ARBOR HEIGHTS ELEMENTARY TECH PIONEER NOTED NATIONALLY: The Wall Street Journal‘s “Blog Watch” gives a shoutout this week to Arbor Heights’ Mark Ahlness, who in 1994 created the website that made AH Elementary one of the first grade schools in the U.S. with an online presence. You can follow his blog here (and he’s on Twitter too!).

SAY HI TO SEATTLE’S MOST FAMOUS NEWSPAPER BLOGGER: Monica Guzman from the P-I’s Big Blog is bringing her weekly BB meetup to West Seattle today, 5:30 pm at Uptown in The Junction. All welcome. We’ve met Monica several times and there are many things we could say about her – all positive! – but we’ll summarize with “she’s just plain good people,” so if you’re in the vicinity, drop by; we plan to.

THE NEXT TIME WE’RE LIKELY TO SEE MONICA, AND YOU’RE INVITED TO THIS TOO: Monica and your editor here are among the speakers set for the whimsically named BigFoot Blogging Conference (along with, among others, Goldy from HorsesAss.org, one of the political blogs covered on the new WSB Election page). 10 am-4 pm October 11th at Kane Hall on the UW campus; admission free, but space is limited.

LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST – THANKS FOR ANOTHER RECORD MONTH!!!! We try to follow a philosophy from our TV days – though you get ratings daily, don’t stress about the ups and downs, look at the monthly trends. When you run a website, you get “ratings” minute by minute, but the trends are what matter. And thanks to you, the trends continue to be amazing – September was the fourth consecutive month with more than half a million WSB pageviews, setting a new record at 564,283 (40K more than last month, even though September has one less day). That’s not just because of all the people who read WSB – most importantly, it’s because of everyone who shares information with the rest of West Seattle via this site, whether it’s a Forum post or e-mailing/calling us with a tip (like the half-dozen people who e-mailed this morning to ask about the film crew in Lincoln Park – thanks to those tips, our in-person and online followups brought full details within about half an hour). This site is viewed as one of the most successful experiments so far in community-centered independent online-only news (our media coverage links are halfway down the “About” page), and we are thankful to have you as a collaborator. We also want to know how this site could better serve your needs — call, e-mail, text, or tweet any time.