Having a Party

I'm having a party, and you're all invited.

You can all blame The Write Jerry for the inspiration that set my wheels turning. When I first saw the “block party” heading of his post the other day, I was expecting it to refer to an EVENT, a crossover of ideas between neighboring blogs. J-No took things in a different direction than expected, but my initial notion continued to develop.

In the suburbs, new and old neighbors will often join together for a block party. It's a time in which friends gather, when new bonds are formed and existing ones are strengthened. There may be a theme, and everyone has something to contribute, whether it be dinner, dessert, or something recreational such as a volleyball net on the front lawn, for example. With that in mind, and considering that a blogroll is, in a sense, a virtual neighborhood, I thought it would make a great crossover event among the blogs I read. Next Monday's as good a day as any, since I have the day off for President's Day and can likely post much, much earlier than my normal time of around midnight. I'm thinking I may post as early as noon.

The specifics still eluded me as I developed the notion of a Blog Party. The Blogs themselves make up the neighborhood, but what would we serve? Ideas certainly, but that's done often, organized or not. People in my blogroll are friends and/or those with similar interests in comics, movies and television. To make it a party, we'd have to be serving the SAME ideas. Yet, that's not true to the spirit of a block party either. Ten people don't all make meatloaf. But if they did, no two families would have the EXACT same recipe.

Here's how I envision a Blog Party working:

1) The host(on this occasion, myself) establishes a date for the event and chooses a topic to blog about.

2) On that day, neighboring blogs may discuss the same topic from their point of view, linking to the host's post.

3) The host may design a logo to commemorate the event, which other participating sites may copy to their servers and display as a link to the host in their post as well.

4) Everyone comments on everyone else's posts, “mingling” with the guests. A good time is had by all.

5) The Blog Party is such a huge success, that one of the participants decides to host his or her own Blog Party, picks a topic, announces the date, and the cycle begins anew.

I've never tried anything like this before. I've been blogging for less than five months, so there may be more successful variations of this concept in existence already. I may be the only one at the party, and the worst case scenario is that I still end up with a decent stand-alone post on Monday. A crossover would be so much cooler, of course.

You're all invited to blog about the following topic next Monday:

Your Top Five Villains of All Time, from Comics to Cartoons to Television to Film

I think this will yield diverse enough responses that everyone will “serve” something different. I'll try to have my list up by or before noon on the 21st, Eastern time. I was going to go with something like “Best Movie”, but Rey's recent poll showed how broad that topic could be. Even what I chose may be too broad but if it works out, future hosts can pick five movies from a certain genre, or five heroes, or vehicles, actresses, artists, etc--the possibilities are endless.

Finally, I did create a semi-patriotic, slightly cheesy logo for the event:



If you choose to participate, you're welcome to copy the image to your server and display it as a link. Even if you don't write about the same thing on Monday, you're all still welcome to drop by my “house” and make comments. A Blog Party is all about hospitality and entertaining the neighbors.