NBI 2016 Soon!

NBI2016

This is apparently the year of us getting our acts together a month late.  The whole Developer Appreciation Week thing… was supposed to happen in March but instead we did it in April.  Similarly the Newbie Blogger Initiative generally kicks off in May, but instead this year we are shifting it over to June.  Honestly June probably makes a lot more sense, especially for those folks with families because May means the insanity that comes with the end of the school year.  This years event is being marshaled by Doone of XP Chronicles and will contain a lot of the features that we have seen from past years.  However you might be asking yourself… why NBI?  Well to be honest, it is this incubator to help bloggers get started.  We all make the same sort of blog posts we make every year, but what it does a great job of is breaking down the barriers between those who used to only be readers, and are now starting out on their own.  Bloggers are this well that needs to be replenished every so often, because so many folks set out with good intentions and for whatever reason end up leaving the community.  Even us grizzled veterans need a fresh infusion of spirit every now and then to keep going, and in many ways this yearly event does that.  We begin to remember why we started our own blogs and why we got into this mess in the first place.  The biggest take away for me however… is that we have this long list of bloggers who have participated and are still actively blogging today.

Here is a big ole dump of some of the blogs that were once in a Newbie Blogger Initiative Class and are still active…

I feel like I probably missed a whole batch of blogs in there somewhere while crawling through my back posts about the Newbie Blogger Initiative, but regardless you can see this process has an effect on our community.  I support this notion largely because when I started blogging I had something like this to help me out too.  The “Blog Azeroth” forums were a similar incubator of excellent blogs related to the game World of Warcraft, and through them I found the support structure I needed to take my first steps into this world.  Now a bit over seven years later I am still blogging… and until recently doing it every day.  As a blogger you are going to need a community to bounce ideas off of, and if nothing else to tell you that you are doing an excellent job.  It can be extremely draining to sit down at a screen and unburden your soul in post form.  The other bloggers that I interact with on a daily basis, are my support structure and they can be yours too.

So You Want to Be a Blogger

You won’t likely find fame or fortune, but you will find is a great outlet for all of those thoughts that keep collecting dust in your brain.  I personally started out as one of those folks that rabidly posted on game forums.  I would create great walls of text about the things that I was passionate about.  I never really thought about creating a blog until I read one that made me realize… this is the sort of stuff I already write on a regular basis.  You’d think it would be simple as that, but in truth it is a lot easier to post a comment on someone else’s site than to create one of your own.  That is why we are here to help.  During the month of June the good sponsor bloggers in the NBI are going to be helping you out with writing prompts, and events that cause you to come up with content to post.  Folks like me will be mining our brains trying to come up with posts that might be helpful about the technology behind blogging, and that sort of thing.  All you need to do is…

  • decide where you are going to blog
  • come up with a catchy name
  • create social media accounts on every platform
  • set a posting schedule
  • come up with cute artwork
  • take lots of screenshots

wait…  I’ve overwhelmed you.  The truth is there are more aspects of blogging than could ever be dumped into a single post, but what we are really offering you is a hand up.  It is hard breaking into any community, and it is hard doing anything for the first time.  It is my hope that we can serve as Sherpas to climb this Everest.  What you can do is check out the various resources, and from there we can get you started in the right direction.

As always if there is anything particular I can help with as you start your journey, post a comment and I will help as best I can.

 

 

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