Blogathon Vancouver 2008: Day of Blogs

The Blogathon was not my creation, it’s something that has been around for many years and since its usual organizers decided to take a break for 2008, I picked up the torch for a mini Vancouver version. There were others who also decided it shouldn’t completely cease to be this year and they have been doing the Day of Blogs this weekend as well.

In the summer of 2000, blogger Cat Connor decided that a free weekend could be combined with a marathon session of insomnia to have some fun with her personal website. In fact, Cat decided to update frytopia every 15 minutes for an entire 24 hours, for a total of 96 posts over the course of a single day…

… The first annual event occurred in 2001, when Cat invited friends and other bloggers to join her in her sleepless marathon. Over a hundred participants stayed awake on July 28 and 29, some doing so in spectacular fashion: there were virtual mix tapes, physical collages, shoes aplenty, and even dreams for the sleepy. Altogether, bloggers raised over $20,000 for 77 different charities in 2001.

… Numbers again doubled in 2003, with over $100,000 raised for charity. 2004 saw a break for the official Blogathon, with Project-Blog taking over for a year. in 2005, staff from previous Blogathons took over, bringing in over $58,000.

… In 2006 year, the original administrator, Cat Connor, returned. She brought Rob Drimmie, her programmer from ’02, and Sheana Director, who handled the event in ’05.

If you have the chance, head over to the Day of Blogs website to check out their list of Bloggers that we have all been publishing alongside for the last few days.

I just thought that now was as good a time as any to explain the Blogathon and why all of us have stayed up all weekend for our causes.