Building on a solid start to my Follow Friday meme last week, this week it is my pleasure to introduce you to Andre Natta, a native New Yorker at home in Birmingham. Andre has many, many irons in the fire yet still finds the time to operate three blogs, Urban Conversations, Dre’s Ramblings, and The Terminal.

In his “spare time”, Andre gives back to the community. He has helped raise food and funds for hurricane victims and collected phones for victims of domestic violence just to name a few. He also gives freely to the blogging community by doing things like organizing WordCamp Birmingham! Andre is a great guy and a great member of his local community and our wider online community. You will enjoy following @acnatta on Twitter.

A Little Background

In 2005 Andre started Dre’s Ramblings as a Blogger blog for as an outlet for thoughts on issues and to stay plugged in with his friends back in The Bronx. Soon it became clear that his writing was taking shape around what was actually going on in Birmingham. He started The Terminal in March 2007 to separate personal from city-related information with a hope of having an impact on Birmingham by shining a light on the goings on that might be missed by the mainstream outlets.

I asked Andre what he would say to people who look at him and thing, “Man, what an awesome gig. I’d love to be a full-time blogger.” His reply? “Being a full-time blogger is a lot of fun… and a lot of work. (Amen!) In spite of that, he goes on to say that given a do-over, he wouldn’t have done very much differently. “It has given me the chance to travel…and an opportunity to interview for jobs that I didn’t even think were accessible to me at this point.”

Be open to where creating a blog takes you and don’t think that just because you’ve achieved one point that you get to stop. It’s what helped you get there.

Andre Natta, Urban Conversations

Why You Should Follow Andre Natta

• Andre has a tight grasp on the business of blogging, what it takes to make it, and where the pitfalls are
• He regularly contributes back to the communities he is a part of
• He’s a pretty funny guy, he comes up with some really great stuff sometimes!

On The Horizon

• Be looking for a “quiet” relaunch of The Terminal in November. After much time and effort, there are some really cool changes coming soon.
• You can also be on the lookout for Andre on the Southern Tech magazine blog, TechDrawl.com (is that an awesome name or what?)
• Look for Andre as a contributing author in the b-metro Magazine in Birmingham. Yes, you read that correctly… he’s writing for off-line pubs as well!

What project have you worked on that you are most proud of and why?

In preparing to write this post, I ask Andre to answer a couple of questions for me. When I asked him about the project he’s most proud of, his answer was so great and important, I’ve included the entire quote below. Forgive me for running long, but this is important.

The project I was most recently involved with was Blogging Against Violence, a new take on holding a blogathon organized by our local NBC affiliate and The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham. Area bloggers were asked to take part and asked to write blog posts to help raise the community’s awareness about domestic violence and how major an issue it remains. What was different was the chance for some of those bloggers to come into the NBC studios and be given the chance to interview experts on the issue. It’s something that bloggers and interested parties would benefit from more in the future – the chance for bloggers to be able to write about something while being equipped with the resources to provide facts to work from. I’m looking forward to the chance to do something like that on a regular basis here in Birmingham and to raise the awareness of even more issues.

If you’d like to get in touch with Andre, he can be reached via email: andre AT urbanconversations.com or andre AT bhamterminal.com… and of course there’s always Twitter! If nothing else, shoot him a quick tweet and let him know you saw the post here and say thanks for what he gives back.

Speaking of Tweeting

Look, I made it easy for you to retweet or otherwise repost this, um, post. Help me pass the word around on Follow Friday about a good guy to know!

and One Parting Shot…

If you haven’t already, signup for my newsletter! Its a brand new project here at jtrigsby and I’d love to include you. Each Monday I’ll be sending a short email with the best of the previous week, sneak peeks at the coming week and some original content that will only appear in the newsletter! Sign up today to ensure you’re on the delivery list for this coming Monday’s mailing.

Thanks so much for coming by and meeting my friend Andre. If you follow him I know you will get a lot from the conversations and you will know like I do that he is one of the All Star Bloggers!

@jtrigsby

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