Berkman Group Gropes

Dowbrigade
has been digesting the
discussions from last nights Thursday
Night’s Blogger Group, which is groping to find a future apart from
its role as backup singers to the inestimable Dave
Winer’s Traveling
Circus and Roiling Rock Extravaganza.

It’s a talented group of misfits who somehow seem to fit together, at least
on Thursday nights: Andrew the
dour and brilliant MIT coder, the demure but lethally incisive Redhead,
whose light touch on the keyboard kicks our collective asses nightly on
the rating board, Jammaster
j, the super-librarian
who doesn’t care for books and keeps us all tenuously tied to the Berkman
mothership, The Kid, whose whose
voracious brain seems to be consuming great swaths of the intellectual
landscape at a bite, and your humble
correspondent.

Cameos from Lydon, Sooz, Seth the gloomy gnome, Halley, always up for an
acerbic comment, the God Squad, and a revolving roster of itinerant geniuses,
crackpots, malcontents and miscreants.

There seemed to be a consensus that the group up to this point was filling
three roles: 1) proselytizing blogging within the Harvard-MIT community,
and easing people into the blogoshpere with training and support 2) Encouraging,
leading and providing a forum for discussion and research into all aspects
of the blogging phenomena, including what they are, how they are influencing
and being influenced by society, and where they are going, and 3) Offering
support in the implementation of the the Manila blogging tool at Berkman.

As was astutely pointed out at the meeting, there are probably only 10
people in the world really qualified to carry out #3, and Dave is the only
one of them within a few thousand miles of here (although rumor has it
he fled the left coast to escape incessant questions on this very topic),
so in this role he is irreplaceable.

But in the first two roles there may be some room to grow and serve the
community. There are some interesting projects in planning, and the blogging
phenomena continues to explode all around us. Like any ad hoc group the
Thursday Night Bloggers’ effectiveness and staying power will be determined
by the demands and opportunities presented in the course of events, and
the mettle of the individuals involved.

Here
are the meeting notes (gracias j)