Big Blipmeet Roundup

Hi everyone. We were watching with great excitement during the “Big Blipmeet week”, as we saw reports coming in of the meets taking place around the world. We had asked blippers to get together for a week(ish) in March to celebrate the fact that the blip community now owns the site themselves. At our last count, there were around 150 entries tagged as #BigBlipmeet, with around 250 blippers meeting up, and comprising around 35 different Blipmeets. That’s a lot going on in a few days!

We won’t list all of the meets here – there just isn’t space. We’ve picked out just a few details from some of them – but do search for #BigBlipmeet and go and look for yourself.

From what we’ve seen we think the award for the Farthest Travelled For A Blipmeet goes to NannaK, travelling from Seattle to Portland – a journey of around 175 miles each way. That’s dedication for you!

All corners of the UK were covered, from Oban to Portsmouth, and from Newcastle to Holywood, County Down. While quite a number of the meets took place in the UK, others happened around the world in locations as far separated as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, USA, Finland and Holland. We think the Swiss meet in Zuoz wins the dual prizes of Highest Altitude and Most Glacial.

It was good to see Scotland, the original spiritual home of Blip, having such a well attended set of multiple meets. Unsurprisingly also, the Photography Show at the NEC in Birmingham had Blipmeets arranged on each day of the show (with an added bonus of varied photography subjects milling around Comic Con in the next hall!).

So many of the entries talked of the fun of meeting other blippers, and what Blipfoto means to them. As StrangledDuck puts it so well, “blip is made of us!”. Blip is a special online community, and it's up to all of us to keep it that way.

Of course meeting up with others isn’t a compulsory part of blipping – we know that some blippers prefer to remain online only, and that some have said also that they don’t know of any other blippers locally to meet up with. So we were blown away when we saw that even those unable to travel to a meet were catered for by the extremely enterprising and imaginative “Virtual Big Blipmeet” arranged by Laurie54 (just search the tag #VirtualBigBlipmeet to see). There’s nothing to stop you joining in with that virtual meet even now, is there…

And Finally…

The prize for the Most Spectacular Way To Miss A Blipmeet You’ve Organised  must go to our very own fellow Blipfuture director, Bob. For those who haven’t seen his journal entries, having arranged a day out on Ilkley Moor he fell from his bike shortly beforehand, and had to have surgery to repair his face (it's not for the squeamish, here). He’s on the mend, thankfully - get well soon, Bob. Despite that, his Blipmeet was a success in his absence (well done all), and he did bump into another Blipper on the moor on another day shortly after while convalescing!

There’s so much we could have shared from the entries. Do let us know what your favourite bits were, either while you were on a meet or what you've read about in the entries. Remember, you can arrange a Blipmeet anytime – to see which meets have already been arranged, just go to the forum.