The DC Bloggers Meetup group (as in, meetup.com) convened last night in Adams Morgan. The venue: Madam’s Organ (despite the establishment’s penchant for antiquarian styles of music, the name does not refer to the keyed wind instrument).
The Venue:
Madam’s Organ was a great place. The happy hour (which goes until 8 p.m.) was 1/2 price drinks, so that only served to increase my enjoyment. They had a cool little balcony for smokers which overlooked 18th Street. The decoration was eclectic and very befitting of a blues/jazz club. The darker colors of paint (dark red and black, mostly) worked with the dim lighting (very few overhead lights, candles on the table) to increase the sense of being in the group. One felt like one’s own table was the only thing there.
The upshot of my impressions of the venue are as follows: a great hole-in-the-wall place with an abundance of character. I can’t wait for the next meetup there.
The Meetup:
When I arrived, the meetup had just gotten underway. It was on the second floor of the restaurant and about 8 others had already gathered around a few tables by the window. They were talking about running. This instantly eased my fears that the group might be made up of the quasi-fictitious basement-blogger type. I signed in and grabbed a drink from the bar (don’t worry; I paid).
After a few orders of business (basic rundown of group, who the 10 most active members are), we got to introductions. One thing which delighted me was the ease with which an introduction rocketed into a tangent (“Oh, you’re that Lilu? Awesome!”). I was very pleased to see so many WordPress users there too.
After introductions, we talked about our mission statement (I’m not sure if we ever ratified it, though), and then got to plain old socializing.
It was delightful to meet all the different bloggers that I did. I had a wonderful conversation with a new blogger named Zach on the finer points of web design, and pointed him in the direction of some good resources for learning the basics. I also had a good time talking about the frustrating obsolescence of ColdFusion with a couple of bloggers.
All in all, I had a great time, met a lot of great people, and will definitely be attending more in the future.
