This could be a hard habit to break…

Chain by pratanti via CC license on Flickr

After blogging every day in June, it’s a bit hard to stop! I was going to leave it tonight, but had this itching feeling that I had to post something.

So today’s been a bit of a mish-mash with sorting out some stuff around the title of my research presentation at LIANZA Conference 2013, being asked to do a 5-10 minute presentation on ANZ 23 Mobile Things at our work hui this Friday!, working on ANZ 23 mobile things stuff, finishing off another book review for Library Review and trying to catalogue some hard books at work (only 2 weeks leave – argh!)

I also managed to publish the summary of my #TwitMentoring research on the New Professional NZ blog as that was the place I asked my research questions (since this was before the birth of the Octopus Librarian blog…)

Also published my first comment for #CommentJuly on Fiona Doyle’s (@FiFYI) Buntoting Librarian blog. I picked her post on “The Twitter” as it perfectly sums up my feelings towards Twitter.

What with one thing and another, I’ve made it through this day – it’s truly been an octopus day, a bit ‘legs everywhere’; hope tomorrow might be a bit clearer!

Joining the conversation – #CommentJuly

Conversation by Peter Nijenhuis via CC license on Flickr

Wow – it’s been a whirl-wind month with #BlogJune and trying to write every day and catch up on the 60 odd people who are participating too! Thank you very much to @flexnib for organizing it again this year; it’s a great challenge and discipline to write every day.

But one part I feel I have missed out on this month is the commenting; engaging in conversation with those bloggers who have made me think, made me smile, made me go ‘ah-ah’, or who inspired me. I think this tweet this morning sums it up perfectly:

30 days hath September, April, June FTW #blogjune is almost over & my most favourite bit is the reading – please continue writing #selfish

— Teresa Bennett (@kalgrl) June 27, 2013

I agree with Teresa; one of the great things about #BlogJune is having all these great posts to read from a great community. But it’s equally important to join the conversation.

I posed a question in an earlier post (actually before #BlogJune) – Why is it so hard to comment?  People gave some really interesting responses in the comments, and following a twitter conversation with @c_hocking, we decided to challenge ourselves to do #CommentJuly. This involves going back to blog posts – starting with the ones from #BlogJune – and commenting on one each day.

I outlined my #CommentJuly rules in an earlier blog post and just summarized them here:

1. I will comment on someone else’s blog post that inspires me each week day in July.
2. 31 days in July, but only 23 week days = 23 posts.
3. I’m away for a whole week in July (without access to WiFi) so will either have to pre-schedule 5 or 6 posts or drop the number of my posts from 23 to 17 or 18. Still working on this…
4. I will comment on only ONE blog post from each person.
5. In addition to commenting on this blog post, I will write a post about it on my blog.
   This will include a link to their post and some commentary on what I appreciate about their blog. If possible, I will re-blog it on my blog but appreciate this might not work with all blogging platforms.
6. Because 23 posts from 23 bloggers is not all that many (and there are heaps of fantastic bloggers out there), I might have to introduce a regular blogging feature and give a shout-out to a blogger once a week. Maybe #BloggerFriday???

I now wonder if my rules are a bit ambitious, and might modify them (a la @juliaderuiter) to just do a wrap up post at the end of the week with the 5 posts I have commented on and share the posts I’ve commented on on Twitter daily.

• Fill in Catherine’s form if you’re interested in being part of the #CommentJuly community
• Julia’s #CommentJuly rules

So are you keen to join us? I’d love to hear what your plan is for #CommentJuly – make up your own rules or modify ours…

Come and join the conversation!

#CommentJuly – the ground rules

The idea of #CommentJuly (still working on the best hash tag :D) is based on a discussion between @c_hocking and I and some blog posts from both of us. These blog posts – if you care to read them – are my post Blog Lurking: Why is it so hard to comment? and Catherine’s post – #BlogJune.

So the basic concept behind #CommentJuly (or #BlogCommentJuly) is to comment on other people’s blog posts. Simple right?

But I need some goals and perimeters to guide this #CommentJuly foray. So here are my ground rules:

1. I will comment on someone else’s blog post that inspires me each week day in July.
   I’m not including the weekends because blog traffic is really slow on the weekends, so it’d wouldn’t be fair to the people I post about on the weekend.
2. 31 days in July, but only 23 week days = 23 posts.
3. I’m away for a whole week in July (without access to WiFi) so will either have to pre-schedule 5 or 6 posts or drop the number of my posts from 23 to 17 or 18. Still working on this…
4. I will comment on only ONE blog post from each person.
   This is going to be hard, especially with #BlogJune, because some people have been churning out fabulous posts every day!
5. In addition to commenting on this blog post, I will write a post about it on my blog.
   This will include a link to their post and some commentary on what I appreciate about their blog. If possible, I will re-blog it on my blog but appreciate this might not work with all blogging platforms.
6. Because 23 posts from 23 bloggers is not all that many (and there are heaps of fantastic bloggers out there), I might have to introduce a regular blogging feature and give a shout-out to a blogger once a week. Maybe #BloggerFriday???

I’ve already found 19-20 posts I’d like to comment on and feature which I am storing in a Google document for now. So what do you think? Are these feasible ideas or do you have other ideas for #CommentJuly?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Blog ideas by Owen W Brown via CC license on FLickr