Yesterday I decided to check out and try one of the Meetup.com events. This meetup was at Cafe Royal and was for the San Francisco Webloggers group.

First off, the introductions:

(Please excuse the quality, it was dark, and I don't think the camera was a very good one...)

For left to right: Myself, Ron, Hasan, Miriam, and Chris.

Ron - Reporter for AP. Good at pool, knew a few cool tricks too, and doesn't like the iPod.

Hasan - Supplanted in the states for a time, but harkens back to Britain - so did his humor.

Miriam - She gets 1500 visitor a week ;-) and just writes about good food! Crazy...

Chris - I think he works for an ISP, not sure, and runs his blog the old fashioned static HTML way.

To be honest, I was surprised that people showed up in the numbers they did. After looking around at a lot of other groups, these things don't really seem to take off until the Meetup group has > 100 members and > 20 RSVP'ers.

Regardless, we filed in, introduced ourselves and then - well - talked. I must admit, meeting complete strangers with such a, uhm, vaguely similiar interest is a little difficult to get a conversation going. If it was, say, a group about Tatoos, it would be easy: "Let's see em boys!" and "Where do you get yours done?" etc etc.

We, however, did manage to get along fairly well. The conversation was lively and interesting - heck, it could be said we actually got along.

All in all, I think I'll go to the next one - maybe I can drag Ian along ;-)