Here’s an interesting project. Blog Action Day aims to form a mass movement of bloggers who will blog on the same topic on a particular day of the year. The day in question is the 15th of October, and this year the chosen topic is the environment.
It should be interesting to see what kind of response this gets. There are already hundreds of blogs signed up to this event, including this one, and there are probably thousands of others who will join the list as the big day looms closer. What I’m looking forward to seeing is how the various blogs adapt the topic to their own particular niche and style of writing.
There is also the issue that the topic in question is simply the environment. While we all automatically assume that this will prompt people to write wonderful odes to nature and how human beings are the evil destroyers of this paradise, there is a large popuation who either see things differently or simply doesn’t care. Are we going to see plenty of articles about how all this stuff about human being destroying the biosphere is pure fiction? That is not something I agree with, but it is a popular spin on the topic. The resulting drama on the blogosphere should be entertaining in the least, and hopefully it will “raise awareness” … although I’m beginning to wonder if anyone who is in the mainstream enough to be on the internet has any excuse to not be “aware” of the very existence of environmental issues. But what do I know, the depth of people’s ignorance is a constant surprise to me.
Blog Action Day is a great idea and while hundreds of such initiatives have been done before, it’s nice to see someone taking a very high profile, marketing savvy approach to it. If you have your own blog I encourage you to sign up, or at least keep track of your favourite participating blogs and how they cover this. The Action Day Blog has a nice article on Why Bloggers Will Change the World, and How You Can Help that makes some good points, in case you are looking for inspiration. Meanwhile, please subscribe to my full RSS feed to remain updated about what I do whith this on Samir Bharadwaj dot Com. I haven’t really decided what my great October 15th posting is going to be, but I hope to make it a good one.
Samir
great to see ur take on blog action day…
seeing the flora fountain and gathrin wat i remember from my previous visits here i believe u r based in mumbai…
the thing is ..by pure chance i ended up givin an itnerview to a reporter from westside plus (toi supplement) about blog action day.. but in the end probably due to his lack of idea about blogging and its reach.. his last question was how do i make a story outof this.. š
his basic needs were do u now anyone else in bombay who is participating in b.a.d. and a general idea on how it wud be intriguing to ppl of suburban bombay.. n now readin ur blog i thought i’d ask u the same.. and hence this comment.. wondering if u can add something to this so tht blog action day gets some exposure in india..
in my opinion it shud ideally hav a much bigger promotion than westside plus.. but thought somehting is better than nothin at all..
Maneesh, thanks for dropping by and for your report on the state of Blog Action Day in Bombay, and more importantly the state of suburban lifestyle reporting in Bombay! š
While I am from Bombay, I’m currently living in Dubai, so I don’t know if I technically qualify as a Bombay blogger. I definitely think giving the event exposure in India is a great idea. As far as it being relevant and interesting to the suburban Mumbai population, I can’t see how this could be any more relevant.
I think everywhere south of Bandra probably has the largest concentration of bloggers per square kilometer in the entire country, so it’s not like the interested audience doesn’t exist. Just look at something like Rediff Blogs, which has over 75,000 blogs on it, and then add to the equation the fact that most Indian bloggers will likely be using more international platforms such as Blogger and WordPress.com, and you’re looking at a very sizeable blogging population. A large percentage of those are bound to be in the broadband-rich locales of the Bombay suburbs.
Then there is the topic: Environment. Anyone who has been stuck in evening rush hour in an open auto-rickshaw in Santacruz should be pretty confident that the environmental issue is hot and relevant for suburban Mumbai. Enough said.
Personally, I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do for Blog Action Day. Environmental issues are vast and varied and the arguments and positions are even more vast. I do know that I would like to do something significant, and so I plan on writing some content that leads up to that day. Keep track of my RSS feed to know when that happens.
Looking forward to seeing your take on Blog Action Day, and hope to see you around here more often.