2005-01-24

Turns out there are a lot of good weblogs!

You can vote for your favorites over at the site of A Fistful of Euros, which is hosting the First European Weblog Awards. Should you feel inclined, this site is nominated in a couple of categories, but there are also tons of other favorites. In fact it was through the first call for nominations that I found some of my favorites.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

i suppose they forgot to stress that a blog should be in english or french... pozdrav, ludost

Eric Gordy said...

Sigh, yes it looks like a lot good sites, including all of the sites in Italian and in what the Hague Tribunal calls "BCS," were passed over. I don't know whether the same happened with German sites, but this could be a reason Novalas is not among the nominees. This must have been automatic, which is kind of a shame if it is the case.
Maybe it says something about this whole Europe business, though?

Eric Gordy said...

Do you think it may be time for an independent Balkan weblog award? I am not sure how to go about organizing it, but if somebody who has a reasonably well read site and is able to do the scripts for voting and the like were willing to host it, it could probably be done. I find good new sites almost every day, so the Balkans might be less of a "niche readership" than it seems.

Eric Gordy said...

It's worth some thought! I don't have the technical knowledge either, but anything can be learned, right? Maybe if we were to keep the idea in mind for November or December. It seems like there are enough Balkan blogs out there to allow for 5-6 categories (arts, literature, politics, esejistika, everyday life, tech...) but I don't think this site gets enough traffic to host a big competition (it averages around 70-80 visits a day, but I am guessing there are probably 50 or so people around the world who read it every day).
The mighty Bora Zivkovic at sciencepolitics.blogspot.com has been writing about "blog carnivals," which I think is something like a weekly digest of the most interesting posts on a general topic. I'd set up a "Balkan carnival" if I could figure out how, and maybe if that attracted a good proportion of everyone's readers it could work.

Bora Zivkovic said...

Carnival is a much better idea than an Award. Carnivals are easy to do. Set a website as "home" of the carnival. Actually, a blog post will do, as you can keep going back and updating it over time. Put all the information there, including the e-mail adress for submissions, links to previous issues, links to future hosts (with dates), etc.

You start by prodding all bloggers you know to submit their posts. Set a date. Go around the blogosphere and promote it. Make a cute little button/link for people to put into their templates.

When the entries for the first issue have all arrived in your mailbox, write a little editorial and link to all entries. Post on your blog. GO around th eblogs again promiting the freshly-published first issue. Repeat every 2-4 weeks until there is sufficient mass of people to start rotating the Carnival around different blogs. Do not try to do it once per week - that is too frequent for a relatively small niche.

If you do this, I may deliberately write a "Balkania" post every two weeks or so. I guess I am Serb enough to have something to say every now and then...

Eric Gordy said...

Ma Coturnice, ti si, kao uzgred receno citava tvoja porodica, kao i uvek, genije. Hajde malo da razmislim, da proucavam malo tu tehnologiju, pa cu pokrenuti taj "Balkan carnival." Svi koji ste zainterosovani, ja vas zamolim da mi date svoje e-mail adrese da vas sikiniram, i cekajte samo proglas. Jer sto vise razmsljam o nagradi, cini mi se da je fina zabava ali i veliki napor za mali dobit. A ovo bi bio nacin da predstavljamo sve sto je najbolje u balkanskoj blogistici.

Jedino pravilo koje mi pada na pamet je da bude na svim jezicima koji se koriste u razgovorima o Balkanu.

Bora Zivkovic said...

Hmmm, Balkania Carnival! I have a few recent posts on my blog about carnivals and links to several of their homepages, as well as recent issues. I like the way Tangled Bank's homepage looks like and is organized. Think about it - it is not too much work, really.

Anonymous said...

OK, my only problem is, I do not know your mail. But here is mine: miljacka.quod@gmail.com should you like to get in touch.
Blog.hr is down again!
Quod

Eric Gordy said...

Silly me. It's eastethnia at gmail dot com.
E.