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From marvelous to mediocrity - Blogathon India

So, what does it take to turn a marvelous idea into an exercise of mediocrity? The answer, like in any other business, lies in loosing touch of ground realities.

The marvelous idea in question is Blogathon event, which is happening for the first time in India: not that India has any special significance on internet. Regional boundaries do not have any relevance on internet apart from bringing together people we can meet offline and closer to home.

So what went wrong? In my opinion, the trigger for this post as well as the 'wrong' is the chosen topics for selection. While the topics chosen are good from the social perspective, they are way off the reality of the blogging context. It is clear there are very very few blogs that actually deal with the subjects like traffic jams, alternate sexuality or politics at grassroots. Most of the blogs target topics like technology, finance, niche topics or just fun/ online diaries. A post on alternate sexuality on a technology blog would be totally out of place and this would hurt the readership of the blogger.

This is where I think Blogathon has failed even before it has started. For one, the topics chosen are regressive. There are million essays on these topics, I have no idea why we need to add to clutter.

Two, topics are not cutting edge in any sense. In other words, it is not forward looking. I think, Blogathon members seriously hurt the initiative by not looking at topics other than social themes.

Three, topics are meant to draw out opinions, probably looking at numbers of participation. And there are billion opinions out there. I do not know if any expert commentary would be given on traffic condition of the city apart from few city-planners or traffic authorities.

Four, since it is obviously not possible to include all the choices, the topics should have been "open" than dictated by Blogathon. By dictating the topic, they have effectively frozen out thousands of bloggers who would have like to participate. For example, when ProBlogger did similar event sometime back, the bloggers were encouraged to come up with articles of their choice and subject, just that it was written in a dictated format.

Ps: I am not aware of the entire extent of their "process". It is too cumbersome for anybody to follow. Perhaps, they should have followed the Toyota model - if the process/communication does not fit in one-page, don’t do it. I just hope they still have time to get good things done, as it is a good initiative. But the warning is everything on net is ephemeral.

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Comments

  1. Agent M16 April 2008 at 13:49

    Hey there,
    I'm Mohan, and I've been involved with Blogathon right from the start, so I thought I, as a blogger, would clarify a few points which felt might help you understand the concept better.

    You're well and truly right - there are right next to zero blogs blogging about topics like traffic and alternate sexuality. The topics are not cutting edge. True, there are a lot of opinions out there.

    BUT

    The basic concept of Blogathon India is this -
    1000 posts on 1000 topics makes no difference.
    1000 posts on 1 topic DOES make a difference.

    Of these 1000 posts, atleast 5 might be heard. And of these 5, atleast one might be worth hearing!

    We're looking for fresh opinions, and not additions to the spam clutter. Most of the time, people who are not shaped by the system can think out of the box and bring about awesome ideas for change. Which is what we are hoping with this event.

    You've said -
    "A post on alternate sexuality on a technology blog would be totally out of place and this would hurt the readership of the blogger."

    I disagree. I think all that all bloggers here can testify that they don't blog what their readers want (unless they are in it to make money), rather, their readers want what they blog about.

    I don't see any way in which the readership of a blog might be affected by putting in a few off topic posts - unless you are looking at blogging from a very advertisement oriented PayPerPost-ical view.

    Morover, why does it have to be offtopic? You can blend in any topic to the theme of your blog, albeit, a bit absurdly, but that absurdity may lead to innovation and genius! For example, in such an event named BlogActionDay, a code blog named polyGeek.com blogged about how cleaning up the code and algorithm could lead to less usage of servers, and thus less electricity consumption.
    http://polygeek.com/419_weatherglobal-warming_optimized-code-could-help-reduce-global-warming

    We couldn't make it "open" since that would destroy the whole purpose of the event. We aren't doing this just to increase blogging activity and have fun. That's pointless. We're doing it for a social cause, as well as to increase the awareness level about blogging.

    I still don't think that anything has gone wrong (other than a few technical things :P) and I believe that these are issues which needs better awareness. These topics will educate the blogger on the issues, and also inform the reader about the issue. The blog may come out with innovative ideas to solve the issue.

    Of course, none of this may happen. But is there anything wrong with giving it a try?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Falkor17 April 2008 at 12:23

    Hi Agent,

    Thanks for comments, but unfortunately, you are playing into the argument. Will write in more detail on that later.

    Hope you are tracking this, as I have no way of knowing you..

    ReplyDelete
  3. Falkor18 April 2008 at 10:24

    Hi mohan,

    Just dropped a comment at the main page. Check out

    ReplyDelete

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