The Casbah 306 King Street West
At the end of last year, I Heart Hamilton collaborated with The Casbah to co-host a #HamOnt Blog Fair. Thanks to Casbah owner Brodie Schwendiman for the awesome idea! On a Sunday afternoon in November, a bunch of local bloggers set up displays at the venue and it was an opportunity for many of us to connect and socialize with each other as well as readers. To promote the event, it wouldn’t be an I Heart Hamilton event without a fabulous window display at Dr. Disc!
Through organizing, I asked around to as many bloggers as I could think of, and I discovered a bunch of new ones in the process. We have such an incredible online community in Hamilton. There were over fifteen blogs represented at the event.
Mingling around the room were:
Cut From Steel
This Must Be The Place
Extreme Nonchalance
Not My Typewriter
The Hungry Gnome
Hamilton Small Fries
Steel and the City
Rebuild Hamilton
The Starfish
Love It A Lot
Oh Summer Candy
When Words Fail, Photography Speaks
Greater Hamilton Musician
Kitestring
Dirty Mac Poster & Design
Joey Coleman
I’m sorry if I’m missing anyone in that list! It was so great to see everyone and for those I hadn’t met, to put faces and names to blogs.
Local food truck Jonny Blonde were also on hand serving up their signature sandwiches. Thanks to that crew for braving the cold and being awesome! We sipped on beer and cocktails, including Brodie’s festive creation, the “Blog Nog.”
To conclude the event, we were treated to a performance by Vancouver band Dear Rouge. It must have been quite the interesting introduction to Hamilton for the band, to be playing for an audience of us bloggers and our laptops!
The bloggers really went all out with their displays – it was impressive to see!
Speaking with everyone, this event definitely sparked an interest in having more blogger meet-ups in the future. I also had a great chat with Biljana of Cut From Steel and Chanry of The Hungry Gnome about the local blogging community on my show that week on 93.3 CFMU.
Thank you to all of my fellow bloggers who participated in the event! There are even more who were interested but were unable to make it. There was such an enthusiastic energy about the event that I hope we can plan some more.
Stay tuned for Steel and the City‘s upcoming video blog about the event.
– Kristin
