BlueWolf's Howl

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July 27, 2003

Blogathon 2003

Whew! That was quite an experience.... and I survived! Yes, I made it through the whole 24 hours AND kept my theme going. (Proud of myself for that.)

I realized very quickly (the first post) that 30 min is not enough time to write a whole poem. Not even a bad poem -- and I have to say that with the time constraints...well, it's not exactly the best poetry I've ever written. But I did finally write again - which was the point.

I found plenty of topics to shoot while it was still light...but once it got dark, I had to search high and low for topics. I also found out that my digital camera doesn't exactly take the best shots.

Staying awake for 24 hours was the easy part (I had help - Thanks Teresa and Shelagh). Sitting in front of the computer and posting was the easy part. Keeping the theme was the hard part. Although, going outside to take photos helped to keep me awake, it also wore me out a bit.

Of course, I'll be doing it again next year.... ;)

And yes, there are things I will do differently... I was a bit disappointed to find that I didn't have any time to enjoy the entire blogathon experience because I was busy generating my own content. And I'm not willing to exchange content for contact. So, next year I'll have the content already prepared. In hindsight, it would have come out better if I had taken the photos with my 35mm (a much better shot) and scanned them ahead of time. Then I could use the time between posts to surf the ring. If I had written the poems ahead of time, I could have posted 24 poems (read better poems) instead of the measley few that were cranked out. Oh....and I found out that when under pressure for time, it's easier to crank out something that rhymes.... [Timely word smithing isn't easy and strangles creativity.]

Sometime this week, I'll be rearranging the Bluewolf's Howl sidebar...and move the blogathon blog link to the Bluewolf Spirit Section. The blogathon blog will stay up all year and I'll use the same site. I liked the layout and liked that the sidebar was simple and easy to maintain.

So how did "we" do? Well, the numbers are still rolling in! At 9pm Eastern it's at $90,848.16. Sponsorships are staying open for 48 hours after the blogathon...and people are still donating!

I started the blogathon with only 2 sponsors. By the end of the 'thon, I had 6 sponsors and generated $125 in donations to GLAD.

Oooops...just checked the site again -- we're at $90,894.16 now... see what I mean?

I'm tickled that the Blogathon made MSNBC's news. I think people are finally getting a clue that we're not just some online fad. In fact, I think people are starting to realize that the Internet is not some passing fancy, either. And the amount of money we're raising has got to make people stand up and take notice. (Actually, that's probably what's making them take notice...) We're not just playing around with a toy here --- we're on the horizon of a new frontier.

Posted by BlueWolf on July 27, 2003 09:30 PM