One of the things I love the most about blogs is how you get to meet so many interesting people both online and offline.
Over the past 3 years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve met so many people online through them commenting on my blog or sending me an email asking me for certain information, telling me about an interesting bit of news, informing me about an exciting new project, or just expressing their appreciation for my blog or even disappreciation; yeah I actually got one hate email from this sick racist maniac Tunisian woman in the US who is strongly anti-Arab and thinks that Tunisians are a superior race.
Some of these contacts evolve into the person commenting or emailing more frequently, and the relationship becomes more of a friendship than just a writer-reader relationship, which is something I just love.
So please keep the comments and email coming.
It’s also so cool when you get to meet some of these people offline in real life, go out for a cup of coffee or something and just talk.
This is actually one of the main reasons blogger meetups have been such a big success. In Tunisia, we’ve actually become a big group of friends who really like hanging out together and who also try to meet with or without meetups.
What’s even more amazing is when you travel to another country and you get to meet all these different people who are either readers of your blog or bloggers themselves too.
I’m convinced that blogging is really one of the best ways to meet cool and interesting people.
I’ve personally met bloggers, blog readers, journalists, photographers from all over the world through my blog, both online and offline in Tunisia, Jordan, London and Paris. And every meeting has been so great and enriching.
Viva Les Blogs…
Happy to se you safely at home 🙂
Our meetup in Paris was very interesting in spite of the rainy day ;))
Wish you and yours the best.
Hey Marwen,
I so much agree with what you said. I’ve been blogging for only a few months, and I have “met”
wonderful people via my blog, although I don’t even know how most of my visitors look like in real life. 🙂
But I feel outraged at the existence of racist blogs which spread hate speeches. People assume that, because they are anonymous on the Internet, yallah, everything is okay.
I really think we (i.e. “Tunisian blogosphere”) should deal seriosuly at this issue. It would be great if you could include this as an agneda item in forthcoming meetups. There must be some code of blogging conduct because otherwise many
sick individuals hiding behind nicknames and claims of freedom of expression will take advantage of this tool to spread their ideas and recruit sympathisers.
I totally agree .. and I am a recent blogger who is already enjoying the meetings and new friendships through my blog
So, nice to meet you 🙂
I am so glad I stumbled upon your website. I get to see things from a different perspective here and I appreciate that so much.
Mohsan, Thank you so much 🙂
It was great getting to meet you in Paris. I really enjoyed our chat together. I truly hope we get to do it again soon.
Tarek, the issue of a blogger’s code of conduct or at least some recommendations for blog etiquette was raised before between Tunisian bloggers, but almost nobody wanted to throw in any limits and thought that offenders would just be ignored and left aside for their blogs to rot and die. A way of looking at things, I guess.
Khalidah, thanks for the comment 🙂 Welcome on my blog 🙂
I’m happy to hear you’re enjoying the meetups and the friendships you’ve created through your blog.
I hope that the next time I visit Jordan, I get to attend another one of your meetups and meet you too.
Jenn, I’m happy you stumbled upon my blog too, because it’s always interesting to hear your 2 cents on the different subjects. Thanks for always coming back 🙂
I am new blogger (only since 2 weeks) and I am expecting the next meetup here to see the tunisian guru blogger lol!
A+
lol…
Well, it’d be great to have you with us in the next Tunisian blogger meetup, which should be very soon 🙂
I’m still waiting to hear about the Zimbabwe-Tunisian connection.. Interesting about the Tunisian woman’s email from the US.. Does she have a blog?
–An Amero-Palestunisian woman
i’m reacting to this:
“I really think we (i.e. “Tunisian blogosphere”) should deal seriosuly at this issue. It would be great if you could include this as an agneda item in forthcoming meetups. There must be some code of blogging conduct because otherwise many”
I think it’s counter-productive to invent this code of conduct, where by rules are set by some sort of committe that supposedly would ‘think’ better than (and for) the others.
The blogger spirit is about free speech, openess, and next to no rules. Unfortunately, extremist views are also part of free speech..
Furthermore, you refer to “we (i.e. “Tunisian blogosphere”)” who are we??? a select people? elected people? founders? Mullahs? Scholars of the blog??? meeting managers????
The moment start refering to ‘We’ and ‘they’, that’s when trouble starts…
Well Napo, “we” are listed on tn-blogs! 🙂
Extremist thinking is NOT free speech. This claim is precisely the oxygen of racists and intellectual terrorists. Even if we cannot make them disappear, we should certainly not encourage them by leaving the door wide open for their ideologies to spread.
A “code” does not necessarily mean a charter. We can agree on a set of simple principles of responsible speech everyone must agree to in order to take part in this community.
Sorry, my proposition is unchanged.
so you actually really think that all tn-blogs members will convene sometime, somewhere, talk and agree on a simple set of rules? and spinning off a enforcement body, i.e. the tn-blogs ‘security council’ that will shut or alienate those who deviate from Tarek’s (oops, the tn-blog subcommitte for al akhlaq al hamida) rules ???
Keep in mind that extremism is a very relative and loosly defined term…your perception of extremism may not coincide with someone else, so are you going to impose your view or accept the other? or again seek a democratic consensus among a loosly connected virtual community???
and btw, i didnt seek to change your proposition, i care less…i’m just trying to debate its practicality, this of course if debate is still permitted in the would-be code of conduct.
sorry, didn’t realise I sounded authoritarian. I was just thinking loud.
Medusa, well for the Zimbabwe-Tunisia link, it’s that my father worked there for 7 years, and so we were there with him. That’s why I’m more of an Anglophone than a Francophone.
As for the Tunisian woman in the US, I don’t think she has a blog. If she does, I thank God I don’t know about it 😛
Napo & Tarek, well I’m personally kind of split when it comes to this issue, in the sense that I understand both of you and what you’re advocating and somehow agree with both points of view.
But let me try to simplify this a bit, first of all TN-blogs isn’t really representative of the whole Tunisian blogosphere, as it knowingly doesn’t include some blogs (ex: extremely political blogs, hate blogs, blogs with highly offensive material …etc), so basically there are some limits to being part of the TN-blogs community, to guarantee that it can go on doing the job it was created to do.
But other than that, a blog is representative of the person behind it, and just like in the real world we end up having people with different opinions and different ways of expressing them, it’s the same with blogs.
And what one of us might find to be bad, might be quite ok for someone else.
And in the end it gives us a true image of how some of us Tunisians think, which might not always be good or the image we want the world to see. But well, it exists.
I guess this also just brings us back to the whole issue of where the line should be drawn for freedom of expression, if ever.