Whereas the first meet was more formal and the second more sociable, the third was a union of both: formal then social.

The formal part was a panel on the SXSWM trip which was of less interest to me, just because I’d already read the tweets and the blog posts, seen the videos and chatted to Stef about it. But for people who hadn’t heard about it, this was a good time to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

There was a lot of discussion about ‘evangelism’, ‘conversion’ and ‘spreading the word’ about social media which struck me as odd language. It bordered on missionary zeal at time which I know some people found a little off-putting. One guy told me straight that his blogger girlfriend had been put off from coming by the ‘formal’ idea.

For me, the killer feature of the meets for me is just in getting a critical mass of creative web fans in a room. Add a little beer and conversational sparks fly, knowledge is exchanged and connections spring up. Some will want to explore the latest ideas and models in social media while many just want to arse about on the web. I measure the quality of the meets by the diversity of ideas, approaches and people that pop up. I’ll be worried if everyone starts singing from the same hymn book.

I’m not too worried right now. With the panel over, one discussion was replaced by a dozen interesting conversations, a sizeable portion of this later migrated over to the Rainbow. I talked to a cartoonist, a journalist and a couple of entrepreneurs among others. My only gripe was there were too many fascinating people to talk to and not enough time to get round. It felt rather like the Crystal Dome.

Other people seem to be as impatient as me about continuing these chats. More frequent mini-meets could be the way to go, or even a techie solution where people can spontaneously organise ‘coworking‘ sessions in cafes around Brum. I know people are actively working on this problem so maybe by Blogger Meet 4 we’ll have something on the go.

I got there early with the idea of wearing my ol’ blue Blogger hoodie might be useful for physically tagging our end of the pub.  It’s also becoming nicely vintage, harking back from an era when blogging was brave, fresh-faced and no-one had heard of comment spam.

The meeting seems to have roughly doubled to about 20 from last time, including some big-time bloggers.  I guess the growth was down to a combination of a more central location (the Dragon Inn) plus the word getting out.  At this size it naturally relaxed into several small but mingling groups, more like a party than a debate.  The cheap Wetherspoons beer reinforced this convivial atmosphere which I saw Jon trying to capture on his mobile, perhaps for later vlogging.

Talked to lots of interesting and friendly bloggers, although not as many as I would have liked.  One month seems like an awful long time for the next meet.

So, what is it? Well, it’s ‘a project to create the biggest photo album in the West Midlands’. The benefits I immediately read: getting people sharing their ‘local place’ photos online and tagging (and geotagging) them up nicely. It’s based on Flickr, which does all this well, so this should be a cinch. In fact the goal could be restated as to get people from the West Midlands using Flickr (and using it properly). Anyway, let’s give the site a spin.

The site itself is very clean with a flash iPhone-ish preview. You can add photos without a Flickr account but it may take 24 hours to appear. However, if you are really going to make this work you need a Flickr account. Fortunately, I have one. Let’s rock.

First bump: I have to authorize the Big Picture service access to my private photos. It’s only because I know the guys behind this project are sound that I’m not bailing out right now. I expect a lot of people will. Adding a new photo is pretty straightforward since I have already tagged my photos like a good flickrite.

Cool – using Google Maps to set the location! This is the first technical enhancement to the existing Flickr interface since the Google Map is superior to the Yahoo Map that you are normally forced to use. An improvement would be to allow satellite view to help place the photo precisely and perhaps a location search too.  I add a photo.

No immediate payback but an (optional) questionaire.  First question, what have I done today? A decent logging system might tell you that but I have dim  visions of research marketing bods typing reams of feedback forms into an excel spreadsheet to produce pie-charts for presentations. Next, how was it for you? Not too painful since I was already primed but no real payback. I put average. How did I find out? Actually, someone told me and pictures of that are on already on Flickr. Defocussing somewhat, I’m asked what kind of cultural events I’ve been to in the last 12 months. It’s been an OK year and I tick 3 boxes. Where do you live? This is personal. I presume its optional and I pass. As I work through age, ethnicity and disability status I’m feeling myself shrinking to a data point for someone else’s ends.

About half an hour later I try to find my picture. There’s a red pin which is probably my photo but when I click on it the speech bubble contains only empty space. Every other pin I try comes up the same. Zero payback thus far and I’m still edgy about those permissions. I deauthorize them and move on.

In summary.  I like the motivation of promoting online sharing and tagging of location-specific photos.  I admire the technical wrapping of Flickr to make it more digestible for non-geeks (you’d be surprised how many people still don’t get tags).  There are still a few issues that are holding this super-mashup back.

The first and most important one is limited payback for my participation.  There’s the chance to Be Part Of Something, i.e. record attempt and a possible huge photo montage.  The promise is of extra exposure for my pictures but its not obvious this will be any better than just posting to a relevant Flickr group.  With some great promotion this will hopefully change.  Audiences Central is handling the admin for the project although social media might be a new game for them. They seem more geared toward herding rather than peer interaction.  The interface also needs a spot more polish.  The Google Maps locater is a good move but still has a few issues as noted above.

The site reminded me of Panoramio and I revisited that.  At this point I have to say it still tops The Big Picture by a significant margin.  Perhaps the mission or scope is different.