Okay, Save This Date!

As I mentioned way back in an April 18th posting, we're planning a community event around weblogs, e-publishing, listservs and whatever other flowering forms of web-empowered citizen/community publishing you can imagine.
That's still true. Only, the date and the place have changed. The event will be on May 29th, at 6 p.m. at Flannery's Pub, on E. 4th and Prospect. As this project grew bigger, and more people expressed an interest in taking part, we saw a couple of things: we needed more time to stitch it together and give folks notice. And we wanted to have it in a comfortable, central location that could accomodate a possible large turnout even while keeping costs moderate enough to allow those of modest means (this is, after all, citizen publishing) to attend (the tab is just $10, which includes light munchies). So here you have it: a full three weeks notice to be there.

Here's the announcement that's about to go out from SPJ, the Cleveland chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists:

For centuries, freedom of the press ultimately belonged only to those who actually owned a press-that is, publishers.
Now, with new Internet tools, that's changing. You don't even need to know some geeky programming language to write for the web. You can just do it.
To learn how, come to a panel discussion among some of the area's leading online scribes - "bloggers" - who are leading the way toward citizen publishing and enhancing community conversation and collaboration.
This after-work event is on May 29th at 6 p.m. at Flannery's Pub, in Cleveland's Gateway neighborhood. The price is just $10,
The discussion is convened by the Cleveland chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists and co-sponsored by the Association of Internet Professionals, Fast Company Magazine's Northeast Ohio Company of Friends and the John Carroll University Entrepreneurs Association (with help from Thundertech.com).

That, in a nutshell is it. We'll be adding some detail as we get closer. And, most importantly, Paul Elliott of AIP and web shop extraordinaire Ideastar has graciously offered the use of their awesome e-RSVP tool, CorpMeetings. That link will soon be up, allowing you to easily register for the event from any one of the hundreds of links you'll be seeing sprout up for this event.
But remember: this is a chance for NEOhio's bloggers, and anyone else interested in community/grassroots/citizen publishing, to pack the room for a multi-layered conversation about how to do more of what we're doing, and do it better. It's also a chance to demonstrate in tangible terms--actual bodies--the tremendous groundswell of interest in these new tools as a way of more easily reaching audiences and connecting more people to a meaningful community discussion, around a host of topics and passions.
So please, save the evening, sign up for the event, and come out and join the conversation that night. Who knows where it might lead you?