Two prominent western PA bloggers are joining forces to host a first ever LGBTQA bloggers and social media summit. Sue Kerr, primary blogger at Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents and Thomas C Waters of thomascwaters.com are planning a get together that they hope will be informative, interesting and meaningful for gay, lesbian, bi, trans, queer and allied friends who are active in any aspect of social media. The preliminary work on an agenda is done, and the next phase is to find a date that may help attract the most participants. A survey is posted here to gather ideas about date and time.
Some might say that the rise of microblogging, has meant that the blog is dead, but Kerr and Waters feel the exact opposite is true. There is greater need today for thorough and meaningful reporting via blog and spread throughout by social media. There is a role to be played everywhere on Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook, Google +, as well as other social media tools and platforms. These two hope to encourage more people who are working within any of these medias to communicate, work together, and increase our presence through LGBTQA voices.
“I want to cast a wide net” explains Kerr, “and bring people together who may not be aware of each other so we can amplify the message.” Waters adds, ” there are as many viewpoints as their are LGBTQA persons and by inviting lots of dialogue, more diverse opinions and ideas will get shared and understood.” too often the mainstream media reduces LGBTQ stories to quick sound items, and our roles can be to help provide more complete, stories with depth and meaning.
A “summit” may sound a bit intimidating, but it isn’t meant to be. Rather, this isn’t just getting together for coffee and chitchat. Our goal is to start a process where individuals who often work in isolation, now feel they have a network or more support, ad as a group, we own the role we can play in communication and activism.
For more information, use the survey, or contact Sue Kerr or Thomas Waters. Or access our survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FRR2D99
Photo: License Some rights reserved by miss604