Whew. Woblomo is over. At the last minute, I changed my goal from posting every day to every other day, and I couldn’t be happier. Sixteen posts in thirty one days is challenge enough.
First, I actually failed my own challenge. If I had stickKed it, I’d be stuck with a bill. I missed the March 9 deadline by 5 hours and 3 minutes. I woke up on March 10 in a hotel room with the sudden horrible realization that I “was fail”. I quickly published a post, ending with a quip suggesting that according to Hawaii Standard Time I had a full 53 minutes to spare. Even though every other day comes every other day (for most people an easily recognizable pattern) I somehow simply forgot. I did end up meeting the other fifteen deadlines according to my actual time zone. There’s always next year.
The exercise was absolutely worthwhile for me. I published several posts that were idling in my idea file, where I’m sure they’d remain if it weren’t for the impetus of forced deadlines. As of today, quantcast says my traffic has gone from 700 to 1,900 people per month, my site ranking from the high millions to 686,628. Google Reader says I have 416 subscribers and impressively clocks my posts/week at precisely 3.5.
I also rushed a few wonder bread posts toward the end. Dear reader: on balance do you think my blog was better during this version of March Madness?
Money Conciousness — one of four other bloggers who participated in woblomo as far as I can tell — says “I don’t think I will ever do this again in the future”. I definitely plan to. I believe it was nearly the perfect length and pace: just enough to serve as a prod to clean out the “easy” posts from my queue and force a few wingits, without leaving me completely bankrupt. I wouldn’t want to keep up the pace every month, but I could easily see doing it twice a year instead of once.
The meme “woblomo” has reached 9,430 places around the web, including the The Monthly Newsletter of the Lansing Junior Chamber of Commerce. Not exactly “wisdom of crowds” fame, but not bad.
My favorite quote about woblomo was from Anthony Towns:
Via David Pennock, who is apparently of the view that if something’s worth doing, it’s worth registering the domain and turning it into a worldwide phenomenon. And hey, why not?
Apparently so. Just wait until I get around to explaining freeralph.com.
I, sadly, also failed the WoBloMo challenge. I started with the best of intentions and had built some momentum and a good list of topics to cover.
Unfortunately, travel followed by illness meant I stumbled after three posts and then only completed a total of 6 for March.
Regardless, I found it a really useful exercise and will happily try it again next time.
For a Duke alumnus, you are alright. Definitely good to empty the idea file once in a while. Enjoyed the topics (or I wouldn’t have commented)
Thanks Mark: glad you found it useful and will try again. Glad you are back to health and blogging.
Thanks Daniel. Much appreciated. Your comments have been great.
That reminds me: there also seemed to be an uptick in comments and new mybloglog users during the month.