Blogathon

Hi Everyone, We are trying to resurrect the idea of a Praja blogathon for later this year.  I created this Wiki to pull together supporters and ideas so we can get the ball rolling.

Next steps: Pick a weekend some time in July. Please add as you see fit!

-Nisha

Notes from Meetings with Deepak and Shekhar.

Blogathon Notes – Next steps
Goals: Create more relevant content on Praja
Grow the Praja community and involve current community more in creating content and projects.
Bring more people into the Praja community.
Online event with potential to be offline event if there is demand for an offline meeting from the community.  
We will have high level bloggers or experts to blog and if there is an offline event give a talk and let people blog their responses, thoughts or just live blog the event.  
Advertising – IT communities and flyers, space, radio, colleges, internet cafés, twitter, facebook.  Potential content partners ijanagraha, mybangalore
Topics: Open to anything, local, national, experts, Know Care Participate thoughts,  
Base  - 60 to 70 bloggers who will definitely participate and can be included in early planning conversations.  Make them stakeholders.  
4500 ppl on the list that can be reached out to at any time.  
Next steps:
Pick Day: Optimally in 6 to 8 months – This gives me and other times to organize and get to know community.  Also with my and other ppl’s time commitments in mind having a little more time will be good for all involved
Set up Praja blogathon group wiki and task list.  

Comments

Discussion

I'm new to the site so I'm not sure if i created all the tasks right. 

But it would be good to link to them. 

@Silkboard - add whatever you can to the task disscussion on Awards.  We should start thinking about how we are going to judge the posts.

Separate dedicated section

I was wondering if all the discussion that Nisha mentioned she wants to start, if it is possible to have a dedicated section on the praja home page and once a user clicks then all the related discussion shows up.

I know that is not something that is done for a project and also this may require extra work but it was just a thought.

 

great going, encourage 'media' blog?

Sorry, was out last few days due to travel etc.

Building on Syed's details:

  • Praja Society members, or Blogathon organizers can't particpate
  • Group entries allowed (if an NGO or RWA wants to post as a "group"

Two types of blogs could be accepted

  • Pure text blog (old fashioned)
  • Media blog (with video)

Separate and special award for the best media blog post across all categories (3 mentioned by Syed).

Let me start working on Awards part. Any journalists reading this, if you want to join in, please send a mail to silkboard at gmail dot com.

This is a great start. I

This is a great start.

I want the wiki to be the housing area for the ideas and discussions can be where we flesh things out.  So I'll create discussions for the community around

  • topics
  • planning
  • outreach
  • Awards.

Using the suggestions from the above comments.  Then we can take the most  agreed upon ideas forward and setup polls for things like topics and awards to measure interest.

I think July 16th is a fine weekend and that will give us plenty of time to get everything discusses and worked out. 

 

 

Format, Areas Of Interest and Award Selection Criteria!

Nisha, Manjari and others,

Here is what I would suggest for the Blogathon Event!

1. Overall

  • Open to all
  • Online
  • Time Bound - Say 9 AM to 5 PM (IST)
  • Pre-Registration Requirements

2. Format

  • Based on Area of Interests
  • 2-3 Categories
  • Each Discussion thread should result in concrete ideas/Solutions/Opinions

3. Area of Interests

  • 3 High Level Categories

    A. Public Policy Frame Work - New, Updates to Existing, Crtique, Debunking

  • Governance - City, State, National
  • Reforms - Police, Judicial, Public Service, Education, Health, Civic Services, Transport, Media, Sports
  • Regulatory Systems
  • Outsourcing of Public Services like Water, Electricity, Transport,
  • Citizen Participation and Advocacy

   B. Cost Effective and Environmental Friendly Solutions

  • Water Usage and conservation
  • Preservation and expansion of Open Spaces and Green Cover in Cities/Towns
  • Waste Disposal Management
  • Energy Conservation
  • Non-Motorized Commuter Choices

   C. Citizen Awareness

  • Water
  • Energy
  • Environment
  • Civic Systems
  • Public Participation in democratic processes and systems
  • Food and Health
  • Social Responsibilities
  • Tools and Technologies promoting Citizen advocacy

4. Selection Criteria for awards

  1. Best among all submissions
  2. In Each Category/Sub-Category
  3. Best among Over-Seas submissions

 

 

So should we get started?

How about we work our way back....
I am not sure how much time is good for it to not slip someone's mind or how much is enough for an idea to spread across a city.

How about we list tasks under the the 3 parts and assign it to one person who would be responsible for it and that does not mean he/she does it all by himself but will track it.

 

 

looks like a clear 3-part project

Part-1: Generating interest in the online-heavy event (surveys to pick topics, or marketing via a radio/newspaper partner, things like that)

Part 2: Actual run of the blogathon: specifics (like: separate section, with end date for all entries, or online-15 days, then 1 all meet all day, need to detail)

Part 3: Awards and rewards. Signing up an award sponsor, and/or a newspaper to carry the winning entries.

We can divvy up work amongst us (Nisha/Shekhar/Deepak/Manjari/myself) on above lines.

Let us structure the wiki also in this 3-part way.

Ideas for topic

I honestly think the best way to involve people is by having discussions.

We could do it 2 ways:
1.) Put 10 ideas and have a poll and shortlist 5
2.) Start a disucssion on topics

But I think we should at least come with 4-5 topics so that everybody gets a better idea about the kind of topics we are looking for.

Updated the wiki

 With notes from meetings I had with Shekhar and Deepak.

We can have a group also.  I don't see much of a difference we need both to help plan.  I would like to have people add their ideas for topics. Whether they want an offline event also.  How to get others on board etc.

Nisha

Blogathon is.....

Blogathon would an online event (still considering if it should be an offline one as well) 

It would be like a an online completion where bloggers and experts can blog on the praja site on topics that range from local to national issues, anything related to governance , Know Care Participate thoughts...etc

The plan is to make it a big event where people can voice their opinion and thoughts.

 

This is just the gist of the events....

what exactly would the event be?

Need details of the event first. Once we are clear what we will do, organizing will become easier.

[Better to convert this wiki to an announcement under the blogathon project]

How about July 16th

No particular reason for picking July 16th, there are no major holidays in July and 16th is mid of the month.

 

Praja.in comment guidelines

Posting Guidelines apply for comments as well. No foul language, hate mongering or personal attacks. If criticizing third person or an authority, you must be fact based, as constructive as possible, and use gentle words. Avoid going off-topic no matter how nice your comment is. Moderators reserve the right to either edit or simply delete comments that don't meet these guidelines. If you are nice enough to realize you violated the guidelines, please save Moderators some time by editing and fixing yourself. Thanks!