blogging about blogging; 25 Jan 14

I’m off to London today to learn about blogging. I’m going to a Guardian Masterclass ‘How to blog like a professional’. Start-time is 1000 so it’s an early start for a Saturday: 0815 train from Cambridge gets me into King’s Cross soon after 0900. Time for breakfast with the venue only 5 minutes further.

It’s a non-day weather-wise. January but not cold enough for a frost. Dark when I get up, overcast and some evidence of rain. The forecast is for more of the same.

Early on a Saturday Cambridge Station is easy to use. Plenty of space in the car park. It only costs £2.60 for the day but why doesn’t the machine give change? I’d carefully stocked up on £1coins but, as is my custom, I was carrying no small change. No queues to buy tickets and I get a bargain: £10 for a day return with my SeniorCard. I notice that there are 6 coffee outlets on the station, all fully equipped with real coffee machines. And strangely several school kids in uniform, boys and girls.

0815 and we’re away. Full train with lots of Guardian readers in evidence. We arrive on time and I head over to get breakfast at Patisserie Valerie and I’m impressed yet again by the fusion of the modern makeover of the station with its good, solid Victorian architecture. I also note the people around are different to those with whom I left Cambridge. It’s another manifestation of the ‘don’t confuse a country with its capital’  phenomenon.

Short walk to the Guardian offices. I pass the office of EC Harris which claims to be a ‘built asset consultancy’. Does that mean buildings?

The Guardian office is impressive, more Silicon Valley than Fleet Street. Lots of space, big atrium, cafes with lots of healthy food options etc plus visible evidence of the Guardian’s heritage which is good to see. Lots of people around and, hardly surprisingly, mainly typical Guardian readers. Just in case we needed another quick fix there’s a pile of today’s paper to which to help ourselves.

It’s quite busy with several masterclasses taking place but ours seems to be the biggest. We start promptly at 1000 and it’s going to be a fairly full day with 3 presentations before lunch and 3 afterwards.

It proves to be an interesting day even though the presentations themselves were not really very good. Number one about blogging experience was amusing enough but maybe the focus on ’10 things I wish I hadn’t done’ was wrong. ’10 things I should have done’ would have been better.

Presentation number two ‘how to write engaging content and find an audience’ was better and perhaps taught us the most important lesson of the day viz the rules of writing good blogs are no different from those of writing good text for traditional media. Unfortunately this presenter, along with all the others bar one, didn’t seem to recognise that the same is true for presentations. Far too much looking at the screen and far too many busy and difficult to read slides.

I guess we’d all come for presentation number 3 ‘SEO for bloggers’ and although it gave some useful tips it became steadily more technical.

Lunch was free and wholesome: turkey escalope and couscous or macaroni cheese, nice simple choice, and salad followed by cake of the day. I shared a table with 3 others and when I explained about my county councillor blog I was asked which party I represented. Given the company there was no hostility when I admitted to being a Lib Dem.

After lunch another presentation which we all wanted to learn from: ‘social media for bloggers’. It was pretty dreadful, all the above mentioned presentation ills committed again. In fact what was missing from this one, along with all the others, was examples of good practice. Too much death by power point.

I expected the worst when presenter number 5 appeared, baseball hat, beard and fatigues, and an at first impenetrable subject: ‘UX and design’. Oh dear, geek I thought, but no. I quickly worked out that UX is user experience and that this guy really knew his stuff, had prepared well with no long lists on slides and would share some really useful information.

I didn’t stay for ‘monetising your blog’ since I’m not really in that game so left to catch the 1615 non-stop to Cambridge home.

So, in the spirit of the day, what were my top 5 take aways from the day?