I have been on the internet since 1999. I have mostly hung out at places with Americans on the Net.. It’s nice to see home grown blogs!!

This is a good find!

Monty Loree

http://blog.meetup.com/371/

Some of the things that helped get the group going are:

1. We made Babe the stuffed pig our mascot. She makes it easy for everyone to find one another, because people only take a stuffed pig to the pub if their crazy or meeting bloggers. (Whereas asking everyone to wear red doesn’t work.)

2. We moved the meetups from the scruffy backpacker pub to one of the nicer post-work-drinks pubs in the city. The new venue has a great vibe, which certainly helps.

3. We hold meetups to coincide with conferences where possible, so some interesting interstate and overseas bloggers can come along too. It helps keep the crowd varied.

4. When I find a cool new blog by someone in Sydney, I personally email them and invite them to the meetup. The ones who don’t think I’m a crazy stalker come along and have a good time
5. I make a big effort to get a variety of people to come. At last night’s meetup, we had tech journos, science bloggers, fashion bloggers, Star Trek fanatics, blogging newbies, partners of bloggers… it made for some really interesting discussions.

6. Our group’s now big enough that we formally book the event in with the venue, so their staff put up signs and know where to send anyone who’s lost.

The main thing is to get people to turn up — once they’re there, all you need to do is make a few introductions, and let things go from there.