Kiwi Carnival Postponed

Due to a lack of submissions, the fifth Kiwi Carnival will be postponed for a week. For all the New Zealand bloggers out there, I've an important question to ask: do you want the carnival to continue?

If so, you'll need to get involved:

1) Promote the carnival on your blog.
Some possibilities: Blogroll the Kiwi Carnival homepage, write posts about it, encourage others to join in, and link to each new carnival as it comes out. This will provide incentives for more people to join in. Which brings us to the next point.

2) Submit a post to each upcoming carnival.
There are scores of New Zealand blogs out there. Yet the carnivals so far have each only received a small handful of submissions. To really represent the kiwi blogosphere, we need more people to join in. It's very easy. Each fortnight, simply pick your favourite recent post (on a topic that's relevant to New Zealand life or politics), and email the details as per the instructions on the carnival homepage. It only takes a minute, and you get a guaranteed link out of it (and maybe some new readers), so it's a win-win situation. Give it a go.

3) Volunteer to host a carnival.
This takes a bit more work, but it isn't that hard, and can be kinda fun. Plus, if people are following step-1 properly, you'll end up getting heaps of new links and visitors.


So, that's what needs to be done. At the moment, the carnival isn't really working. The value of it lies in bringing a large number of blog readers and writers together. It's like a blog marketplace. But there's a catch-22 going on: it's only worth reading if enough authors contribute, but authors won't contribute unless there are enough readers to make it worth their while.

The flip-side of this is that the carnival would be self-sustaining if only we could reach the 'critical mass'. With enough bloggers contributing, it would make for an interesting and worthwhile read. So plenty of links and visitors would pour in, and this in turn would provide all the more incentive for bloggers to feature their work there. It's that "marketplace" idea again: we just need to get enough producers and consumers in the same location to begin with, and others will naturally follow.

But to achieve this critical mass is going to require publicity: all of that step-1 stuff mentioned above.

It hasn't happened yet, but I'm willing to give it one last shot. Kiwi Carnival #5 will be held next Sunday, August 21, and its degree of success will determine whether there are any more after that. It's in your hands now!