January 25, 2009 
admin 
On Saturday, Jan 24, 2009, Keystone Progress sponsored the first ever PA Rootscamp here in Pittsburgh.
RootsCamps are participant driven events or forums, using the “unconference” or “open space” format that is born from the desire for activists, organizers, leaders and politicians in the progressive sphere to share and learn in a productive, fast-paced, open environment.
I did a session on Blogging, Microblogging and Social Media, and promised the session participants links to all of the stuff we talked about. I sent that out via email, but thought I would post it here as well.
Writing Blogs:
Many ways to blog for free!
I spoke mostly about WordPress (www.wordpress.org) but there are other tools as well. Here is a Mashable blog entry that does a great job identifying tools for writers: http://mashable.com/2008/12/13/writers-toolbox/. Actually, the Mashable entry does a great job of covering everything we talked about- Blogging, Microblogging, and Social Media.
If you are interested in a more branded blog, I recommend using a local Pgh service provider TUBU.net, if you do, please tell Andy Quayle that I sent you. OK, the price is a bit higher than when I signed up- now $10/year, but this is pretty dirt cheap for a hosted site. Andy provides fantastic customer service and tech support service too. http://www.tubu.net/blogger/
Reading Blogs:
In terms of reading blogs, I commented on Google Reader, http://www.google.com/reader/. But here is another Mashable entry that covers RSS in a big way: http://mashable.com/2007/06/11/rss-toolbox/.
We also spoke about ratings and blogs and 2 sites were mentioned, Digg, and StumbleUpon. Digg.com and http://www.stumbleupon.com/. We also talked about FriendFeed, http://friendfeed.com/
Podcamp
We spoke about Pittsburgh Podcamp, an unconference similar in structure to Rootscamp. The website still shows last year’s info, but there are some good resources there, http://www.podcamppittsburgh.com/. Planning is underway for this year’s podcamp which will be the 4th time Podcamp has happened in Pgh. There are podcamps in other cities as well.
Blog Networks
And I mentioned that there were some good local networks of bloggers: Pittsburgh Bloggers, http://www.pghbloggers.org/ and RustBelt Bloggers, http://rustbelt.ning.com/.
Here is how to find me on a variety of sites:
Twitter- tcwaters
Facebook- Thomas Waters, Pittsburgh PA
LinkedIn- Thomas Waters, Pittsburgh PA
Delicious- tcwaters I bookmark on ad off on a variety of subjects. I have a category( tag) called Social Media
My blogs are: http://thomascwaters.com, and QLATB.com
If you appreciate reading my posts, would you like to thank me with a coffee? 
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