Blogging Lessons: What Works for One, Doesn’t Always Work for Another

As we round out the first year of Pure Geekery, I started my second blog Atomic Living. It’s more of a lifestyle/DIY/home blog than Pure Geekery is. This past weekend I went to my first event as Atomic Living, the Indie Arts  & Vintage Marketplace. And learned a valuable lesson that what works for one blog, doesn’t necessarily work for another.

Having covered several conventions over the past year, I figured I kind of had this thing down pat. Talk to some people, see what they have to offer, take some pictures, get some business cards, match it all up when I get home. And that method has worked really well for covering events in the geek community. It doesn’t work quite so well in covering events in the vintage community.

The biggest difference being so many of these vintage places either don’t have a web presence, or if they do they don’t have pictures of all their inventory. So I can’t take a photo of a dresser, find the same dresser online, and say where it came from. The vintage shops also carry a variety of items, which makes it hard to match up. When I go to a convention, each booth tends to specialize. One guy will have items for steampunk costuming. Another will have retro games. Yet another will focus on bow ties (cool). But vintage shops can’t carry just one thing. They carry a variety, which makes this process all the trickier.

Adding to the difficulty, is that at conventions booths tend to have their name and booth number on the wall somewhere. Again, if I forget whose booth had a certain something, I can usually find a photo that has their booth name. At the Indie Arts & Vintage Marketplace at least, I didn’t see booth names posted in a uniform spot for all booths. So looking at photos for that was out too.

So moving forward, I’ll need to make sure to take notes. Or at least take a picture of the business card after I’ve taken photos at a booth. Lesson learned.