meeting went well, and we are planning another one soon, so if any of you would like to be incorporated next time, let us know. We will probably be sending out invitations as well, so you know about it for sure, but an invite will not be required to participate.