Aussie Bloggers

I’ve always wondered why Perth is getting this reputation for sorts of things, like the blogging capital, passionate web design, uber web events, and general friendly community. Well maybe it’s the isolation.

Being forced to innovate and find new ways to do things, like communication. If you think about it if you have a smaller community, like in Perth, you will get a closer knit community with a fair degree of social and professional group overlap. The rest of the country has a few degrees of separation, we have one degree of separation at best. There is also the “damn the torpedoes” attitude of going it alone, and thinking outside the square, considering that the un-written rules don’t apply to you.

The funny thing is I know the people in Perth don’t consider themselves any different. In a way, it’s the opposite, you can feel a little backward in the town that always sleeps. Yeah we have don’t have deregulated trading hours, the liquor licensing hours are strange at best, in fact we are the Nanny state, seems government even tells us when to sneeze.

You would expect with an isolated city you would get a very happening social scene in the Perth city. Sadly due to a distinct lack of direction and mentality of a small country town, Perth is dead on all nights of the week after 8pm, it just has a few sad outlets and that’s about it.

With this type of “vibrant” nightlife, it is a no wonder that the people of Perth are making their own entertainment with the various meetups and social events. So in a way the isolation and lack of vision by the city fathers is leading to a social cohesiveness.

Now let’s just crack that isolation factor up a notch, and bring it back to person level. If we do this I believe this is going to lead to an increase in online social networks and blogging, especially in places like Perth.

Consider over the next few years the level of social isolation is going to increase. Dictated by the price of fuel. Expect it to be $2.50 a litre by this time next year (Jun 2009). People are going to find themselves more and more working at least a few days from home. Or at least they will be spending more time traveling on an alreasdy overstretched public transport system.

Just think about this, it’s going to have a dramatic impact on everyone’s way of living. Either way the usual 9 to 5 and after work social life is just going to decrease. This is going to lead to the only outlet for some degree of social activity will be online.

Hence with Perth already being isolated and with a vast 100km hinterland, poor outer suburban public transport, increased travel time and separation from family, friends and colleagues is bound to lead to more isolation .

Is this going to lead Perth being about to claiming the online social networking crown as well.

Image: Perth Bell Tower