Since I was in New York City visiting with some of my chapter people there, I took the opportunity to go to the ProBlogger Meetup hosted by Darren Rowse. It was a great time, and I met lots of people.

What really struck me about the event, and I was discussing this with Mike Levin of Hittail, is how this virtual community suddenly became a real community. I mean, everyone who was there reads Darren’s blog—and that means that when a group of readers come together there’s lots to talk about. It was all ad-hoc and free to us. Text-link ads sponsored food and drink, which I’m sure was relatively inexpensive as compared to your standard Hyatt/Ritz Carlton $5.00 cokes. All this to say that the internet is creating some really prime attention space for our members’ attention, and we had better provide value that goes beyond “networking," AND that we bother to tell members what we are busy doing for them.