Lowell Blogger Gathering on December 4th

November 25, 2010 by DickH Posted in Lowell 4 Comments

The city of Lowell is home to an incredible blogosphere that becomes more active with each passing day. Life on-line can be greatly enhanced, however, when its participants get together on the ground and so we invite all area bloggers, commenters, readers, social media-users and anyone else interested to gather together next Saturday, December 4, 2010 at Top Donut at 700 Aiken Street in Lowell from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. There’s no agenda, no schedule, no formalities – just a casual meet-up to share a coffee and some conversation at a local business that has plenty of room and plenty of parking. We hope to see everyone on the 4th.

What: Get-together of area bloggers
When: Saturday, December 4, 2010 from 9 am to 11 am
Where: Top Donut, 700 Aiken Street, Lowell (corner of Aiken St & VFW Highway)
Why: Why not?

4 Responses to Lowell Blogger Gathering on December 4th

  1. PaulM says:

    In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d like to say thanks to all the people in our city and immediate region who are part of this pioneering effort to use the web for community dialogue. Their work has enriched my life in the past few years that I’ve been involved in what can be thought of as a social experiment. Nobody really knew if anyone would look, read, and listen to blog postings at the start. What’s developed is a mutually reinforcing network of thinkers-observers, writers, editors, photographers, and designers (of a kind) who on their own time report on the life of the community.

    In the master’s program in community social psychology at UMass Lowell, I studied what makes communities “tick.” In one book edited by Murray Levine and David V. Perkins, “a competent community” was defined as one with “the power to generate alternatives and opportunities; knowledge of where and how to obtain resources of all kinds; and self-esteem in the form of pride, optimism, and motivation.” This level of competency is reached “through community development or social action.” I’d say the blogs in Lowell and town nearby qualify as the type of social action that helps make a community “competent.”

    Thanks also to the people in the news gathering business that all of us depend on day to day. We look, read, and listen ourselves, whether the information and entertainment originates on TV, in newspapers and magazine, on the radio, or, increasingly, on the web. We often share what we’ve encountered in these sources and respond in our work. Their versions of reality help all of us sort out our own version that we try to organize our lives around.

    In 1997, UMass Lowell professors Charles Nikitopoulos and David Landrigan and I organized a well-attended public forum at O’Leary Library about what the then-new Internet might mean for Lowell. It’s been 13 years, but feels like 25 when I think about it. The blogosphere has changed the way we communicate at the local level. Let’s see where it goes and where we can take it.

  3. Marie says:

    Paul
    I was at that Forum in 1997 – totally clueless about the technology and with no thoughts of ever being hooked on the internet or actually being a “player” on the Lowell blogging scene. The opportunity to be read and to connect is priceless! I salute my RH blogging colleagues and those in the broader Merrimack Valley+ blogosphere. Looking forward the the blogfger-gathering on December 4th.