One door closes, another opens

Feb 22, 2007

Change is the only universal constant.

Well, change and the bemoaning of same.

When the original Friday Five went on its first hiatus, I would check in every week to see when / if it was restarting. I didn't really have the time or the resources to run any kind of community of my own, though I knew how much work they were. When Blogger Insider ended, I really missed it. I hadn't participated too long. The originator declined other peoples' offers to take over the activity, and that community faded away. I had more resources and more drive to run a community, but the original author was fairly adamant about not giving out their mailing list, or allowing re-use of the name. There were people who tried to re-start the meme, but for one reason or another, it never really took hold.

Now that T13 is ending, I think I'll try starting up some kind of weekly writing activity. I have the resources, I know how to steer clear of potential problems, I have realistic expectations of spin-offs (they'll happen, and they may or may not be related to what I try.) But exactly what form shall it take? Hmm...

Thursday Thirteen ::17: Endless Possibilities

1. Pair bloggers up, and have them interview each other (idea from Blogger Insider, circa 2001)
2. Have participants list twelve items about last week, plus a photo or image that relates to the week's activities (idea from Baker's Dozen, circa 2002)
3. Unrestrained creativity, no "theme" (because that seems to work sometimes, and not sometimes)
4. Blog feature articles — actually, paragraphs (part review, part showcase)
5. List of questions to answer each week (though seems a bit too stifling, and a little bit too much work to keep coming up with questions / themes every week) (idea from Friday Five, Thursday Threesome, many other memes)
6. Welcome commercial sites, allow them, tolerate them, or surreptitiously try and push them out? And, of course, what defines 'commercial site'? This should be a fun community activity, not a place for people to come talk about their business and try and get more clients. (If that happens...yay. But, to paraphrase Pump up the Volume, "I can smell a hardsell like a fart in a car". And I really don't love them any more than anyone else does. For one, they very rarely make for entertaining reading material.)
7. To forum, or not to forum? And if 'yes', how to set guidelines? A simple "use common sense, be polite" doesn't cut it on the internet, sadly. (And if nothing else, the PTB have to know when to lower the boom on someone, or when to close off a particular topic.)

And because I can't think of other actual, cogent points to make, books and TV I've been watching:

8. Jericho. It's interesting; but I knew that it wasn't filmed in Kansas because I saw a hill. Kansas has no hills. (If you squint, you can see through from Cheney to Nebraska.) (I also cheated and watched eps 1-12 on On Demand. There were two ads per ep, all by a major US auto manufacturer. Hmmm...I wonder who's sponsoring the show?)
9. Mort, by Terry Pratchett. Death actually gets a bit crankier in this one, so I didn't enjoy this as much as Reaper Man or Hogfather.
10. Isaac Asimov's science fiction short story collections. Yay, Barnes and Noble discount books! I now own a copy of Flowers for Algernon!! (Though the paper quality, lo it sucketh.)
11. Battlestar Galactica...though it's getting a bit too angsty for my tastes, and it seems to be confused about what it's doing. Never a good sign.
12. The Prestige, which I picked up on DVD last night (the DVD was released Tuesday). It's a good movie: good characters, excellent performances, interesting twists, a (very) few unsettling ideas. Though one possible utter bit of desperation-filler-device - I have to watch again to be sure I didn't miss something.

Other Participants

• Chicken Scratch with books
• It's a Raggedy Life
• Writing Aspirations writing about the end of a meme
• Jon Tillman with blog behaviors that piss him off and make him stop reading
• Scribbit with tips for raising kids who love to read
• Crazy Working Mom with ways to survive a horror film
• Wylie's Words with funny quotes about writing
• Random Insanity

Keywords: | Thursday | memes | Iterations |
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