Finding Happiness with Atlanta Media Bloggers
Went to my first Atlanta Media Bloggers Association meeting Thursday night and was pleased that I did. There were just 15 or so of us, but we were coming to it from all different angles. Sort of a microcosm of the blogging world. There was Grayson Hurst Daughters who is looking for a new creative outlet after tiring of the mainstream media; so, she gets loose at her Spacey Gracey Review. If you are feeling blue, then cheer up, Michele Moore who has the Happiness Habit website is going to perk you right up. Really, it says it right here:
The Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People : Learn how habitually happy people’s special skills and perspectives power their buoyant good moods and abundant joy.
You know, personally, I like to be slightly miserable; it helps the creative juices.
Frank Baia gave a small lecture on interconnected intelligence, which in the style of Wired’s Kevin Kelly, means he gets it. And he is proving it with his work at Mountain Park Life, a community blog, in his own tiny community. A nice touch, they podcast council meetings–and he is interested in this connected intelligence game for public good and profits too.
I met, and hope to keep talking with, James P. Harris, CEO and Chief Storyteller, of Elemental Interactive, which bills itself as:
…an interactive communications firm with a unique focus in purposeful corporate storytelling.
Hans Klein, who directs the Internet and Public Policy Project (IP3) at Georgia Tech, and I have been talking a lot lately as we define common grounds and possible future projects. He was there too.
Special thanks must go to TechLinks editor Kevin Howarth and blogger at Narcissistic Graffiti, who put the night together. On the top of his blog last night was praise for Boston Globe columnist Donald Murray. Murray ran the nonfiction writing program at the University of New Hampshire, where I got my Master’s Degree, and really because of him my entire professional life was given a jumpstart. He is maybe best known for teaching teachers how to teach writing by writing. What a pleasant surprise to see his name and his column. He also was a contributor my book The Complete Book of Feature Writing, which I keep thinking I need to update and reissue.
The other pleasant surprise was that Howarth once listed PJNet.org as one of the top 10 blogs. So hey, I have to love the man.
Any how, I was extremely impressed with the kind of talent an open call to the world of Atlanta bloggers brought forth. If the mainstream media doesn’t figure out how to connect with the intelligence, talent and diversity of this pool….well, good night, or as Jimmy Breslin once wrote:
…if you want to stay in the past, then stay there with your dead newspaper.