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Last night saw the Adam Smith Institute’s Democracy & the Blogosphere event in Westminster. An interesting mix of bloggers, blog readers, journalists and other interested observers pitched up to the ASI’s Great Smith Street HQ to hear from a panel comprised of our own Perry de Havilland, journalist and blogger Stephen Pollard, Ideal Government‘s William Heath, and Sandy Starr of Spiked. The BBC was also on hand to record the event, highlights of which will be broadcast on Radio 4’s Westminster Hour on Sunday evening at 10:45 PM (GMT).

I always think that I am in danger of harping on this theme too much, but last night I felt compelled to point out that it is what you do with the technology of blogs that is the really interesting bit. If the blog format is overhyped - and by some sources it is - then the network effect of blogs has been incredibly underhyped.

Ignoring the fact that I would not be working for the Big Blog Company if I had not met Perry and Adriana through our respective blogs and that I would not have been sitting at the ASI event last night if not for the connections I have made through blogging, I used as an example the man who was sitting next to me at the event - my friend, blogger Norman Geras.  Norm and I come from very different backgrounds: Norm is a few decades older than I, from Africa, is Professor Emeritus of Government at the University of Manchester and a noted scholar of Marxism and acclaimed sports author. I am, well, me.

I ‘met’ Norm in the blogosphere in early 2003, when I started my own personal blog. He began blogging shortly after I did, we read and linked to a lot of the same blogs (including one another’s), and we started exchanging emails. Soon, his wife and I - the author Adele Geras - were emailing and collaborating on our own project.

In January 2004, I finally met Norm Geras in person.

When we got together face-to-face for the first time, we already knew a great deal about one another, had already shared our fair share of laughs and groans (some politics-related, some technical as I helped Norm sort out the back end of his blog), and had already established a context to our friendship. We had other friends and acquaintances in common, most of whom neither of us had (have) never met. Since that first meeting, we’ve met up other times - in London and in Manchester, at Norm and Adele’s home - and continued our conversations, introductions to new people...all of the stuff that makes blogging so significant.

Do you see here what the interesting bit is? It’s the network, stupid.

Good content matters. But good content alone will not do the trick. You need a network of people to read and appreciate your content, to pass it along through their respective network(s) and get you the attention of other people who will read and appreciate your content, pass it along through...Well, you get it. (Which puts you further ahead of the game than a hell of a lot of people who feel qualified to pontificate on blogging and what it’s all about.)