Good Morning Everyone! It is almost time for Blaugust and in fact at the time of writing it… it is probably already Blaugust for our Oceanic participants. Timezones are weird. Anyways as is often the case before the official start of Blaugust I release various bits of information about the event. Namely this morning I updated the Media Kit page to include the Participant List Google Sheet and then created and uploaded an OPML file for those who use feed readers. This morning I had the fun time of trying to find RSS feeds for everyone. Side note, if yours is not prominently displayed you might want to change that because for as belabored as RSS is… it is still the best methodology for reading lots of blogs in a single application. I should also say that this participant list is not updated in realtime. There are various bits of data that I don’t share publicly from the sign-up sheet so generally speaking I update the sheet that I just shared once a day and dump a new OPML file at that same time.
At the time of writing this, we have 74 blogs signed up and ready to participate in Blaugust 2024. What is even more impressive however is of those 74, 34 are folks who have never participated in Blaugust before. I honestly thought that abandoning Twitter would be the death knell for this event, but in truth, it has caused it to find an entirely new life. Last year we had 103 participants which was by far our highest of the last decade. As always I assume the event is just going to be participants drawn from our list of usual suspects, but we keep reaching new audiences and I think a huge part of that has been planting our flag for the official account on Mastodon, specifically Gamepad.club the server I help manage. Blogging is very much alive and well in the Fediverse, and the community of folks that assemble there tend to be way more geeky and way more apt to spin up their own DIY services to fit their needs. As a result, it has been a perfect match for the spirit of Blaugust and I am extremely happy to see new faces rolling into our community discord.
Here is the list of blogs participating this year as of the time of writing this:
As I said above I am keeping an OPML file updated which should make it easy for you to import the entire batch into your feed reader of choice. I will also be updating my blogroll to include all of these folks.
In other news, I provided a version of this year’s logo without the checkerboard backing on it. This might fit your particular blog style or needs a bit better. I uploaded it yesterday on the discord, but also added it to the media kit page this morning. In this year’s information post, I threw out the idea of the “First Post of Blaugust” being one that introduces yourself to the community. I often have the false belief that everyone already knows me and that no one wants to know more information about me… since I pour so much of myself into the blog. However, in the spirit of the event, I plan on participating in the introductory post tomorrow and hope you will join me in this new tradition. Even though I have written countless introduction paragraphs over the years as I have joined many different communities on the internet, each time they end up being a little different. The benefit of writing it on my blog is that I can actually backlink further details if I have written a post about a specific topic in the past.
I hope this coming month is an amazing time for everyone participating in Blaugust 2024. I rarely go for the highest award and tend to just post on weekdays, save for Sunday when I post our podcast. I hope you take all of this assembled apparatus and make an event out of it that best suits your needs. While the core of the contest has always been “do 31 posts”, over the years it has become way less about that and more about mingling with your peers. Get out there, read a ton of posts, and get active in some conversations. As always I will be here lurking in the background if anyone needs anything. I am far from the most charismatic leader, and often get overwhelmed by large-scale social situations… but I appreciate each and every one of you that are joining in this nonsense.
Happy Blaugust Eve!
The post Blaugust 2024 Eve appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! Today is the very first day of Blaugust 2023. I had some concerns going into this year, to be honest, because so much of this event spread through the use of Twitter as a platform. This year represents the first Blaugust when I am actively avoiding that platform, so I was a bit concerned if things would coalesce in the same manner as they have in past years. That said I was also excited to see what a Mastodon/Fediverse Blaugust would end up looking like. I know when I stopped syndicating to Twitter, I didn’t really see much drop in readership and in fact, I saw way more engagement from the Fediverse community as a whole. Just to add more things into the mix, this is the tenth year of Blaugust so I wanted this year to feel vibrant and alive.
At the time of writing this post, we have over eighty participant blogs. Knowing that there will be folks that sign up during the process, I think this year might be our most active yet. What has been super interesting is how many of the usual suspects have returned, while also the Fediverse has served as a hotbed for drawing new folks into the fold. I have been so proud of how this event has spread into new corners of the internet. It doesn’t necessarily shock me, because while I am following a bunch of folks that I knew on Twitter as they have moved to the Fediverse, I have also branched out and met a ton of awesome people that for some reason our paths never really crossed before now. So I think the thing I am most proud of is how many first-time Blaugustans we have:
At the time of writing this post, we have THIRTY-FIVE folks who have never participated with their blog in a Blaugust event before. That feels massive. I am legitimately uncertain if we have ever had that many first-timers before apart from of course the very first year. Many of these folks are not necessarily first-time bloggers mind you, but again for whatever reason our paths never crossed before the break up of Twitter. I thought decoupling ourselves from Twitter might have harmed the event, but everyone spreading out to different platforms of choice… seems to have actually spread the concept considerably.
The last decade of Blaugust has been littered with many “why didn’t I do that sooner” moments. This year’s version of this is the fact that never in the past have I ever created a dedicated account for Blaugust. The timing is purely selfish because I am now helping to Admin Gamepad.club, it was very easy for me to just set up an account there. The theory being I could use it to boost all of the posts that use the hashtag, and then keep my own account as something a bit less spammy. I should have done this years ago on Twitter because it is really nice to have a single account that is focused on the event rather than having things get lost in the mix of my random posts. While not everyone uses Mastodon or the Fediverse in general, it does give me a relatively nice way to keep an easily consumable thread that is entirely focused on Blaugust content.
It has had the unintended consequence of prompting a number of folks to either set up brand new accounts on Gamepad or migrate there. Which admittedly is cool and only serves to make our local feed a bit richer, but is more a side benefit rather than the goal. For the folks that call BlueSky their home, I have also created a Blaugust Posts feed that is published through Skyfeed and should allow you to keep tabs on any posts that are made over there. Since accounts are at a premium on that network, I figured it was probably a bit wasteful to set up what is effectively a Blaugust bot over there. The folks who are still syndicating to Twitter can always be found at the #Blaugust2023 hashtag as well. Threads is unfortunately a bit wonky and does not appear to have functional hashtags so I have no clue how any of the stuff on that platform functions, though I am sure folks will be syndicating there as well.
The Blaugust Discord has also seen a flurry of activity as new folks sign up and join in the conversation. This was still one of the best decisions made in the past, to branch out and start a Discord to support the event. What it has done more than anything is kept the spirit of the event alive all year round. While I often struggle to keep up with Discord, I view it as an invaluable part of this process because it allows for some side discussions to take place that maybe don’t quite elevate to the level of actually writing a proper blog post. It also serves as a platform to ask questions and address concerns. Legitimately when I started this madness a decade ago, I never thought it would turn into this thriving community. I want to thank everyone who has ever participated in this event in the past because you have become part of this great tapestry.
Lastly… August 1st is a pretty special date for me independent of Blaugust. Twenty-Five years ago today I married my spouse, who has hosted her own version of Blaugust for many years in the Math Blogosphere. It floors me that we’ve been together Twenty-Seven years and married Twenty-Five of those. As a result of the anniversary, I may not be paying super attention to Blaugust happenings today, but thankfully I have built this machine that sort of runs itself. Huge thanks to all of the Mentors who have always been more than happy enough to step in when I am not paying attention. Thanks to everyone for keeping this event alive, and I wish you all a happy and productive Blaugust!
The post Blaugust is Thriving appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
