Blaugust

Killer Riffs

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Every so often I get something stuck in my head and am forced to push forward with it. This week it has been leveling more characters to 71, and the present fervor has largely been focused on the Bard. I spent an excessive amount of time in Heaven on High either solo or with some FC friends, and managed to finish off the ascent to 70 last night. I’ve been going around since then unlocking the various spells for the quests that I completely ignored during the process of leveling. This is a weird place to be in because the game will even let you drag an ability to the hotbar… but you can’t use the spell until you have completed the quest.
The other thing I have been doing an awful lot of is Main Scenario Roulette, which effectively is always going to be either Praetorium or Castrum Meridianum… aka the last two raid like dungeons required as part of the ARR main story quest. In both cases they have now disabled the ability to skip any cut scenes, which means you will be surrendering 30 minutes of your life. However this proposition becomes well worth it when you consider that doing this scenario at level 70 will pretty much make you instantly level 71. Even at level 79 when I completed this while working through a gap in experience to the next level… it was worth almost 75% of a level. One of the things that Final Fantasy XIV is excessively good at is incentivizing content that no one wants to run. These were painful at level and continued to be a painful process to get through as a fledgling player who was trying to random queue for them. Now they become an experience in watching how players have figured out how to optimize the process to take the least possible amount of time in doing so. Sure the player gets to watch every single cutscene, but they also will get lost in a heartbeat if they are unable to keep up with the optimized routing through the place. I did some experimentation and they are absolutely not chain running, as I maybe got 10% of a bar filled when I was not getting the Roulette bonus. This has become a ritual for me pretty much every night to get one free level on one of my alts and then go on about my business. I am absolutely now using this as a way of jumping across the gap at 60 or 70 to fix those missing runs on the latter that I talked about the other day. In truth I really liked both Praetorium and Castrum Meridianum because they felt extremely epic when we ran them with a full party of 8 players. Now it feels sorta like going back and soloing Molten Core.

Blaugust Stuff

As far as Blaugust goes… the sign-ups are starting to trickle in and I have been transferring them from the private sheet over to a more public listing. Additionally if you read this post early in the morning you may have missed that I added a Media Kit page that was requested. As time allows I will be moving some more of the event information over to that page so that it is kept in one spot. Additionally I want to go back and stub in data about the previous runnings of the event.

Blaugust 2019

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It is that time again, time for another running of the festival of blogging known as Blaugust. Several years back I had this idea of challenging other bloggers to do a full month without missing a post. However over time that has morphed and mutated and taken on other festivals that are no longer running… to turn into what was Blaugust Reborn last year a sort of one size fits all festival for blogging and all serialized content. The why is pretty simple. We live in a time when blogs are going dark and the hope is to keep infusing the community with a fresh lease on life. Those of us who have been doing it for over a decade now can easily lose hope. It sometimes takes a fresh batch of whippersnappers to keep us engaged and interested in making sure that the community thrives. Blaugust lives on as the inheritance of so many other great initiatives that have come before like the Developer Appreciation Week or the Newbie Blogger Initiative. If you have a blog that is waning in frequency, or if you ever thought of creating one… this month is the perfect time to put those plans into action.

The Schedule

Last year we started this concept of having themed weeks as a sort of ladder to hold onto as you move through the journey. These are by no means mandatory participation, but do serve as a bit of a scaffolding to help you think of things to write about as we move through the month.
  • Blaugust Prep Week – July 28th – August 3rd: This is a time for those of us in the community who have sorta figured this blogging thing out to help get you started with some tips and tricks style posts. Additionally this is a time to sign up on the Discord and start mingling among the folks. It is designed to ease you into the month with some helpful advice.
  • Topic Brainstorming Week – August 4th – August 10th: This is a time to for mentors to throw out ideas for posts to help you when you run out of things to talk about. This is something that hits all of us and having some familiar topics to revisit often times helps to defeat the tyranny of the blank page.
  • Getting to Know You Week – August 11th – August 17th: Tell us about you and your preferences as a gamer or whatever it is you happen to like doing. This is the time to dip into the well of stories and tell us something interesting that has either happened to you or something about your specific footing in your real or digital life.
  • Developer Appreciate Week – August 18th – August 24th: This one is specifically targeted at the gamers among us, but could be re-purposed to talk about any industry. The idea is to give appreciation for some of the folks who have created the things that you love. In the past we specifically talked about publishers and game studios that create the games that we are enthralled by, but it could be authors or artists or anyone who creates something that you love. It is a good time to give some thanks.
  • Staying Motivated Week – August 25th – August 31st: The final stretch. The idea is to post some help to keep folks motivated as they run towards the finish line. Also some general tricks and tips on how you keep motivated if you are one of the more seasoned veterans of the blogging community. If you are fresh to the initiative you could talk about some of the ways you have kept yourself engaged and creating content.
  • Lessons Learned Week – September 1st – September 7th: A reminder that the goal is to refresh the content creators out there and not necessarily to run a sprint. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant for awhile, and others are going to want to talk about the experience. Creating a space to hold those discussions and hopefully keep folks from dropping off the face of the earth immediately following the event.

The Awards

We are more or less keeping the same structure as last year for the awards because in theory I think they worked fairly well giving folks lots of different targets for participation. The daily blogging thing is not really for everyone, and even myself I have backed off to only doing week days… and even then allowing myself off a day here or there because life got in the way. It is perfectly okay to start out with gusto and try for the Rainbow Award but ultimately end up with a Bronze, because as you go through the process it may or may not be as easy as you think.
  • Newbie Blogger Award – You did it, you created a new blog and by god we are going to sing your praises for doing it!
  • Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the Month of August 2018.
  • Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the Month of August 2018, go you!
  • Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the Month of August 2018, you are a badass!
  • Rainbow Diamond Award – You did it, you posted every single day during the Month of August 2019 and deserve accolades.

Mentorship

One of the benefits of having done this at least once before more or less in this same style… is that we have existing infrastructure! We already have a batch of mentors ready to help the process, but if you feel like you would be best served in that role we are always open to more. Ultimately mentors should have at least two years of blogging experience under their belt in order to gauge the ebbs and flow of content creation in front of a live studio audience. We aren’t expecting perfection, just a willingness to share the lessons you have learned along the way with fledgling participants. For those participating, Mentors will be clearly marked as such in the Discord and can likely share some sage advice along the way.

The Details

  • The Sign-Up form for Blaugust 2019 can be found here. Only those who have signed up will be given credit towards the awards.
  • The Invite Link to the Blaugust Discord can be found here. Participation in the Discord is entirely optional.
  • When you share your content please use the hashtag #Blaugust2019 for tracking purposes and to make it easier for those watching along to see new things.
  • Mingle with your other Mentors and Participants because this is a community event, and part of the fun is getting to know the community. These folks represent a social structure that you can lean on for advice in the coming years. I personally deeply value my ties with other bloggers that I have built up over the last decade of doing this thing.
  • Welcome to Blaugust 2019 and lets all have an amazing August creating content together!

Blaugust 2018 Wrap Up

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Blaugust 2018 Wrap Up

The time has come to close Blaugust 2018 and as such you are all owed a post wrapping up the numbers.  Firstly I want to give special thanks to Armagon/Nogmara for chiming in and volunteering to help when I posted on twitter this morning.  I went from the top down on the list and they went from the bottom up and we knocked out the official tabulation of posts way faster than would have been the case were I doing it entirely by myself.  Things I have come to appreciate…  blogs that have a monthly tabulation of posts.  Things that I have come to dislike…  themes that do not clearly show the date a post was made.  Regardless we made short work of the counting and as such I have a bunch of numbers to share.  Of course we are fallible human beings and if we failed to count your blog correctly, please let me know and I will remedy this.

First some general commentary.  This is without a doubt the most successful running of Blaugust to date.  The discord turned out to be a pretty excellent way of interacting throughout the month and while I got super busy with the start of the school year and things getting crazy at work…  we maintained an active community from start to finish and I am super proud of everyone who participated.  I am especially proud of my mentors and all of the time they spent answering questions for the other folks participating.  I am also super happy for all the folks who just wanted to join into the community without actually participating, so a shout out to all of the supporters.

Here are some general statistics for the month…

  • 90 blogs signed up in Blaugust Reborn 2018
  • 83 bloggers made at least one post during the month
  • We added 1404 new blog posts to the community as a result of Blaugust Reborn
  • This equated to an average of 45 new blog posts per day
  • 26 Bloggers had 31 posts during the month or in a few cases considerably more

I have to say that is some pretty impressive numbers, and I am very pleased with how things turned out as a whole.  As such now is the time to start showing the progress.  While I traditionally don’t consider myself part of the festivities, I’ve included my numbers in the list just to show as a baseline for folks to compare again.  There are a lot of people who did WAY better than I did this month.  Additionally I thought it would be interesting to track the progress of mentors versus participants, because again…  some of the participants blew the mentors out of the water as well.  For sake of making tracking easier, folks who signed up with multiple blogs were counted as a single tally rather than a tally per blog.  Without further stalling on my part… the numbers.

Bronze Award Club

Blaugust 2018 Wrap Up

Now if you go back to my original post outlining everything, these are folks who made at least five blog posts during the month of August 2018.

Silver Award Club

Blaugust 2018 Wrap Up

Again based on the original outline these are folks who got at least fifteen posts during the month of August 2018.

Gold Award Club

Blaugust 2018 Wrap Up

As outlined in the original post, these are folks who got at least 25 posts during the month of August 2018

Rainbow Award Club

Blaugust 2018 Wrap Up

Finally we have a rather large number of people who hit 31 posts in the month…  and a few went considerably over.  Grace with her two very active blogs managed to get the single highest post out which is super impressive.

I am exceedingly impressed with just how much content was put into the world by Blagust Reborn 2018, and I thank you all for particpating.  I want to give a special honorable mention however for the folks who started but never quite made those five posts to get on the chart.  Signing up and starting something is the first step and hopefully next year they will find the oomph to post a little more frequently.  The discord community will be here supporting them as they keep their blogs going throughout the calendar year.

Honorable Mentions

So there it is folks…  some amazing work for Blaugust Reborn 2018.  I am humbled by the sheer amount of support I got from the community on this, and without a doubt we will be making a come back with Blaugust Reborn 2019 in the near future.  My hope is that through the Discord community the planning process will go a little more smoothly in the future as I was sorta doing this by the seat of my pants as I went.  Thanks for proving that blogging is not in fact dead, and maybe making a bit of a resurgence.  For now I am going to close this post and go play some games, but sincerely I love this community.

2018 Blaugust wrap-up

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2018 Blaugust wrap-up

Today is the last day of Blaugust, and everyone is starting to reflect on the month and what we’ve accomplished. Before I get to that, though, I want to thank Belghast for setting everything up this year. There’s a bunch of time and stress associated with getting a community project like this off the ground. I’m so very grateful that he made the effort to revive Blaugust, give us some guidance and our Discord, and be our biggest cheerleader during this month of nonsense.

I managed to get 29 posts written here this year (counting this one). I would have had a perfect 31 but I decided to take last weekend off to avoid burn-out. Luckily I also have my other blog, where I have faithfully posted every single day. So in fact I will have a total of 60 posts up for the month. That’s so much blogging!

One thing that really set this year apart for me was the amount of interaction I’ve had with my fellow bloggers. I had more than double the views and almost ten times the comments compared to this time last year! I definitely attribute that to being more active in the comments here and on the blogs I’m reading. There are always so many awesome things to read over Blaugust, but I really made an effort to try to comment more this year too, which led to some really fantastic conversations. Most years I feel so exhausted and burnt-out after posting every day for a month that I end up taking a big break in September. This year I’m really motivated to stay active because I don’t want to miss out on chatting with the new friends I’ve made.

Thank you, fellow bloggers, for making this the best Blaugust ever!