Last night I met some fellow San Diego bloggers at the San Diego Bloggers Meetup at Cafe Bassam. This was my first time meeting up with fellow San Diegans with common blogging interests, and I was more than impressed with the turnout. The meeting structure was informal, although a lot of that was due to the constricted confines, and the ambiance was frothy (my latte was fabulous) and friendly.

The conversations were focused around blogging, but at my table topics took interesting tangents into data security, privacy, San Diego nightlife, and real-estate. Two topics seemed to get more face time (or maybe these were the two that interested me the most); Twitter seemed to dominate, followed by the disconnect between web-savvy and web-inept folks taking a close second.

The later topic is something that I want to explore in a future blog entry, because I am very aware of the disconnect and curious to explore the topic further. The consensus at the table, however, seemed to be that inspite of the rapid adoption rates of social networks and web 2.0 websites, the general public (people we work with, meet at the grocery store etc.) either doesn’t know about the wealth of sites and tools available, or doesn’t know how to access them or what to do once they get there. I’m beginning to think that this blog post may have a valid point; Yahoo! may be the gateway to social media and new technologies for those who are less web-savvy.

The former topic, twitter, came up repeatedly and I loved every bit of the discussion just as much as I love twitter (you can follow me on twitter and I’ll follow you back). In my little group there seemed to be a 50/50 split between those who knew about and use twitter and those who didn’t. The biggest challenge was trying to describe what it is and why to use it. I know social media types have blogged about this relentlessly, and I really like this post for the why and the how, but I’ve yet to find a single layman’s definition of twitter that makes sense to people who have never heard of it before. Micro-blogging just don’t cut it, and trying to describe the “What are you doing?” question/answer format doesn’t really work either. What seems to resonate most with people is the comparison to a big group chat room with all the people who either find you interesting or vice versa. I definitely think this subject is worth exploring more, and maybe I can collaborate with fellow San Diego bloggers at the next meetup to work on further defining twitter.

So who did I meet? Well, I met a diverse group of really interesting people/bloggers including:

Two real-estate gurus Tony Balsamo and Kris Berg. A San Diego nightlife blogger, Richie Edquid, who’s looking to monetize and really knows his stuff when it comes to the downtown scene (definitely worth checking out if you’re local or visiting). Geoff Young who blogs about the Padres, something very near and dear to my heart. Jessica McKimmie, a very intelligent marketing-savvy gal who’s dabbled with blogging on a professional level. And there were a few others who I’d love to give some link love to, but I either didn’t get cards from them, or forgot to formerly introduce myself (meaning I can’t remember if they introduced themselves to me; sometimes I wish remembering names was my forte).

I know there were plenty of pictures taken, but I checked flickr and nothing seems to be up yet. If you can point me in the right direction please do, I’d love to see them.

All in all a great time and I look forward to future meetups and events.

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