I wish I could go to the SBC. Alas, Orlando is a 3-week wagon journey from where I live and fording the rivers is tough this time of year. It would be fun to meet many of you who interact on this blog and authors of other blogs I check out through the awesome meta-feed going on in the directory page here. (I have to give Tony Kummer a lot of props for putting this whole thing together.) I even kind of like watching Robert’s Rules of Order in action.
But since I can’t be there, I have a little assignment for those of you who will be.
Meet a fellow blogger face-to-face.
I would like to add “a blogger you’ve debated with online”, but for those who don’t debate at all, that wouldn’t be fair.
But make it your goal to connect with a flesh-and-blood person while at the SBC this year. Put a face with a name, etc. I often think of how much our blogging would improve if we were sitting in the same room as the people we are talking to. Granted, even in real life, you still get the “Drive-by” commenter, the name-caller, the name-dropper, the ALL CAPS person, the person who has written a minor stream-of-consciousness dissertation on your comment thread without use of any punctuation or breaks, and even the trolls. People are still people face-to-face, and because different viewpoints are represented over issues that people hold dear to their hearts at meetings like the SBC, it probably won’t always end with everyone dancing around the Orlando swampland with flowers in their hair singing some lame song from the 60’s.
But not everyone is like that. So get up, break out of your church’s little group or your annual good ol’ boys club, and spend 5-10 minutes talking with a fellow blogger. It’d be good. You can even use this comment thread to connect if you will, as long as this doesn’t turn into e-harmony. 🙂 You may want to follow someone’s comment name to their website and set something up over email.
So meet a fellow blogger face-to-face this year. You’ll recognize them by their Star Wars pajamas and laptops.