I want to give a thank you shout-out to Colette Cope, who got my blog listed on PennLive.com!
To find me, go to PennLive.com, click “Local” and then look under “More Local Blogs”. Or I suppose you could just keep coming the way you always do, via my feed, a bookmark, Facebook or whatever else. I’m hoping this brings in a few new readers, but we’ll see!
A few days ago I wrote a post about why I’d rather be here than in Silicon Valley. While people there are more apt to become early adopters, Central Pennsylvania’s rate of adoption for new technology is much slower. This basically makes those of us blogging, tweeting and FriendFeeding here the Robert Scobles, Louis Grays 
and Darren Rowses of the area.
Pretty cool if you ask me.
Now we’ve taken another step forward. blogHarrisburg has been online previously, but today received a sweet new redesign that takes it to a whole new level. What is blogHarrisburg? Basically, it’s a web site that aggregates all the posts made about the area by local bloggers and places them conveniently onto one site. This will do worlds to promote blogging in the area and will put much deserved eyeballs on some of the great work that local bloggers are doing.
Speaking of local bloggers and Twitterers, you can meet some of them Thursday (5/22) at the blogHarrisburg/Twitter meetup! It’ll be going down at Appalachian Brewing Company on Cameron Street in Harrisburg from 6-9 PM. I usually play volleyball during that time, but I’m going to try to make it anyway.
Tomorrow I’ll be looking at a promising Central PA web site that hopes to be your one stop for event information - Spotobe.
Of course, a lot of me wants to say yes. Scobleizer interviews some pretty high-profile people in the world of technology. He also gets to fly all over creation. He has a multitude of eyes and ears hanging on his every word.
Unfortunately, I feel that being fully immersed in the startup world and the ever-changing landscape of the web has put him out of touch with those who will make or break many of these ventures; the every-day guys and gals.
That isn’t a knock on Robert at all. I’m totally envious of what he gets to do, and if things go my way, maybe one day I’ll have as many eyes and ears on me. You can call my BS if you want, but if I had to choose between being a voice among tens of thousands of voices in the Valley or being one of just a few here, I’d choose here.
I’m located within spitting distance of a state capital that is severely lacking in web presence. There are not many people on Twitter in Harrisburg - how else would a college student be able to chit chat with local news reporters at will? We have very few serious bloggers, but these bloggers consistently scoop our newspaper writers on a regular basis. There aren’t many people here who get it yet, and to me, that’s exciting.
Those few of us bloggers/early adopters that do exist here have the opportunity to do something great, something not a lot of people can say they’ve done. We have, in our hands, the opportunity to transform an entire city. We have the chance to completely change the way this city communicates, consumes media and sees the world as a whole.
I would guess that 97% of Harrisburg’s citizens have never heard of Twitter. They’ve never heard of FriendFeed. Some might think that Google is the only search engine in existence. These people use email, AIM, Myspace and Facebook. They read their favorite sites using bookmarks, not RSS feeds. They find new music through the radio and word of mouth, not sites like Last.FM or Pandora. The early adopter pace is just too fast for them to keep up.
I do not look down on these people at all. Many early adopters seem to think highly of themselves for having been on something “first”, before it was cool. I do not think that way. For me, these people are not a heavy anchor holding us back. Instead, they are the sails. When they flock to a service, then you know you have something special.
I look foward to helping introduce them to this new world. And Robert, next time you go to Tel Aviv, save me a seat?
