The Original 101, or Why I’m a Blogathon Junkie
Once, long ado, in the days of old, I participated in a smallish event called the Blogathon. As I recall, there were somewhere around 101 bloggers who participated in the event, way back in July of 2001, and together we raised over $20,000. I remember being amazed at what so few were able to accomplish, and at the diversity of organizations that we all put our marathon blogging effort into.
Sometimes I go back on the Wayback Machine to look at the old ‘thon site that Cat put together. In our second year - or maybe the third year - we made little notations by the folks who were members of the original 101. It was sort of like a club, or a team, or maybe like we were the ‘thon veterans - the ones who did it the first year, when we were using Ringsurf for our webring and when Cat had to manually update both the registration list and the fund totals. We didn’t have a forum, I don’t think, and if you wanted to chat you got an AIM invitation directly from Cat.
Every year, I keep hoping that I’ll see more of the original 101 participating. Many of the sites that ran the ‘thon (so to speak) aren’t active anymore, and most of those who are active haven’t participated since. Others don’t have archives up, so there’s no way to know what they said or did for the ‘thon. I was feeling nostalgic, so I poked around through archives and took advantage of search features to see what folks were doing six years ago this July.
It seems a lot of us started out the ‘thon with what has generally been accepted ever since as a Very Bad Idea - that is, junk food and sugar. Leia at Random Thoughts from A Large Head mentions that she’s stocked up on “Coke, sugar, and snack products,” as did a lot of us, I imagine.
Some of us thought, even at that first ‘thon, that it might be helpful to have some kind of shtick or special project, to help us get through the 24 hours and keep people interested. Rabi of Wockerjabby made collages for her sponsors. I’m completely impartial, of course, but I was pretty fond of “Change”. For myself, at the tender age of sixteen (seventeen?) I attempted a really bad, mis-informed, prosaic and generally useless rambling on “the history” and culture of the queers, on a now-defunct domain.
Jett superior of All Blogged Up and Nowhere to Go tried to, ah, fix up her cousin (no, not for the whole ‘thon). Over at Accidental Julie, there were impassioned please of the sandwich variety. Bill over at Mermaniac gave away books throughout the event, while Nightgigjo of Now This shared fairy tales. Alyssa over at Substance Musings devoted her 24 hours to shoes. Ryan of twist of fait accomplis shared a dream journal; Firda staged a Haiku-athon. Kerplooey featured a super-Blogathon, with over 100 posts during the event. All this was before we even had a special hot-spots or webcam portal - people just wanted to do something fun or funky or beyond what was expected, and they did, and it was amazing.
Some have done the ‘thon (more or less) ever since, or gotten involved in other ways - besides me, Elegy of Shattering.org has kept up with it, and Jennie of spinning jennie only took a break in 2002. Peter from Crushing Krisis kept with the ‘thon for a few years, even doing a lot of PR work for us for a few years. Jett participated in all the ‘thons up to 2005, when she became our Webcam and Hotspot wrangler.
Of course, not everyone has archives up or available - among those with nary a mention of that first ‘thon are Davezilla, Intergalactic.nu, Woops!. Mena Trott’s entries seem to have vanished as well.
I do find myself wondering, as I browse archives and think about that first year, if the folks who haven’t repeated the event ever get to a point in late July and ponder the possibilities. Are they turned off by how big Blogathon has gotten, or by how many other blogging marathons go on now, or by the fact that with the many new volunteers and the many many new bloggers, it doesn’t quite have the same intimate feel of that first ‘thon? Do they miss the community that flares up every June, only to dissipate every August for the next ten months? Do they even remember it?
I like to think so, but perhaps that’s just because of how invested I’ve become in that community, how close I’ve gotten to some of the folks who keep coming back, year after year, to raise $20 or $200 or $2000 for a whole spectrum of charities. The personalities and the causes are even more diverse now than they were in 2001, and while I don’t always agree with the charities folks blog for, I don’t think I’ll ever stop being in awe of the passion and persistence people put into supporting the things that matter to them. I think that’s one of the greatest things about Blogathon - it proves that these blogs aren’t “just” self-absorbed personal sites and shows that people can make a difference with their blogs even if they’re not an A-list (or B-list, or C-list) blogger. And that’s pretty cool.
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The criticisms of my students would serve as a good warning to visitors of Seeworthy: she talks too fast, she's too hard on us, she assigns too much work, and you have to be a dyke to get a good grade.
In other words, I'm a big, fat, queer, feminist meanie, and I am totally out to get you. Graaagh!
i’ve met some of my best friends through the two years of blogathonning. (yes… i’m a n00b compared to you.)
I met and solidified a lot of my closest internet friends through my three years of ‘thonning (and most of them were from the 101). I definitely still have a huge empty spot in my year where the event used to be. I mean, not only did I blog and help organize, but I also recorded 25 new songs and threw a party!
I’ve realized through a local non-profit event I’ve helped to jumpstart that what ‘thon was missing for me was structure and, with it, year-round permanence. I *hated* that it was only important to people (including organizers) from May to the day of the event, and the implications that had on trying to evolve the event from one year to the next. For Blogathon to be a serious brand it needed round-the-year maintenance, relevance, and communication, and I wasn’t at a point in my life where I had patience for that to develop over the course of several years.
It sounds as though you’ve got a lot of commitment and positive energy around the event, which is awesome! Unfortunately, I still have a lot of negativity connected with putting in so much effort for the non-thon in 2004 - an effort that was attached to my ability to graduate college! I wish I could get over that grudge so I could come back and enjoy the event just as a blogger, but it’s hard for me to detach that from the opinions I developed as a planner.
Pfft, Jen! If you’ve already done a ‘thon, you’re not a noob. And what’s wrong with being a noob anyway?
And Peter, I can *definitely* sympathize with a lot of what you’ve said. I’m actually in charge of working on something that will bring year-round permanence to the ‘thon, so it’s good to at least see that it’s not just Cat and me who were hoping for that. I do remember the phenomenal press kit you created (I still have it on my comp), and I do regret that we didn’t get to ‘thon in 2004 to use it. The most, erm, problematic year for me was 2005 - I think I found out I was running the ‘thon about three weeks before it was supposed to occur, which again, is a problem that we wouldn’t have faced if we had year-round permanence and action.
There wasn’t a ton on the external side, but Cat and I have actually been doing ‘thon talks for MONTHS now, so I’m optimistic for this carrying over into next year (it sort of has to if we’re going to keep up with the project I’m working on). I definitely respect your decision to stay out - it makes all the sense in the world - but if you ever do want to come back, as a blogger or anything else, we’d definitely love to see you.
Thanks for stopping by
(Wow, I just went back and looked at my press kit, and I totally forgot about a lot of those columns and letter templates! I really hope you found a way to make use of some of them.
Also, it’s interesting that I currently do this sort of thing - both for a living and in my spare time. Funny how college actually impacts your real life
PETER IF YOU COME BACK I AM SO TOTALLY WHOLESALE IN.
I’m just sayin’. We would make awesome WonderTwins.
Sheana, you check your e-mail? I responded just yesterday.
Thanks for the link — I ended up going back and reading a lot of the entries from that day. Feels like a whole ‘nother time!
I was lucky enough to meet Cat in person last year and this year. She’s as committed to the Blogathon as ever, which is cool to see after this long.
Hi Sheana,
I’m trying to get into contact with the organizers of Blogathon 2007…we (www.chipin.com) have a fundraising tool that is ideal for blog-based fundraising. To see our service in action on a blog, check out http://emilysupdates.blogspot.com/. We use PayPal for payment processing and all funds go directly to the fundraiser’s PayPal account.
We’d love to support Blogathon 2007 in some capacity, ideally as being the official fundraising platform and we’d be happy to put some dollars behind it, either in marketing or in donations. If you are interested, please let me know.
Cheers, Todd
ChipIn