Huff Post meetup

Every once in a while, it's good to stick your toe into new waters. And so I did tonight on a mellow Monday evening at the Lucky Lab brewpub in Northwest Portland.

Surfing the net the other night, I came upon The Huffington Post and noticed an open invitation to meet other readers of the site face-to-face and discuss current issues. HuffPost calls itself "a socially driven Internet newspaper" and its national reach was evident tonight. A Portland State University student who worked on Obama's campaign stepped up as organizer and 17 others signed up for the meetup, one of more than 300 that Huff Post hopes to pull off around the world.

Seven of us showed up -- not a bad turnout, I thought. Four women, three men, with ages ranging from 22 to 60-plus (I'm estimating here) and political leanings a solid blue -- about what you'd expect for Portland and a Web site that draws mostly liberal commentators and readers.

We gathered shortly after 6:30 p.m. around two picnic benches in a corner of the outdoor courtyard while a bluegrass band played a few yards away. And for the next couple hours we flitted from subject to subject like a butterfly after nectar.

Has Obama been a disappointment as president?
Yes. Though some folks were more forgiving or defensive or more apt to blame the Republicans for not getting more significant legislation through the Congress, the consensus was he hadn't met expectations -- though some of us argued those expectations were too lofty in the first place.

Are Democrats a victim of their own diversity of ideas?
Yes. The health care bill took so long to pass because there were so many factions within the party advocating for this or that feature, this or that level of coverage while the Republicans simply closed ranks and opposed it nearly universally, just as they've done on every major issue. Failing to come together -- and soon -- could mean the GOP scores big in November.

A few other personalities and topics popped up -- the Oregon governor's race, Portland Mayor Sam Adams, U.S. labor unions, national politics -- and the group agreed it would be worthwhile to get together again. I'd hoped to gain some insight into what's on the minds of ordinary citizens -- as opposed to the elected officials, policy advocates and other usual suspects whose views regularly find a home in The Oregonian's editorial pages -- and I certainly came away with an unfiltered dose.

As noted previously, this was hardly a representative slice of Portland. Still, it was good to learn about the different ways people access the news these days. The PSU student, for one, said she relies on Twitter updates all day long and, in fact, was checking her Blackberry periodically during the meetup. Another person starts each day online with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. And still another says she tends to watch KGW, the NBC affiliate, for local news; when she comes upon a story she's interested in, she goes to the station's web site for more information. Finally, everyone agreed that while The Oregonian has good content, our affiliated web site, oregonlive.com, is difficult to navigate -- a complaint I've heard before, owing to the template we're locked into.

I've hardly scratched the surface here but I'm glad I went...and I'd be up for a second round.

Photo by yours truly. From left: Dave, Kori, Mike, Tara, Lynsey (meetup organizer) and Moya.

P.S. Random observation. Anyone else notice today's date of 8-9-10?