2nd Annual HIMSS Blogger Meetup taking shape

We’ve got about 20 people signed up for the New Orleans meetup (click here to register or here to see who’s signed up so far). Looks like based on all the current feedback, Sunday night before the conference starts looks like the best time. Neil and Tim are helping to come with a venue and I’ll be tracking down last year’s attendees to see if they’re interested in dropping by. Here are some other HIMSS Blogger ideas we’ve come up with:

• Create a professional button or label that can be attached to our badges or shirts that say “Blogger”. It would be great to identify ourselves as bloggers when we visit with vendors or meet with people so that they can share story ideas with us.
  • Setup a “Blogger Pitch” session for vendors who’d like to pitch us their products. The idea would be to get a room or something at the conference and setup a time (1 or 2 hours) where any vendors that want to reach out to us can do so in one place. We could blog live from the session, do podcasts, etc.
    • Have a quick session where only bloggers would meet with each other to suggest how to improve traffic, pitch each other story ideas, etc. I’ve gotten so much from my fellow bloggers that I’d like to give back and would hope some of us old time bloggers can help some of the newcomers.
    If you’ve got any other ideas or think the ones listed above are useful, please share by commenting here. If you’re a blogger, please blog about the meetup and link here as soon as you can (if you don’t mind) — we really need to get everyone signed up so that we can be sure we choose the right venue (one that’s big enough to host and feed us). Last year’s event got really great interest and the venue got a bit small (which is a good problem to have, of course).