How to be a star blogger
Corie Lok
Thursday, 20 March 2008 14:51 UTC
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There’s a few good roaming medical blog carnivals, for example Medicine 2.0 blog carnival and Grand Rounds (most recently hosted by Monash Medical Student). I find that carnivals are great for spotting new blogs and I like the way that roaming carnivals will have a different perspective depending on which blog is hosting.
I have no idea how the roaming format is organised though, hopefully some well placed comments will elucidate this – I’ll keep you updated!
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Maxine, you are of course right in that blog carnivals are someting different. But I would like the idea of a coordinated blogging effort here on Nature Network. This could have different formats, e.g.
- A regular (e.g. weekly) blog post that summarizes the most interesting blog entries on Nature Network. Your From the Blogosphere blog is doing just that (but also includes Forum discussions and other NPG blogs).
- A regular blog post about a specific topic. This would be more like a carnival, appearing on rotating blogs, etc. The topic could be fairly specific, e.g. Science Writing, Cancer (to name just a few of my personal interests) or broader, e.g. something like Science 2.0.
- We could continue with SynchroBlogging. We make this a regular feature and either pick a particular date (World Book Day, April 1) or specific topic. We should start to summarize the blog posts on that particular topic. This would not only be a good introduction, but also makes it easier to find the blog posts, especially if they are not all posted on a single day.
There are probably other possible formats, especially when Nature Network blogs can have more than one author later this year.
I personally like the SynchroBlogging format.
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I like all these ideas, Martin – happy to join in with synchroblogging if it were on a “camp follower” or general type of topic rather than on a scientific research discipline itself. World book day was a perfect topic I think. I also noticed several blogs (not just on NN) doing the “switch off” hour, presumably after the actual event ;-)
What is the next secular, international day?
Here are some to choose from.
7 April- world health day
22 April – Earth day
27 April — Freedom day (?)
15 May — International day of families
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I’ve got that funny strike-out again, but the link does work.
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Maxine – you seem to the be only person with the strike-outs. Is this some mysterious power you have, or have you been cursed after annoying one of the NN spirits?
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Strike-outsare a feature of Texile formatting, read here for more info on how to do it.Another date for synchroblogging would be April 30. At least in Germany and Northern Europe we celebrate Walpurgis Night. This would be a good date to talk about witchcraft in science.
Seriously, after this April 1st brain-doping business is done, we can think about our next synchroblogging. I would suggest that we pick a week instead of a day. This gives people more time to write and comment. At the end of the week a designated blogger could summarize the blog posts and discussions. Earth day on April 22 sounds like a topic where everybody could contibute something.
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Thanks, Martin! But I have to say, it seems to happen to me randomly ,I have no idea how it happens and I tried hard to remove the strike out in the comment above (eg removed smiley icon) and nothing happened. It must be something to do with a combination of dashes – I don’t recollect doing anything like the command described in the link you provide, but I’ll try to avoid double dashes in future.
Like the Walpurgis night. I was once in Germany on that date – scary stuff! -
How about celebrating the “proper” World Book Day, on April 23rd? That gives those of us who missed it the first time around some warning.
Martin – - thanks for the link to the Textile help1.
1 I had been wondering how people were creating footnotes.
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Another important date is April 7 (next Monday). Every paper submitted after this date and funded by the NIH has to follow the new Public Access policy. Would there be interest in an Open Access week? There are many things that could be said about this topic: explaining the policy, pros and cons, personal experiences, policies in other countries, etc.
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I’d go for a public access synchro-blogging. I’ve been musing on this for some time.
Perhaps the 9th would be a good day, to synchonise with Bora’s day out in London.
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