Hi Everyone, (I apologize for sending this so late!

) The Dar es Salaam Bloggers Circle (DBC) September meeting took place as scheduled on Wednesday September 21, 2011. It was a pleasure to see those of you who made it. Those of you who didnt make it: you were missed! The meeting was attended by: 1. Biche 2. Omar Ilyas 3. Pernille 4. Taha (ChickAboutTown) (OmarIlyas) (Dunia ni Duara) (Vijana.fm)

Taha led the meeting. Thanks, Taha, for a job well done! The topics on the agenda were: 1. The Dar es Salaam Bloggers Circle Facebook Page 2. Planning the Upcoming Blogging Workshop 3. Developing a Blog Aggregator 4. Fighting Writers Block 5. Why Only Bloggers? 6. The Google Group 7. Creating a Star/Badge 8. The Tanzanian Bloggers Union? Heres a summary of the discussion that took place. Dar es Salaam Bloggers Circle Facebook Page The DBC now has a Facebook page located at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dar-es-SalaamBloggers-Circle/183374961733153 (the page doesnt yet have a succinct URL because it hasnt yet received 25 Likes). The purpose of the Facebook page is to serve as an online space for discussion/sharing between meetings. Pernille is the main administrator of the page (though I also have administrator rights). Planning the Upcoming Blogging Workshop At the August DBC meeting, it was decided to organize a blogging workshop before the end of the year.

Planning for the workshop was to begin at the September meeting, which it did. The blogging workshop will be a half-day event geared at helping newbie and veteran bloggers acquire further blogging skills from fellow bloggers. The workshop is scheduled to take place on Nov. 5 or Nov. 12 depending on location availability. The proposed location is Music Mayday (located behind the Airtel building at Morocco). Taha volunteered to check if this venue will be available on the proposed dates and report back to us. Developing a Blog Aggregator Following up on the idea of creating a Tanzanian Blog Aggregator to serve as a central place from which to keep abreast of the Tanzania blogosphere (first mentioned in the DBC July meeting), Taha volunteered to develop an aggregator, while I volunteered to help him come up with a list of Tanzanian blogs. Once the list is compiled, we will need volunteers to visit each blog on the list to determine 1) whether or not its still active and 2) to determine its general topic so that the blogs can be categorized by type. If this is something you would be interested in getting involved with, please let me know. Fighting Writers Block The group discussed writers block and shared ways to overcome it. Some suggestions were to:

Regularly free-write in a notebook (e.g., on a daily basis), and use this free-writing as the basis for posts when faced with writers block.

Keep track of search terms that bring visitors to your blog since this is an indication of the kind of subjects readers are interested in, then use these search terms as bases for posts when faced with writers block.

Why Only Bloggers? Omar asked the group why the DBC was limited only to bloggers instead of also including users of other types of social media. The consensus was that the line had to be drawn somewhere, otherwise the needs and experiences of the groups members would be too varied for them to be addressed meaningfully.

The Google Group After the July DBC meeting, Taha created a Google Group for the DBC, which can be found at http://groups.google.com/group/DarBlogCircle. Although the group already has a few members, it has essentially been unused since its creation because

many of us were unsure how to use it. Taha explained that the Google group is essentially to be used as a mailing list. Once DBC members sign up to the Google group, the group as a whole will be reachable through one email address: DarBlogCircle@googlegroups.com. This can be used by anyone to send email to the entire Google Group. If you havent joined the Google Group yet, I encourage you to do so now. (To join the Google Group, click the first link above, and then click the Join this group link on the right hand side of the page.)

Creating a Star/Badge To promote the DBC and the Tanzanian blogosphere as a whole, it was suggested that a badge be designed for DBC members to display on their blogs (if they so wish--think: similar to the Afrigator badge). Another suggestion was to come up with a meme of 5 questions that everyone could answer in a post on their own blog (about their blog, their reason for blogging, their reason for being involved with the DBC, etc.) and then these meme posts could be linked to from the Facebook page and by fellow bloggers.

The Tanzanian Bloggers Union? I had received an email (as part of a mailing list) from the founder of the Tanzanian Blog Awards, Pauline, about starting a Tanzanian Bloggers Union. I wanted to know if anyone else had received this email and to find out what they thought about the subject. No one else had received the email, but we agreed that I would tell Pauline about the DBC and welcome her and others to join our group.

The Dar es Salaam Bloggers Circle October meeting will take place on October 19, 2011 at 6.30pm at Cine Club.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Biche

P.S. If you would like to discuss anything in this summary, please feel free to do by responding to this email, sending email using the Google Group, or starting a conversation on the DBC Facebook page!