The Carnival of the Mobilists
So, what's it all about?
For the Reader
For the blog reader it exposes you to the very best posts of the previous week, all written about mobile and gathered together in a central place. You can read the summary on the host's site and click on any story that catches your eye. Each week, it'll be hosted at a different site, so you can read the Carnival post and explore many other mobile blogs you may not be familiar with.
For the Blogger Contributor
For the blogger contributor, you get your best writing exposed to (hopefully) a lot more readers than normal.
Every week, the Carnival will be hosted at a different site, which has the benefit of sharing traffic and the workload. The host will receive contributions during the week (including the inevitable last minute rush), write a summary of the contributions, with links to the contributing blogger. Here's an example from the first Carnival of the Mobilists.
Hosting the Carnival should generate even more traffic than usual, as the idea is that all contributing bloggers tell their readers about it. Please Note: When promoting that week's Carnival, just link to the host's site, not direct to every link. The key is that readers visit the host site and from there, the individual participants.
Timing: Entries must be received by 9 pm PST on Wednesdays. This allows the host to edit the post on Thursday for Friday publication.
Send your entry to: mobilists@gmail.com. All participants writing about mobile are welcome - you don't need a special invite.
Please note that if your entry is selected, there's a kind of moral obligation to promote the Carnival on your site that week. If you don't there's no heavy reprisals, but you will be universally hated by all :-)
If you would like to host an upcoming Carnival of the Mobilists, drop me a line at the link on the top left of the page or leave a comment.
Finally, if you'd like to include the Carnival of the Mobilists button on your site, feel free. You can simply copy the code below and it will be added to your site, linking back to this page:
<A HREF="http://mobhappy.typepad.com/russell_buckleys_mobhappy/2005/10/announcing_the_.html"><IMG SRC="http://mobhappy.typepad.com/russell_buckleys_mobhappy/images/carnival.gif" </A>
How to Host a Carnival of the Mobilists
Here are a few notes to guide potential and actual hosts of the Carnival.
1. We always need volunteers to host, so don't be shy about stepping up. Hosts get great exposure and extra traffic that week - and many new readers will stick around if they like what they find.
Here's a list of hosts in the coming weeks:
18th November The Pondering Primate
25th November Smart Mobs
2nd December WAP Review
9th December Mobile Jones
16th December C Enrique Ortiz
23rd December Christmas Edition at MobHappy
Christmas Break until 20th January.
20th January The Golden Swamp
27th January Blethers
3rd February Mobile Enterprise Weblog
2. We want the Carnival to adopt the character of the host site every week, so we try to avoid being too prescriptive. All we ask is that you feature at least 10 submissions from entries we receive.
One should be your "Best Post of the Week". And if possible, try to choose and highlight a newcomer to the Carnival.
If you get more entries than 10 (which is pretty likely), it's up to you how you deal with these. It's nice if you link to them, even better if you link and describe them. But we appreciate that your time is limited and you may be restricted as to how much more work you can do.
3. If you can't host when you have agreed to, please, please give as much notice as possible so someone can be appointed in your place.
Feedback
The Carnival is an evolving thing and all opinions are welcome. We always listen to new ideas, although don't always act on them if we don't agree with them!
Anyone interested in the discussion is invited to join our Google Group here. http://groups.google.com/group/Mobilists.
History and Inspiration of the Carnival of the Mobilists
The Carnival of the Capitalists is something of a blogging institution and one I've participated in both as contributor and host, from time to time. It was, in turn, inspired by the Carnival of the Vanities originally.
The Carnival of the Capitalists is still a great institution, and one I hope to keep contributing to, but Carlo and I thought that the mobile blogging world is now big and diverse enough to warrant our own Carnival - hence the Carnival of the Mobilists.
This sounds like a great idea -- thanks for organizing it!
-M
Posted by: mike | October 18, 2005 at 04:02 PM