BlogPreston

First Preston Bloggers Meetup a success

Andy Dickinson gave his experiences of blogging at the event

The first Preston Bloggers Meetup took place at the New Continental on Wednesday 13th May.

Up against stiff competition from The Apprentice it was good to see about 25-30 people crammed in the Snug area to get some blogging advice.

Andy Dickinson, pro-blogger and lecturer in digital journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, gave a talk about how to go about setting up and running a successful blog. He drew on his background as a blogger, starting out in 2003, and how he built up a community and brand around himself and what he was writing about.

The evening then moved on to networking and socialising as novice bloggers sought tips from those more experienced in blogging ways and a small queue made its way to seek advice from @digidickinson.

The night has even sparked a few blog posts (and I suspect there will be a few Tumblr, WordPress and Blogger accounts being setup this evening!):

Gemma Cameron was blogging from her iPhone before the night had even finished, capturing the words of widsom that Andy Dickinson was passing on. Rick Seymour also captured what Andy offered as advice while Chris Skoyles focused more on what the event was about and the atmosphere at it.

There were even a few tweets during the event, although it was marred by some twitter down-time, but you can find #prestonbloggers related tweets.

You can also view images of the event via Flickr. If you’ve got any images, upload them to Flickr and tag them with ‘prestonbloggersmeetup’.

Now the big question, how often would people like these events to happen? And did you like the format? Are you inspired to improve your blog? Are you inspired to start one?