Presentation Description  | Speaker Information | Meeting Agenda  | Location | Registration

Meeting Location Confirmed!
Cleveland Park Library, 2nd Floor, Large Meeting Room
3310 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Wash., DC

Note--Speaker Jerry Lawson will join us for an optional informal gathering for continued conversation, networking, and refreshment across the street at Nanny O'Brien's following the meeting. 

Web logs, also known as "blogs," have attracted a great deal of news media attention. Blogs have been featured in prominent stories in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, but they don't get much respect. It's easy to understand why. Most blogs are poor quality. Lack of focus and narcissism are rampant.

Could there be something more to blogs than meets the eye? Why did Macromedia order its key staffers to start blogs to promote and provide support for Macromedia's products? Why did Google, one of the most Web-savvy companies around, recently buy out Blogger.com? Have Macromedia and Google caught on to something most people don't yet appreciate? Why did the Business 2.0 magazine story "Blogging for Dollars" refer to blogs as "powerful knowledge management tools"? Why do some observers believe that blogs have extraordinary potential to assist some businesses, especially smaller businesses that want to level the playing field against larger competitors? How can those businesses that stand to benefit from blogs implement them effectively?

This presentation will also examine the relationship between blogs and "news aggregators," a major new weapon in the battle against information overload. A still-evolving new category of software, news aggregators can process Web pages formatted in a flavor of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) called RSS (Rich Site Summary). Making information available in this manner is called "syndication." Because news aggregators make it easier for users to handle large amounts of information from their favorite Web sites, they have the potential to make major changes in the way most people use the Internet. Even businesses that don't want to get into blogging may get big benefits by syndicating sections of their conventional Web sites. This presentation will examine why and how.

Speaker: Jerry Lawson is a lawyer and the author of the American Bar Association book, The Complete Internet Handbook for Lawyers (ABA, 1999). He doesn't sell any blogging-related products. His initial foray into the world of blogging was tentative, but he's been pleasantly surprised that his first blog (http://www.netlawblog.com) has given him a level of exposure in 2 months that he had not seen in 8 years with his conventional Web site.

Jerry may be reached at lawson@netlawtools.com

Location: One-half block south of the Cineplex Odeon Uptown movie theatre on Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC. (There are many restaurants suitable for pre- or post-meeting gathering/networking/refreshment in the block north of the library.) 

Parking: Very small lot, off Macomb St., to left of library. 

Metrorail--Cleveland Park Station on the Red Line (on Connecticut Avenue, just 1.5 blocks north of meeting site) 

Free and open to all

Several times a year a smaller group (usually about 8 to 12) goes to Nanny O'Brien's (directly across the street from the library at 3319 Connecticut Avenue, NW, 202-686-9189, open 2 pm Saturday to 2 am Sunday) or another local establishment for continued conversation, networking, and refreshment following the meeting. (Participants pay for their own beverages and food.) 

Join us!