We’re back! After weeks and weeks of not posting, we’re coming back with fresh posts, new beta bites and maybe even some new projects. After letting the site lay fallow, I decided it was time for us to get back into blogging. But how could we prevent the same problems from cropping up again and killing our post-rate?

It occurred to me that as a group we work on projects collaboratively. First in college and now both on our personal projects, at our various places of employment and even making dinner (see picture), most of our actual productive work is done with other people. So how could we apply this paradigm to blogging? Blogging is in general pretty solitary. You sit alone, type up your thoughts and only then put them out for other people to read. Some people talk through your ideas with another person before writing them and maybe a few people actually have someone edit their drafts, but by and large blogging is not a group activity. I thought this was wrong. My solution: Blog Parties!

Basically I just wanted to get everyone in one room and writing. There’s a big activation cost to starting a blog post, and social activities are a great way to hide these kinds of costs. Long commutes go faster if you have a friend to talk to and tedious tasks fly by when everyone is joking around. Social activities return benefits out of proportion to their costs. If I could get everyone together we would be able to bounce ideas off of each other, ask questions and even edit posts before we put them out on the internet. By making it a group social activity I hoped people would enjoy writing posts more and be more inspired to write high quality posts. All of us in a room for an hour we could easily whip up a week’s worth of content in a fun and interactive environment.

So far it’s going pretty well. Brian’s already done with his post, Sean’s well on his way and Brendan’s looking up links for his. In a few weeks I’ll write a follow up to this and let you know if we manage to keep it up. Until then, enjoy our fresh new content, comment on stuff you find interesting and come back often.