Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Carnival of the Blue Sunset

Next month will be the last edition of the Carnival of the Blue that I will be curating. The consensus among those I've polled is that the utility of blog carnivals has diminished in the last couple of years, especially with the rise in social media. Consequently, June may also be the last Carnival of the Blue. There is the possibility of transferring the curation of the carnival onto someone else. If you know anyone who is interested in the responsibility, please have them contact me.

It's been an honor and pleasure working with the online ocean blogging community.

Thank you.

Jason

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Carnival of the Blue No. 48-Barefoot Blog

The possibly penultimate Carnival of the Blue is up at Danielle's Barefoot Blog. Check out May's edition with all the oceany links from the previous month.
Next month's Carnival will be on World Oceans Day, June 8, at Mark's Blogfish blog. Email your contributions to Mark (blogfishx [at] gmail . com) or use the handy blogcarnival.com form.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Carnival of the Blue No 47 - Water Word's that Work

The 48th edition of the Carnival of the Blue is up at Water Word's that Work. Check out the briny links from the past month or so.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Carnival of the Blue No. 45 and No. 46


My apologies for letting this slip here, but I hope you haven't missed the past two months of ocean excellence. In February, Zen Faulkes brought us from the epipelagic down to the Hadopelagic. Check it out at the NeuroDojo.

This month the Carnival of the Blue set sail with Sam Urmy at the Oceanographer's Choice.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Carnival of the Blue No. 43: The Seasonal Arboreal Phasianid Edition


December's carnival is up at Dr. Alistar Dove's Deep Type Flow blog. Al is an Australian marine biologist living in the United States, where he is currently Senior Scientist at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Carnival of the Blue Guidelines

I've been meaning to post guidelines for the Carnival of the Blue for quite some time. This is geared mostly towards new CotB hosts, but there are also pointers here for anyone wishing to contribute a post. If you have questions about this information, please let me know.
- Jason (dotoftheblue @ gmail . com)

BACKGROUND
Blog carnivals collect together links on a particular topic (blogcarnival.com/bc/faq.html). There are carnivals about botany, politics, neurology and more. They occur on a cyclical schedule, usually weekly or monthly.

The Carnival of the Blue is a monthly roundup of blog posts related to the oceans. The CotB got its start in June 2007 by Mark Powell (aka, blogfish). His goal was to celebrate World Oceans Day and also bring the ocean blogging community closer together.

CURATOR
The curator for the Carnival of the Blue is responsible for the overall management of the events. This includes posting and maintaining the CotB main website (see below), finding hosts for each month, composing and sending out the CotB newsmail and updating the Twitter account. The curator also forwards any contributions received via the blogcarnival.com submission form (see below).


Mark Powell is the Carnival of the Blue founder. Jason Robertshaw is the current CotB curator.

HOSTS
Deadlines
A call for participation is posted at the CotB website once or twice a year. Bloggers can sign up by commenting on the call for participation post or by contacting the curator. Slots are often booked up to a year in advance. Subscribe to the CotB newsmail or Twitter feeds for announcements (see above). Each month a different host makes a Carnival of the Blue post on or near the first Monday of each month. Contributions are due the Friday before the first Monday of each month.

A host might receive contributions anytime during the month prior to their hosting date. So someone hosting in May might receive posts throughout April. Contributions may come directly to the host from contributors. The curator also forwards any contributions that come in via the blogcarnival.com submission form. Most contributions theypically arrive closer to the submission deadline (and sometimes even past it). It is up to the leniency of the host to decide how far past the deadline to accept contributions.

Host Guidelines
Guidelines for contributors are listed below. Beyond those, there are no hard rules as to what can be included in a CotB post. It is up to the discretion of the host as to the appropriateness of content, but profane, derogatory and discriminatory content is never befitting. The hosts can also, at their discretion, include a few links in addition to those sent in by contributors. Special Note: there are scammers that take advantage of the blog carnival system, looking to boost their search engine rankings by fooling legitimate sites into linking to them. An easy way to spot fakers is by looking at the contributed link. If their website looks phony, doesn’t have an archive of ocean-related content and seems to be hawking online degrees, timeshares or merchandise, they are probably fake. If you have any question about the legitimacy of a contributed link, please contact the Carnival of the Blue curator (see above).

Format
The format of the actual Carnival of the Blue post is open. Visiting previous Carnivals of the Blue is the best way to get a sense of how other hosts have structured their posts. Archives of past posts are linked on the CotB website. However, each month’s contribution typically fall into self-evident themes like: invertebrates, art and poetry, deepsea, conservation, coastal, education, etc. You can organize by these themes, or by geography or alphabetically—whichever way works best for you. Each link is usually given a summary by the host. This summary can be just a few words or a whole paragraph, but should be enough to give a reader some context. Some hosts include photos and other images too. Be sure you have permission to use any copyrighted content and give proper attribution as necessary.

CONTRIBUTORS
The Carnival of the Blue is posted on or near the first Monday of each month. Contributions are due the Friday before the first Monday of each month. Guidelines for contributions are as follows:
  1. Written in the previous month since the last posted Carnival of the Blue.
  2. Be on some topic related to the oceans. Your entire blog does not need to be about the oceans. Just the contributed link. For example, if you write about knitting but have a blog post about woolen whale patterns, by all means consider sending it in.
  3. Written by the contributor. Don’t submit links you have not personally written.
  4. In blog format. Direct links to PDFs, videos and other non-blog format content is not suitable.
  5. News articles are not the intent of the Carnival of the Blue. If it’s something ocean-related and really interesting, write a blog post about it and then contribute that post.
The easiest way to contribute a link is by using the blogcarnival.com submission form: blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_8736.html

Alternatively, links can be sent directly to the Carnival of the Blue curator or to that month’s host. Email contacts are provided on the CotB website.

It is typical and graceful for any contributor included in a Carnival of the Blue post to mention it on their own blogs with a link back to that month’s post. This creates a virtuous circle between the hosts, contributors and readers.