I am starting up a blog carnival.  For anyone reading this who is not familiar with the idea of a blog carnival, I can best describe it as a series of episodic posts linking to other blogs that share a common theme.  It might be better to explain via an example.  Previously, I hosted an edition of Scott Nehring’s Carnival of Cinema, and you can see what that looked like.

That was a cool experience, and I imagine I will participate in the cinema carnival again in the future.  (Probably many times.)  But most of the people contributing to that carnival wrote very in-depth film reviews and long essays on the industry.  In truth it seems like the majority of blogs that I run across are built mostly of long posts. 

But the whole premise of this site is celebrating the idea of condensing what you have to say down into just one sentence.  That constraint can breed all kinds of creativity.  So that’s the common theme that I’m building this carnival on.  Brevity.

I don’t really have any idea what I’m getting myself into.  This may be a giant flop.  It’s entirely possible that there is nobody out there who cares to submit a “brief” post.  I aim to find out.

Posting Guidelines

  1.  Brief.  It should take no more than 20 seconds to read/watch your post.
  2. Clean.  If it can’t appear on network television, it can’t show up here.
  3. Compelling.  I know this is subjective, but I don’t want to be bored even if it’s only for 20 seconds.
  4. One Post Per Episode.  A given blog can only have one post in each episode, but you can have one post in every episode if you keep submitting.

Content Examples

The great thing about a carnival when it works right is you get exposed to all kinds of blogs that you never would have found on your own.  Even so, there are a few types of content that come to mind as particularly well-suited for this format.

  1. Web Comics.  They are short and funny.  Perfect.
  2. Poems.  No dirty limericks allowed.  Sorry.
  3. Jokes.  Note the aforementioned prohibition of dirty limericks.
  4. Lolcats.  Or loldogs.  Or lolfurniture.  Just no loldirtylimericks.
  5. Short Movie Reviews.  Believe it or not, I’m not the only person to come up with this idea.
  6. Other.  I don’t know.  Infographics?  Humorous shopping lists?  Pick-up lines?

Schedule

How often will new episodes come out?  Weekly?  Monthly?  Every 11 days?  I honestly don’t know.  It likely depends on how many submissions I’m getting.  I’ll probably be feeling things out for the first couple episodes, but my intent is to settle into a regular schedule.

Submitting

Let’s open the floodgates.  You can submit your brief posts at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_4482.html  Submissions will be accepted until Friday, June 29th, at noon eastern time (-500).