Five years ago, I decided to write one blog post every day. 365 posts later, I knew myself and my world infinitely better. The project led to a great many changes in my life: a new job and a new startup being the biggest. There is so much you can learn by simply making reflective practice a part of your daily life. The one thing that didn’t happen, though, is that I didn’t connect to very many new voices. There were folks who commented on my blog posts, but most of them had been commenting here for years. There were no brand new connections or communities created.
In the last days of 2014, as I was considering doing this again, I realized that this was the biggest shortcoming of my 2010 blogging regimen. I DIDN’T create a community of writers. Essentially, I was blogging selfishly, caring more about my growth than the conversation that could be created if I would have involved others in the process.
I’m going to do better this time.
That is why I am launching #C4C15: Comments for Community in 2015.
Rather than writing a new post every day, though, I will write a comment. Rather than blogging alone, I will blog with each of you. Rather than just talking to the ether, I will create a conversation. I will build something new throughout 2015, a community of writers and learners.
Come with me.
Every single day of 2015 and writing a comment on another blog post, Google+ post, Facebook post, or Twitter conversation (this will have to be at least three exchanges, as I don’t think 140 characters is enough to build community). After writing this comment, I will link to the original post here so that everyone can read along and comment with me. The idea is to use this blog as a kind of travelogue of my voyages around the web.
So that I can keep the process as transparent as possible, here is the full extent of what I am planning to do:
- I will use Nuzzel to find the posts that have the most re-tweets every day. I will use Feedly to curate my favorite blogs. I will use Flipboard, Zite, and Google+ to find articles that are off the beaten path.
- I will use this IFTTT recipe to send all of my favorites to a Google Doc that will have the list of all of the posts I want to comment on.
- I will use the comment feature on the post.
- I will highlight the comment after it is posted and the use the “Press This” bookmarklet to capture it back to this blog.
- I will tag the post with #C4C15 hashtag.
It is my sincere hope that many of you take up this call to make 2015 a Year of Commenting for Community. Please share your adventures on your own blog while using our hashtag. Thank you for being a part of this community. It is going to be a great year of learning.