YouTuber Video Bloggers Attend As One Gathering

Posted on February 19, 2007

CNET has an article about a gathering for YouTubers held over the weekend in San Francisco called the As One Youtube user gathering and video scavenger hunt. The event was organized by Mr. Safety, also known as Cory Williams. As you might expect the event was heavily filmed. CNET noted that some of the YouTubers discovered they had fans.

"I don't have any groupies yet," said Ben Going when asked whether his Internet fame has changed his life. The 21-year-old waiter from Huntsville, Ala., has a regular YouTube audience that numbers nearly 26,000.
Two minutes after making his joke, Going was approached by two red-haired teenagers who asked him for an autograph. Going, known at YouTube as Boh3m3, shrugged at a reporter and appeared simultaneously thrilled and embarrassed. Lowering his hat, the one Going wears in many of his videos, he signed away.
"I watch you all the time," Eric Dutton, 14, from Pacifica, Calif., told Going.
Just two years ago, it would have been a curious thing for a 14-year-old Californian to revere a waiter from Alabama. No more. Dutton who spends two hours a day on YouTube, later said: "Boh3m3 is really honest on his blogs and he's naturally funny. Like the time he said he's never thrown a boomerang without it coming back to hit him in the head. That was hilarious. He thinks the Australians are trying to put one over on us."

CNET also says that a lot of the top YouTubers spend many hours watching videos and working on their own videos.

What they have in common is a passion for communicating with the rest of the world via the Internet. Many of the top bloggers, such as DigitilSoul, TheHill88, and YourTubeNews, spend roughly 30 hours a week working on or watching YouTube videos. Frank Patterson, or DigitalSoul, is a 36-year-old, full-time father and part-time electrician from Pittsburgh.

It sounds pretty similar to the kind of hours the top non-video bloggers put in. Some of the YouTubers attending included Damien Estreich (YourTubeNews), Frank Patterson (DigitilSoul) and ysabellabrave. Caitlin Hill, who is also known at TheHill88 on YouTube, also flew in from Australia. Valleywag blogs that Christopher Mast already has a collection of twenty videos from the As One gathering.