Blogathon Vancouver 2008: One Week to Go

There are only seven days left until a group of brave bloggers from around Vancouver (and Canada) join me in the inaugural Blogathon Vancouver July 26th.

Based on the Blogathon of the past, which is not in operation this year, bloggers are encouraged to sign up, pick a non-profit of choice, collect pledges (which can be a flat donation, or a certain amount for every hour the blogger manages to stay awake), and blog every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight. [Miss604]

Tips for those participating, some of which can be found on the wiki as well…

– Please make sure it’s clear that pledges can be sent to BlogathonVancouver [at] gmail [dot] com. This is not for payment information but simply a promissory note of encouragement: “Hi my name is Jane, I would like to pledge $10/hour to keep Raul going,” (for exmaple). At the end of the weekend bloggers can then email those who pledged them and provide a link to their charity’s online donation page: “Thank you for your support! Please follow through on your pledge by donating online via this website/link.”

– Bloggers can also get in touch with their non-profit of choice to see if they can track donations received on July 26th or to at least notify them of what you’ll be doing.

Photo credit: Duane Storey on Flickr / DuaneStorey.com

– It is imperative that your non-profit of choice have an online donation page, I fully discourage and do not endorse any blogger to take in payment information or accept cash donations in person, in comments, or by email. If you received a pledge from someone who cannot donate online, try to provide them with a phone number or mailing address for the non-profit.

– You might want to notify your readers in advance (and especially your subscribers) that your feed and blog will be flooded with 48 posts next weekend.

– If you have a blog that can handle “tags” or “categories” it will be beneficial to create one specifically for Blogathon.

– We’re hoping to have a badge up soon that participating bloggers can put on their sites this week.

Speaking of participants, we currently have these fine folks enlisted for one of three marathon shifts next weekend:

Tania Morrison (Ottawa), Raul, Shane Gibson, Karen Hamilton, Ayeza Garcia, Isabella Mori, Danny Dang, Mehnaz Thawer, Jenn Lowther/Nadia Nascimento, Barbara Doduk, Chris Richardson, Colleen Vince

For more information please visit the wiki page, sign on up, or feel free to contact me.

Also, if you are a local business that would like to sponsor one of my 48 blog posts next weekend, please contact me. You will get a 30 minute timeslot for a $50 donation (thanks to Shane for the idea) and I will either write a normal post with a note, “this time slot sponsored by…” or can add a quick write up about your business.