2014 Blaugust Wrap-up

Wrapping Up Blaugust

This mornings post has taken a bit longer than I had originally hoped for and is caused by a number of reasons.  Firstly I slept in extremely late this morning, and secondly we cleaned the house for a bit before I finally sat down to tabulate the results of this months contest.  Additionally it took me a bit longer to roll all of the dice than I had intended, but here I am writing the wrap up post.  There is no way I can adequately express in words what this entire endeavor has meant to me.  Like I have said more than a few times…  I really expected to get maybe five participants at most in this month long challenge and instead at last count we had 52 individuals that joined in.

More than that I have watched a fledgling community solidify around the shared challenge.  There has been so much cross posting as part of this event, where someone will post an idea… that will spark another blogger, and another until it has echoed through the entire community.  We’ve had discussions on the meaning of gamer, a handful of surveys and and most recently an interesting discussion on what exactly our blogs name means.  My ultimate hope is that going forward this connective tissue we have built will stay just as strong as it has the last month.  There has been some talk about trying to organize a series of twitter chats using a specific hashtag to have long freeform discussions about the things that matter to us in our community.  I think I would love to see someone take the ball and run with this one, because I know it works well in my wife’s mathematics communities.

Blaugust Survivors

In my mind each and every person that participated in the contest is amazing.  I want to thank you all so much for taking the time to devote to this initiative.  Even if you couldn’t post every day… your attempts and struggles mattered to me.  Towards the end of the challenge I became extremely focused on who was posting every single day, but I don’t want you all to lose sight of the fact that just by joining in you have won to me.  As such I want to take a moment to recognize every single member of this Blaugust community and give you a nifty little banner that you can attach to your blog with pride.  You came, you saw, you rocked this Blaugust thing!  I’ve kept the images huge on purpose to allow you to scale it down to fit your blog without losing resolution.

Blaugust Winners

The next group that I want to recognize is all of the folks who spent hour after hour making sure they had a new post each and every day.  I cannot express in words just how awesome you all are.  Some of you are seasoned veterans at this blogging things, but even more interesting is just how many on this list have not even made their first year anniversary yet.  I know it was a struggle for some, but you all rose to the occasion and created some extremely interesting content as a result.  You not only survived Blaugust, but you kicked its ass and are taking a victory lap.  Once again you get a nifty doodad for your blog, to significant that you Won Blaugust 2014.

Now For the Prizes

As with any contest there have to be prize winners and a good chunk of this morning was spent rolling a lot of dice and recording the results.  You can check out the full spreadsheet here of the rolls for each of the winners.  I am not sure how long my prizes will last but quite honestly I would love to give each and every one of the winner something for being so amazing.  I’ve had a few people mention that they are willing to donate for the cause, so over the coming weeks I might see if I can make that happen.  However for the time being… the final results are in and…

  1. Grand Prize – Alternative Chat
  2. Also Awesome 1 – Missy’s Mojo
  3. Also Awesome 2 – I Has PC
  4. Also Awesome 3 – Echoes From The Abyss

I will be getting with each of you over the next few days to pass out your prizes.  If I still have prizes left to give I will be going down the spreadsheet and sharing the love as best I can.  Hopefully the whole prize thing doesn’t lose sight on the fact that all of you that participated are awesome, and strength willing I hope to do this same thing again next August.  Here is hoping we can continue to support the creation of awesome content in our little community.  I hope you all enjoyed yourselves, and I look forward to the next event!

20 thoughts on “2014 Blaugust Wrap-up”

  1. Congratulations to everyone who participated, and especially those who completed the challenge. Thank you for organizing this, Bel. It was work, but worth it.

  2. Thanks for all the hard work you put into Blaugust! While some days were a little tough to come up with a topic, but overall I think it was more fun than I had imagined. This was also a great opportunity to meet many other bloggers, and this’ll help me branch out and hopefully start keeping up with more blog-reading. Cheers! 🙂

  3. Thanks for the banner! I’ve loved Blaugust and I hope to keep in touch with the blogs I’ve found 🙂 I’ll look out for an announcement to see if it happens again next summer 😀

  4. Thanks and nice to be a lucky winner. Truth is I feel like a winner for just participating – I improved my blogging, became closer to many community members, and had a lot of fun in the process. I won’t be sticking to the everyday posting schedule but I know I’ll post far more often 🙂 and oh, live A book as well!

    Thank you for the inspiration Belghast its a wonderful initiative and looking forward to next year already!

  5. So many 😀 Congrats each and everyone who attended. It was horrible!! haha nonooooo It was hard work, sometimes fun, sometimes very difficult! I loved reading everyones posts <3

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